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Boston Guitar Sound? Tom Scholz?


petejt

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I like Ynqwie's sound on No Parole... It was "cleaner" sounding than what he went with on Rising Force. I think the old Dimarzio FS-1 pickups and added compression helped this quite a lot.



Agreed.
Yngwie's tone on other studio albums always seems to have too much speaker buzz. :freak:



And yet live it sounds a hell of a lot better.
[YOUTUBE]de4Gzf-TgqE[/YOUTUBE]

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A lot of the early Boston stuff was done on a Les Paul with P-90's & Marshalls.

 

 

He's still using a beat-to-{censored} goldtop with P90 live. His amps on stage all look to be his custom jobs. And he still sounds {censored}ing great.

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If you have a high gain amp already and you want that sound or something similar, Get yourself a Fuman PQ3 parametric EQ and use it before the amp. The PQ3 is a boost pedal and parametric EQ pedal all in one. Set the midrange freequency boosted at 800hz at a narrow bandwidth and you will hear what im talking about. You will need a hush or decimator pedal because the EQ will add a lot of noise. (nature of the beast so to speak..adding EQ and boosting freequencies does add noise)



Yup, gets you pretty darned close. :thu:

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actually barry goudreau was every bit as important to the boston sound as anything. he did most of the key solos, people think sholtz was the main guitarist actually he stayed back more in the rythem pocket... check out any of the live videos on youtube.

 

 

Tom Sholtz played almost every guitar on the first couple of albums. And most of the bass too.

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Not trying to be an ass, but everybody says you can get close with this or that. Do y'all have any clips of this or that getting the Boston sound, or close enough for the MILFs (not the cork-sniffers) for a live cover gig?

 

:)

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wow, that Rockmancentral website is INSANE.....love it!

Over the years, I had:

X100 Rockman
Rockman Soloist

Sustainor, Chorus, Delay, Compressor and Chorus/Delay rockmodules.

Early XP-100 amp (with the stereo 6" speakers and 100 watts)

XRP rack preamp.

Tons of the stuff. I used it a LOT in the studio in the late 80s and 90s. GREAT stuff, and starting to go up in value.

It has a very identifiable sound, but if you tweak it good, you can get some great tones out of the Rockman stuff.

it's not BROOTALZ though......

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Not trying to be an ass, but everybody says you can get close with this or that. Do y'all have any clips of this or that getting the Boston sound, or close enough for the MILFs (not the cork-sniffers) for a live cover gig?


:)


Did you try an EQ or fixed wah along with some arena delay/reverb?

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I may be old, but I grew up on Boston. You of the boosted mids club are right in there with Tom Scholz. Lots of compression too. Tom was an MIT grad and built some pretty nice gear back in the day. These guys invented the power ballad an paved the way for bands like Foreigner. If you can get your hands on some Rockman gear, do it. You can always tweak with EQ th de- boston the sound and get some great tones happenin'

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Not trying to be an ass, but everybody says you can get close with this or that. Do y'all have any clips of this or that getting the Boston sound, or close enough for the MILFs (not the cork-sniffers) for a live cover gig?


:)



I haven't got any clips, but I am able to get that sound quite easily. 'tis a lotta fun! :cool:

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I have an X100. The input jack on it is loose and crackly. This thread has inspired me to go get it fixed.


Billy Corgan cites the Rockman as inspiration for the early SP Tones.

 

 

Contact Dunlop for repairs. I know they repair the pedals. Call them and ask if they also repair the headphone amps like yours.

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The DG is OK, the Sustainor wonderful. Now I've got to reverse engineer it ...


BTW, there is also this site for information:

 

 

Yeah, I'm familiar with the rockamn.fr site. However, these units don't reproduce the Boston sound all that well. My musical world revolves around those first two Boston albums for both the music and the guitar sound.

 

First of all, the first two Boston albums had two somewhat different guitar sounds and I like the second album's guitar sound slightly better even though it was a less popular album than the first. Second, even Boston doesn't sound like those albums when they play live. That started ever since he started only using the Rockman modules. I never liked those too much. They sound harsher and less smooth. The band sounded better in the late 70's when Tom Scholz took most of his studio contraptions on tour with him. However, it was driving him crazy. He was forced to make compact units he could control with a foot pedalboard. The little headphone amps actually do the second album better than the rack units but they're also more noisy and don't do as good a job reproducing the first album. It would take a lot of work in producing it but those first two albums could be reproduced using digital modeling but I guess the demand for that sound isn't as big anymore. It's the best guitar sound EVER!

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I lived in the Boston area when the band first surfaced. I saw them twice and live they used nothing but Marshall stacks...

 

You might not have read this whole thread. Go to www.rockmancentral.com and click on the big picture in the middle of the screen. After that, pick the link called The Boston Sound from the list on the left side of the screen. A new list will appear on the left side of the screen and click on The Marshall Sound. You will see all the other crap he had besides Marshalls. Mind you, he had even more stuff behind the speaker cabinets and behind and under the stage. It was WAY more than, as you say "nothing but Marshall amps". That's why he invented the Rockman equipment. He tried to get as close as he could without the tons of gear he had to lug around and connect from show to show to show.

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Does anyone know what amps, effects, equalisers etc. were used to
originally
get that 'Boston Guitar Sound'? I think it was mountains of stuff.


What songs out there were recorded with that sound?

 

I knew someone who knew Tom Scholz in the 70s. He used to record ODs at the studio in my home town (Northern Recording Studios, now RIP), and i knew the owner.

 

I got to see the rehearsal space he had in Waltham, MA in 1976, and got a brief explanation of "the boston guitar sound." Basically, it starts with a les paul into a cranked Marshall SLP. Then, lots of outboard gear added: limiting, chorus/doubling and delay. And teh midz were boosted for sure (~800hz).

 

The Rockman aimed to re-create that same type of sound/effects without the $10k worth of outboard studio gear. They were noisy as all hell, but you COULD coax some great toanz out of em once you tamed down the noise floor.

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