R Blackmore

Hootsmon

OK educate me on RB......here is a relatively clean Strat tone ( at the start of the song anyways) that sounds immediately like RB....i know very little of him TBH compared to other guitarists from the 70s but this is just GREAT....what's going on here to get that tone, is it just his style/attack or what?

ICBM

He used an AC30 in the studio, which might be a surprise! But most of the rest is in the way he plays.

EricTheWeary

He has said quite different things at different times about his gear. Strats usually with scalloped fingerboards into some kind of boost or pre amp into a valve amp.

 He preferred Vox to Marshall and said that at one point his main stage amp was an AC30 rehoused into a Marshall. His later signature Engl amps are based on Vox I believe. 

 Ritchie mostly used a Gibson ES335 pre Purple and I believe it is on the odd early Purple track. It certainly appears in some of the film of early Purple, I guess he was using it as a spare to his strat ( Ritchie’s first strat used to belong to Eric Clapton). 

Ritchie was usually plugged in to a Revox ( or Aiwa) reel to reel tape recorder before the amp. So the pre amp of this overloading is part of his distortion. He also used a treble booster at times. BSM make a Ritchie styled treble booster and say that his sound in Machine Head was strat+ TB+ AC30. When I saw him a couple of years ago there was a reel to reel on top of his amps. Wether he still uses it or it was placed there as a joke on guitar nerds who knows. 

Then various fuzzes, reverbs, wah,etc,etc, at different points in time. 

https://youtu.be/KiXcqxms3Bs

https://i.imgur.com/fkIfeMM.jpg

prowla

He's quite funny sometimes; he'd pretend to play notes just to confuse people.

But his playing is so precise.

Here's DP in great form with a "reacts" bloke I quite like to watch.

gringopig

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mudslide73

Lovely picking technique that was light years ahead of most of those guys. Great feel as well as savagery on tap. I think he gets overlooked in favour of the usual Bluesbreaker and Yardbirds graduates when he was very much ahead of them in some aspects.

ICBM

EricTheWeary said:

His later signature Engl amps are based on Vox I believe.

I've only looked at one once, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing whatever in common with an AC30 other than having valves in it.

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

https://youtu.be/KiXcqxms3Bs

My god, what a remarkable piece of film that is.  Great performance, very well shot and it still looks great too.  And over 50 years old!  It's a little piece of history.  Amazing.

scrumhalf

If that's a link in the first post doesn't seem to be working.

Machine Head is a stunningly good album, and Purple around that time were brilliant. "Pictures Of Home" is from the very top drawer of rock music.

Grumpyrocker

Good lord what was Rod Evens wearing? No wonder they got rid and replaced him with Ian Gillan. 

EricTheWeary

ICBM said:

EricTheWeary said:

His later signature Engl amps are based on Vox I believe.

I've only looked at one once, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing whatever in common with an AC30 other than having valves in it.

Ahh, that was based on an interview with Ritchie. I guess he didn't know or care or just likes pissing people around. 

EricTheWeary

Grumpyrocker said:

Good lord what was Rod Evens wearing? No wonder they got rid and replaced him with Ian Gillan. 

There is a black and white film of them doing Hush in which Rod is basically wearing just a towel. He certainly had his own idea of style. 

ICBM

EricTheWeary said:

Ahh, that was based on an interview with Ritchie. I guess he didn't know or care or just likes pissing people around. 

Just likes pissing people around! He's the one who had an extra strap button fitted on the headstock of his Strat, and when asked why, said "so people wonder what it's for!", if I remember rightly...

Philly_Q

Incidentally, it's Blackmore's birthday today.  74 and still got all his own hair.  Many happy returns and all that!

Hootsmon

to the RB experts....is he a bridge pick up kinda guy or a neck ?

Philly_Q

hootsmon said:

to the RB experts....is he a bridge pick up kinda guy or a neck ?

Both, but never middle.  He has - or often had - a dummy pickup in the middle position.

chromatuna

hootsmon said:

to the RB experts....is he a bridge pick up kinda guy or a neck ?

Yes those two :-)

Which is to say he used both and had no time for the middle or in between positions to the extent that one of his signature Fenders either didn’t have a middle pickup or had some kind of hum cancelling arrangement there. You can hear him switch between biting bridge and singing neck during solos sometimes... and vice versa of course

prowla

gringopig said:

I'm obsessive about guitars but I couldn't even tell you what Blackmore was playing in that Playboy after Dark video from 1968. My attention was fixed on the bassist's hair!

Amazing. Just gobsmacking!

Wossisname's gold trousers are Simon Cowell beaters!

prowla

Ritchie's more recent stuff, with the missus (He's been in this band longer than he was with Deep Purple).

rsvmark

EricTheWeary said:

 He preferred Vox to Marshall and said that at one point his main stage amp was an AC30 rehoused into a Marshall. His later signature Engl amps are based on Vox I believe. 

Interesting. I seem to recall Staus Quo did this and re housed AC30s in Marshall head shells. Does anyone know why? Obviously they preferred the sound but was it an image thing (some bs about 'real rock stars play marshalls' or was it a commercial marketing deal with Marshall? 

scrumhalf

Didn't Marshall do a 200w head becuase of a request from Blackmore?

IMHO Blackmore's best live work came when he played the 335. When he played the Strat he spent too much time arsing about - yanking the vibrato arm, scrabbling his fingers up and down the neck and throwing the thing around.