Peter Green's reverb?

zepp76

Does anyone have any idea what reverb tank/unit Peter Green used at all please? I'm sure it was a separate unit rather than an amp reverb. I'm hoping I can match it using my Bluesky, fingers crossed.

sweepy

I always thought it was a Fender twin tbh 

EricTheWeary

IIRC he used all sorts of amps. There's a great story about the guitarist in the support band being asked if he was okay to use Peter's amps and he said yes only to discover it was a knackered old PA head into an equally knackered cab that sounded shite although somehow still fine when Peter plugged in. 

Assuming we are talking about the original FM period it would have been​ spring reverb of some sort; I think he had a Matamp unit at one point, a Fender one at another and Fender amps with reverb at other points. 
Pick the best sounding spring reverb emulation the Bluesky does and tweak to taste I should think.

victorludorum

Bandmaster Reverbs, which I think are basically bigger Twins.

Ravenous

Watch out: there's a story going round that he recorded at least one of his big tunes late at night in an empty multi-storey car park with a few mics placed around the cabinet...

(That might have been "The Green Manalishi".  It also might be incorrect, because I read it a long time ago on the internet. But it's a warning he didn't always use one particular piece of kit...)

zepp76

So does a reverb tank work like a pedal in that you plug it into the front of your amp (if you don't have a loop)? I'm gathering you can't run it in line with other pedals? I quite like the thought of a reverb tank sitting on my JTM, I bet they're pricey though.

ICBM

Generally you would run it last in line before the amp, with any other pedals in front. If your amp has a loop you could run it there too, but the classic vintage reverb-unit sound is with it before the amp.

Marshall also made a solid-state reverb unit which looks amazingly cool, like a slightly smaller 2061 head, but doesn't really sound that brilliant. Also very rare, I've only ever seen one.

Funkfingers

Some of the classic recordings were made using an "echo chamber". Literally, a monitor loudspeaker at one end of a room, hall or corridor and a microphone (or several) positioned at the far end to capture the natural reverberations. The wet signal is blended with the direct recorded guitar signal to create the overall effect.

zepp76

ICBM said:

Generally you would run it last in line before the amp, with any other pedals in front. If your amp has a loop you could run it there too, but the classic vintage reverb-unit sound is with it before the amp.

Marshall also made a solid-state reverb unit which looks amazingly cool, like a slightly smaller 2061 head, but doesn't really sound that brilliant. Also very rare, I've only ever seen one.

That's good to know, for some reason I thought you couldn't run other pedals through it.

Funkfingers said:

Some of the classic recordings were made using an "echo chamber". Literally, a monitor loudspeaker at one end of a room, hall or corridor and a microphone (or several) positioned at the far end to capture the natural reverberations. The wet signal is blended with the direct recorded guitar signal to create the overall effect.

Clever stuff but I don't think I'll be going to those lengths! It seems Mr Greenbaum used all kinds of reverb, so I'm going to try for middle ground which hopefully the Bluesky can do but I can't help thinking how cool it would be to try a tank, certainly gives me something to think about.

bbill335

Lots of old mixing desks have built-in spring reverbs, he could have used anything. A keys player I know has an old WEM mixer that he reckons has THE BEST reverb.

TimmyO

Paging @Van_Hayden  for the Matamp angle 

zepp76

TimmyO said:

Paging @Van_Hayden  for the Matamp angle 

I was hoping someone would pop up with that suggestion as after a bit of searching there is a slight chance Greeny may have used a Matamp unit. Please someone with more knowledge chip in!

Van_Hayden

He had one (Matamp verb), he could have used it & there's a couple of people on record say he did. The old Series 2000 reverb has quite a bit of gain and an EF86 in a lot of them. It would probably have been placed before the amp & would have overdriven the amp a touch when pushed. They're a monumental pain in the arse, noisy and difficult to locate as they pick up more noise from the head when you stack them up....but then it was the 60s when everybody rocked with a curly cord & a bit of hum was normal. 

57Deluxe

Ravenous said:

Watch out: there's a story going round that he recorded at least one of his big tunes late at night in an empty multi-storey car park with a few mics placed around the cabinet...

(That might have been "The Green Manalishi".  It also might be incorrect, because I read it a long time ago on the internet. But it's a warning he didn't always use one particular piece of kit...)

Yes - this has been told by Mick Fleetwood to in a radio interview.

Story lifted from Vintage Amps Forum post:

"Recording Green Manalishi
The power chords that provide the track with so much of its menace were the result of late night experiment at DE Lane Lea Studios.Using the underground car park beneath the studio,the engineers set out three 4X12" speaker cabs.They close- miked one,then distance- miked the other two to catch the cavernous reverb generated when Green played the pwer chords on his Fender Bass VI-the blended guitar sound is one of the most startling ever captured on tape.'It sounds like there must be loads of compression and fuzz and overdrive on the guitars to get that sound,but there isn't,' reveals Keen.'Peter had things like Cry Babys and Coloursound distortion pedals but he didn't use 'em that often.He was mainly into reverb-that was his big thing.'
The chilling solo guitar,was counterpointed by Green's demonic howling vocal,was achieved in the same way as the chord bombast-though this time by having one microphone pick up the reflection off the far wall of the car park,effectively giving the sound a complex reverb delay.
For live performances,Green almost exclusively used his '59 Les Paul occasionaly switching to his Strat 'when the mood took him.' On two occasions he used the Fender VI live.'The thing about Pete was that he had all the effects but he never used 'em adds Keen.'He could make a note distort just by overplucking it;that's how good he was.Total control.'


http://vintageamps.com/plexiboard/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=575022

zepp76

57Deluxe said:

Ravenous said:

Watch out: there's a story going round that he recorded at least one of his big tunes late at night in an empty multi-storey car park with a few mics placed around the cabinet...

(That might have been "The Green Manalishi".  It also might be incorrect, because I read it a long time ago on the internet. But it's a warning he didn't always use one particular piece of kit...)

Yes - this has been told by Mick Fleetwood to in a radio interview.

Story lifted from Vintage Amps Forum post:

"Recording Green Manalishi
The power chords that provide the track with so much of its menace were the result of late night experiment at DE Lane Lea Studios.Using the underground car park beneath the studio,the engineers set out three 4X12" speaker cabs.They close- miked one,then distance- miked the other two to catch the cavernous reverb generated when Green played the pwer chords on his Fender Bass VI-the blended guitar sound is one of the most startling ever captured on tape.'It sounds like there must be loads of compression and fuzz and overdrive on the guitars to get that sound,but there isn't,' reveals Keen.'Peter had things like Cry Babys and Coloursound distortion pedals but he didn't use 'em that often.He was mainly into reverb-that was his big thing.'
The chilling solo guitar,was counterpointed by Green's demonic howling vocal,was achieved in the same way as the chord bombast-though this time by having one microphone pick up the reflection off the far wall of the car park,effectively giving the sound a complex reverb delay.
For live performances,Green almost exclusively used his '59 Les Paul occasionaly switching to his Strat 'when the mood took him.' On two occasions he used the Fender VI live.'The thing about Pete was that he had all the effects but he never used 'em adds Keen.'He could make a note distort just by overplucking it;that's how good he was.Total control.'


http://vintageamps.com/plexiboard/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=575022

That made for good reading thank you. It was good to read in the link that Greeny used JTM45's for a while it means I'm on the right path, I just need his fingers now!

hotpickups

Last time I saw him a few years back he was using a Lazy J

dilbert

I was in America some years ago at a Jamfest type of thing and there was a Badcat something or other which had just a lovely cavernous reverb and which I naturally thought would work a treat for those classic Fleetwood Mac numbers.

Set it up almost full on, called up "Need your love........"  and totally disappeared in the mix. Lesson learned but I've always been wary of on board reverb since then.

    

Fretwired

Green also used Fender Dual Showman Reverb amps .. there are YouTube vids of him playing them ...

victorludorum

Fretwired said:

Green also used Fender Dual Showman Reverb amps .. there are YouTube vids of him playing them ...

You're right! I thought it was the Bandmaster, but it's the Showman that he used. I think they're essentially a more powerful Fender Twin.

english_bob

victorludorum said:

Fretwired said:

Green also used Fender Dual Showman Reverb amps .. there are YouTube vids of him playing them ...

You're right! I thought it was the Bandmaster, but it's the Showman that he used. I think they're essentially a more powerful Fender Twin.

It's basically the same amp (at least in that era) as the Twin Reverb, but in a head/cab format rather than a combo. 

Nobody needs a more powerful Silverface Twin.