Songs that featured solid-state guitar amps

[swarfrat]

I once launched a Jazz Chorus into orbit in college. Some buddies and I were roadying for a band's local show (Jacob's Trouble, Dubuque, IA) I went to pick up what I thought was a Twin in a road case, and it was a JC120. I hope I didn't hurt it too bad.

 

[Michedelic]

If you're alluding to direct distortion, or a pedal straight to the console, I think the epitome of that tone is in Norman Greenbaum's "spirit in the sky" or TRex "bang a gong-get it on"

You can't put it everywhere all the time, but used sparingly and blended right it works great.

I think Marc was just using a Strat into a Vox AC30 with a little bit of breakup; it doesn’t sound that overloaded. “Spirit In The Sky” was a full-on custom fuzz circuit built into the guitar. If anything, The Beatles’ single version of “Revolution” is a perfect example of guitars straight to board max out.

 

[MordBass]

FWIW, Kirk and Matt both use Orange CR120 heads in Crowbar, which are solid state with the best onboard gain channel that I have ***ever*** heard in a solid state amp.

Do you know when he switched? Because Ive seen that randall rg on stage in photos/videos of them as recent as a few years ago.

 

[kleinenenten]

There’s pretty much a whole sub-genre of death metal based around hitting old Peavey Bandits with Boss HM-2s that started in the late 80s/early 90s. Of course, it’s an “eclectic” style and not for everyone, but I quite like it...

These days the amps and pedals have changed, but that was the origin of the sound, anyway.

 

[scowboy]

I think James Hetfeild at times has also favored a Roland JC-120. Joni Mitchell always used a JC-120.

 

[Uncle Hanky]

Do you know when he switched? Because Ive seen that randall rg on stage in photos/videos of them as recent as a few years ago.

I can’t recall exactly, but I follow both the Crowbar page and Matt on Instagram, and the Orange heads are in the tour photos this year.

 

[NOVAX]

There's lots of mic'd tube amps on electric warrior, but in the intro you can hear the track of direct distortion. It surfaces again in the breakdown.

 

[Sean Parsons]

In London in the 80s you couldnt swing a cat without hitting a JC 120. Many of the punk gigs had a reggae band as support who would use that amp. Then the punk band would use the same amp with drive pedals.

I seem to remember seeing a bunch of HH Amps around that same period.

The thing is that people were angry and just wanted to play. They didnt care so much about gear. Certainly not by todays standards.

Big famous band used Marshall, Fender, Vox and HiWatt.

Pub bands used whatever was around.

 

[Bob_Ross]

No idea about on the records, but live Frank Marino used an Acoustic 271 in his Mahogany Rush days.

 

[Michedelic]

Dave Wakeling uses a Peavey Bandit almost exclusively. His other guitarist had a Vibroverb-they blended exquisitely. Dave also happens to be a very cool bloke-

FYI, I’m at soundcheck, and Dave’s using a Maz 38, so tubes are back; he’s the only guitarist. Bass rig is a Markbass 4x10 powered by an Eden 300.

 

[Tom Bomb]

Thread's a treasure. One can learn so much here Legendary! Lord knows, The Pignose gets some love. Good to see.

In the same vein, there's also the unassuming and Lilliputian Marshall MS-2 — some serious studio time there too, believe it or not. Nice rigs to have handy.

 

[mexicanyella]

There’s pretty much a whole sub-genre of death metal based around hitting old Peavey Bandits with Boss HM-2s that started in the late 80s/early 90s. Of course, it’s an “eclectic” style and not for everyone, but I quite like it...

These days the amps and pedals have changed, but that was the origin of the sound, anyway.

Maybe that's part of why Boss HM-2s are fetching such high used prices now. I did not know that about the metal sub-genre, but I remember recording some mega crunch tracks on a four-track project a long time ago through an early 80s Peavey SS combo and a borrowed Boss HM-2. Those things can get really distorted. Not subtle, but fun!

I got thinking it would be fun to find one again. Found out they're not likely to be pawnshop bargains at this point!

 

[ElectroVibe]

I didn't know that thing about black flag, but I never really cared about their gear. I know the first couple of bathory albums were recorded using a cheap Yamaha combo. I also know Victor Wooten's brother has been known to use a Squier guitar and a crate amp in performances (who really should get recognition for some of their amps),. Other than that I'm not too sure - but I'm sure that there are plenty of examples of people just using whatever is on hand in studios, we make a big fuss about gear on the internet, but at the end of the day it's all just tools and you can either work with with them or you can't.

"...a cheap Yamaha combo." That's exactly what I am talking about. Or maybe something sold by JC Penney in 1971.

 

[mexicanyella]

Here's some spectacularly solid-state-sounding guitar action for you:



I saw these guys when they came through St. Louis around the time of that recording, and they were pretty interesting...but there were two guitar players with different gear and approaches and their parts intertwined enough that it was a challenge to figure out exactly what was going on.

The really abrasive, scratchy thin stuff came (I think) from the guy with the weird-tuned strat copy and some beat-up solid-state 2 x 12 combo (Yamaha, maybe). But I'm not sure. I think it's a combination of oddly set-up guitar, really weird tuning, weird chords/intervals AND solid-state distortion...but hard to say. The playing approach was so out there that it was kind of disorienting.

 

[kleinenenten]

Maybe that's part of why Boss HM-2s are fetching such high used prices now. I did not know that about the metal sub-genre, but I remember recording some mega crunch tracks on a four-track project a long time ago through an early 80s Peavey SS combo and a borrowed Boss HM-2. Those things can get really distorted. Not subtle, but fun!

I got thinking it would be fun to find one again. Found out they're not likely to be pawnshop bargains at this point!

That is the ENTIRE reason they’re hard to find cheaply used! I lucked out and scored one for $40 a year or two ago. Check out the Behringer HM300 for a spot-on $25 clone, or one of the now many clones. There are even DIY kits if you can build stuff. Feel free to PM me if you want more info.

 

[Scottgun]

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith and Dave Murray were using solid state GK amps on the Somewhere in Time/Seventh Son of a Seventh Son albums and their supporting tours

View attachment 3313969

Beat me to it.

 

[ElectroVibe]

When I think "solid state guitar amp" I think Ernie Isley on "Who's That Lady."

I love it! Plus the fact that you hear it on oldies radio all the time. That guitar is all over the song.

 

[ElectroVibe]

Pre 80s;
The Doors.
SS Acoustics, mostly 260s.

They sounded good on "Love Me Two Times".

 

[ElectroVibe]

With solid state (at least some solid state) you can get some of that effect, but maybe not as wide a range. In my experience it works best with turning up a lower-gain channel loud, rather than using a high-gain channel...but that's true to some extent with tube amps too.

I think some of what's going on is that whether you use tubes or solid-state, cranking up a lower gain channel LOUD gets you some grit from the amp, and maybe a different feel and changing dynamic response as it nears the limit of what the amp's power supply can do in a linear fashion...but it also pushes the speaker, giving more grit and a further compressing effect. You back off, or roll the guitar volume back, or both, and it goes clean. You dig in and whack it, and it barks and feels more compressed. The texture and overtones you hear will likely differ from what a pushed all-tube clean amp would deliver, but sometimes, and for some people, that's okay.

I agree with your SRV and AC/DC examples...those are great examples of hearing a player work the amp by varying input levels. The King's X example I posted earlier is pretty crunchy all the way through, but some of their stuff features really cool clean-to-dirty work using the Lab Series solid state rig. One tune that comes to mind is "Pleiades," from "Gretchen Goes To Nebraska."



Apart from the obvious cleaner/dirtier tones in the verse/chorus, there's a long sort of "chordal breakdown solo" that starts off as sort of an edgy almost-clean at around 2:12, and cycles through the chords every 15-20 seconds. Each time through he rolls up the guitar volume a little more so you hear it get crunchier in discrete steps. It really lets you hear the range of what one channel can do with only picking hand input and guitar volume settings changing its behavior.

Ty Tabor used the dirty channel only on the Lab Series, but having played on of those once, I'd call that dirty channel kind of "medium gain." The range of "clean to dirty" is maybe not as wide as in the examples you mentioned, but there was no Tube Screamer action going on here...just an active-pickup Strat Elite and the higher-gain channel of a L5, slaved through a Crown power amp and 4 x 12 cabs.

EDIT: two other songs where you hear some Ty Tabor Lab Series clean-to-dirty are "We Are Finding Who We Are" from "Faith Hope Love," and "Summerland," from "Gretchen Goes To Nebraska." The unusual solid-state tone is really evident on the latter of the two:





The King's X bassist, Doug Pinnick, used a weird rig too. As I recall it was a rackmount SVT-something with the highs EQed out, combined with various crunchy guitar amps with the lows EQed out...using graphic EQs. Seems one of the times I saw them the guitar amp was a red-knob Fender Showman tube head, and one of the times it might have been some kind of Traynor head. Some of the songs, like "We Are Finding Who We Are," have sparse sections where you can hear dirty, gritty bass highs sustaining and kind of rattling behind the guitar. The effect is interesting but never came across on the albums like it did live. In real life, Pinnick's bass tone was weird but massive and awe-inspiring. Like, internal organs being rearranged. It really seemed like their odd gear choices evolved together and made sense when heard together. I think I drove home from the '92 show I went to, at the Blue Note in Columbia, MO, with my gall bladder in my foot and my colon where my lungs are supposed to be.

One of the things that I thought suffered when Ty made the switch to Zion guitars and Mesa amps for "Dogman" was that the band's sound became more dominated by this big bristling distortion sound, whereas before the guitar and bass oddness seemed more complementary.

I really like that guitar sound. I never listened to them much. I bought one of their tapes. Saw them live in 1996 with a coworker at the time who was a big fan.

 

[ElectroVibe]

Looky what I found...pretty much like what I remember of the show I saw(except Kira had a Rickenbacker); as far as I can tell, both Greg and Kira have those dark brown Peavey preamps of the era going into second generation QSC's, and then those huge cabs...



In America, in the 'Nuggets' era of garage bands, '65-'67, the Thomas Organ-built Vox solid state amps reigned supreme. Everyone wanted a piece of the Beatles(and British Invasion)sound, but the irony was that those amps were nothing like the UK tube rigs, aside from cosmetics. I once read a description, "a blizzard of nails", or something like that, and that's not too far off. While yes, those amps have their fans(a result of nostalgia more than anything else, I reckon), I thought they were horribly shrill. Very expensive back in the day as well. Now of course there was Fender, Sunn, Ampeg Gemini and Rocket, SS Kustoms, and a few lesser-known brands in use by those bands, but for that two year window, Vox was, as they used to say, happening. Once Marshall made it to the US circa 1968/69, all those Super Beatles got kicked to the curb. While Chicago's garage punk kings The Shadows of Knight(of "Gloria" fame)are seen in archival footage using smaller Fenders, to my ears the tone on this track(with some added fuzz, obviously)pretty much sums up the US Vox sound, as I remember it...

Pure conjecture on my part, of course, however...
When The Who finally got to the US to tour extensively for the first time in 1967, they were fairly unknown, and on a minuscule budget. Even though they had moved on from UK Vox gear to Marshall right at that moment, they couldn't afford to bring anything over, so US Vox marketing stepped in and gave them a bunch of Super Beatles to use. But as you can tell from the Monterey footage, it was a very thin sound, Pete also relying on fuzz for some crunch and sustain...

Here's an American band that was on the cusp of garage and psychedelia, and had some great stuff beyond their "Ain't Got Nothing Yet" one hit wonder. Now, of course this is one of the usual lip-synched TV appearances of the time, and I have no idea what they might have used in the studio, but in this clip you see them with Standell 'candy dish' top solid state amps...


In the UK post-punk era, plenty of Roland JC series were used, Siouxie/Banshees, Killing Joke, Smiths, Japan, and so on(XTC and Gang Of Four used some obscure SS stuff)), but there was also H+H, an interesting solid state line. Initially used to some extent by Pink Floyd(Waters), TRex, and Be-Bop Deluxe, Daniel Ash put one through its paces in Bauhaus and Love+Rockets...

As well as the Buzzcocks...

That keyboard solo is awesome. lol.

I had the original Nuggets release on cassette. Then they put out some followups and I had a few of those. That's what I suspected might have had some guitar sounds like that.