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Amps Def Leppard used?

sahlomonic

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gainfreak Newbie

gainfreak

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What did Def Leppard use for amps on the Hysteria album? I've heard they used Randalls, but does anyone know specifically what they used? I'm dying to achieve their tone. And I don't have enough money to hire Mutt Lange.

 

 

 

You might not want to hear this but that was a modified Rockman on that album. If you you want that sound, get yourself either a rockman sustainor or a distortion generator and a EQ and you'll have that sound. If you want to use it live, just add a poweramp.

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gainfreak Newbie

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The Randall stuff was used live. In the studio, I heard it was a modified Rockman. There was a huge recording site on the net that had major details on that sound. To be honest with you, Ive always thought it sounded like a rockman with great production.

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mfergel Newbie

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yeah, regular Rockman. He's been using aJMP-1 direct to the board through a Palmer speaker emulator for the last several albums for quite some time now.

 

Remember, the trick back on that album was also that instead of playing chords, a lot of times they would play the individual notes making up the chord and track those separately. Also, they would do other things like open tune each chord and play those separately, etc.

 

VH-1 Classics has a DVD available of a show they ran on making Hysteria. Really good DVD. You can get it for $10 at Walmart. It's cool because they play back individual tracks. Not as technical as I'd like, but a nice overview of the writing/recording process and such.

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t-rave Newbie

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heres the story form the horses mouth ( Mike Shiply, Mutts right hand man..moderator on gearslutz)

 

"Well Flex.......here we go into the Def Lep gtr stuff.

The gtr sound you are talking about in "Hysteria"is a "Rockman" by Tom Scholz. Every guitar sound on that record is Rockman. The clean sounds and the distorted ones!!!!. We had tried to get a gtr sound with DL for so friggin' long.We had 100's of amps lined up in the studio and had tried almost all of 'em and we were sick of the "crunchiness" of the sound . Mutt didn't think it was commercial enough...especially when we started layering gtr sounds.......which was part of the idea for this record.

We tried the "Rockman"..which only really had one sound..as it was a very cheap box so we got in contact with Tom Scholz and asked him to modify the sound for us. So he sent us a version of the box that ZZTOP had been using on all their records and it was spot on for us also. Yes ZZTOP didn't use amps either !!!.We could layer sounds up and the sound got more interesting instead of more crunchy.

The clean sound in Hysteria and the attack you are talking about is simply the sound of the compressor inside of the Rockman on its clean setting..(still a hard sound to beat 'cos of it's space).that's it's sound...we also effected it with chorusing and delays and stuff in the mix but we did the whole album with that {censored}@y little box!!!

The Rockman has such a god awful sound but we would notch out certain frequencies with notch filters and such....put it thru Palmer speaker simulators ..anything to make it work cos it had no real balls to the sound but that also was half the point.When it was layered up....it was a very commercial sound ..

We had been working with AC/DC etc and those bands had a sound already....they could make their amps sound so damn good.....but give the same amps and setting to DL (which we did)and it was a horrible noise !!! "cos DL used so many 2nd's and odd inversions in their chords so we would re-tune the gtr so that each chord could be played "open" instead of fretted.,......especially for the clean sounds, so that the sustain and openness would stay for each chord , again no one in their right mind would do any of this , and we most certainly had lost our minds ages ago. It was a looong process and was an experiment . Even how we were gonna do the drums was an experiment. Literally up until we started to mix, there were no drums or bass on the tape.just gtrz and vocals......all the rest was put in in the mix!!!!..they had been using a linn drum to keep time and 'cos the arrangements kept changing all the time.....I mean ALL the time..even in the mix...there was no point putting drums onuntil last cos we would be changing parts everyday !!!.....The answer was to do them last with a Fairlight....it was all very "wobbly" conceptually because having listened for almost 2 years to songs with no Bass and no real drum parts on tape..you can imagine how the picture changed when we stated adding bass and drums to the picture......well we kinda freaked and couldn't get used to the difference (no {censored} !!) So I had to come up with Bass and Drum sounds that fit the heavily textured gtrs. Normal drum sound sounded boxy and small so we went into the whole drumsound fiesta.......that's another story."

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gainfreak Newbie

gainfreak

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heres the story form the horses mouth ( Mike Shiply, Mutts right hand man..moderator on gearslutz)


"Well Flex.......here we go into the Def Lep gtr stuff.

The gtr sound you are talking about in "Hysteria"is a "Rockman" by Tom Scholz. Every guitar sound on that record is Rockman. The clean sounds and the distorted ones!!!!. We had tried to get a gtr sound with DL for so friggin' long.We had 100's of amps lined up in the studio and had tried almost all of 'em and we were sick of the "crunchiness" of the sound . Mutt didn't think it was commercial enough...especially when we started layering gtr sounds.......which was part of the idea for this record.

We tried the "Rockman"..which only really had one sound..as it was a very cheap box so we got in contact with Tom Scholz and asked him to modify the sound for us. So he sent us a version of the box that ZZTOP had been using on all their records and it was spot on for us also. Yes ZZTOP didn't use amps either !!!.We could layer sounds up and the sound got more interesting instead of more crunchy.

The clean sound in Hysteria and the attack you are talking about is simply the sound of the compressor inside of the Rockman on its clean setting..(still a hard sound to beat 'cos of it's space).that's it's sound...we also effected it with chorusing and delays and stuff in the mix but we did the whole album with that {censored}@y little box!!!

The Rockman has such a god awful sound but we would notch out certain frequencies with notch filters and such....put it thru Palmer speaker simulators ..anything to make it work cos it had no real balls to the sound but that also was half the point.When it was layered up....it was a very commercial sound ..

We had been working with AC/DC etc and those bands had a sound already....they could make their amps sound so damn good.....but give the same amps and setting to DL (which we did)and it was a horrible noise !!! "cos DL used so many 2nd's and odd inversions in their chords so we would re-tune the gtr so that each chord could be played "open" instead of fretted.,......especially for the clean sounds, so that the sustain and openness would stay for each chord , again no one in their right mind would do any of this , and we most certainly had lost our minds ages ago. It was a looong process and was an experiment . Even how we were gonna do the drums was an experiment. Literally up until we started to mix, there were no drums or bass on the tape.just gtrz and vocals......all the rest was put in in the mix!!!!..they had been using a linn drum to keep time and 'cos the arrangements kept changing all the time.....I mean ALL the time..even in the mix...there was no point putting drums onuntil last cos we would be changing parts everyday !!!.....The answer was to do them last with a Fairlight....it was all very "wobbly" conceptually because having listened for almost 2 years to songs with no Bass and no real drum parts on tape..you can imagine how the picture changed when we stated adding bass and drums to the picture......well we kinda freaked and couldn't get used to the difference (no {censored} !!) So I had to come up with Bass and Drum sounds that fit the heavily textured gtrs. Normal drum sound sounded boxy and small so we went into the whole drumsound fiesta.......that's another story."

 

 

there is another site where they go into detail about the zz top Rockman. If they used the same version of the rockman the it was modified to take out some mids. That said, the point is really moot because it sounds like a regular rockman to me!

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willy22 Newbie

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The Randall stuff was used live. In the studio, I heard it was a modified Rockman. There was a huge recording site on the net that had major details on that sound. To be honest with you, Ive always thought it sounded like a rockman with great production.

 

 

I read in a guitar mag around the time that album came out that they did use Rockmans. It had something to do with the electronic drums.

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M-III Newbie

M-III

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Mutt Lange is the one responsible for Def's tone.

 

For the Hysteria album, a bit +infinity. Mutt was the man behind the magic on that album for sure, I'm sure they had his studio and his massive arsenal of amps at thier disposal and then some. Although I've read several times in various articles over the years saying the same thing though, that thier very well guarded secret was some modded Marshalls. I dunno what models though, my guess is JCM 800s, maybe a Plexi in there or so.

 

I saw them recently in concert with Journey and they didn't have thier heads on stage unfortunately... My guess on what they used were those same Marshalls or some newer models like the DSL. Good luck finding out... :o

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-->CHRIS<-- Newbie

-->CHRIS<--

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I heard the Rockman Metal ace is the production version of the modified rockman.

 

I dont have any respect for the way they made that album. DL didnt really write the songs. ML would coax them to play riffs and constructed the songs around them in the studio.

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Riggins Newbie

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I dont have any respect for the way they made that album. DL didnt really write the songs. ML would coax them to play riffs and constructed the songs around them in the studio.

 

 

That would explain why that album sucked so bad musically.

IMO their last good album was High n' Dry.

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sahlomonic Newbie

sahlomonic

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The Metal Ace is at best a knock-off of the Rockman. Tom Scholz sold SR&D to Dunlop, therefore changing the name of the Rockman X100 to the Metal Ace, and only using some of the licensed patents, to keep the cost down and ease of production.

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