Tone Advice on Rain by The Cult...

andyp

Hi folks.

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, but it seemed like a good place to put this...

I've been playing for 18 months now and generally it's improving very well on an almost daily basis. I've mostly been playing what I'd call "straight-up rock" like AC/DC etc. and blues licks and stuff so finding a tone hasn't really been an issue so far. Wee bit of drive, wee bit of reverb and a wee bit of chorus for one or two things, and that's it.

But... I've been learning Rain, by the Cult lately and I'm finding that my version sounds very "thin". I tried dialling in a bit of very short delay on my Blackstar ID Core 10 and it sounds like I'm heading in the right direction but the effects on the Blackstar are pretty basic and it's hard to know what the hell I'm actually dialling in. My main practice is on my DSL 5 but I don't have a delay pedal so my experimenting is quite limited, plus I'm not sure yet exactly what it is I'm looking to do to get the tone.

Does anyone know this song well enough to help me with what effect I'm looking for? To me it sounds like it's a lot of reverb and a delay to thicken it, but I really don't know. The playing side is coming on well but without getting a better grasp of the tone I'm trying to dial in, it's quite hard to get it sounding right.

Any help would be great. Apologies for my novice-ness on this.

Andy

mike_l

A Boss digital delay, chorus and phaser will point you in the right direction for FX.
Billy uses Boss pedals as they're reliable and easy to replace if they break/get lost (his reasons).
A small amount of drive will put you in the ball park.

Also he uses a Gretsch White Falcon (I think) so a semi-acoustic guitar with not to powerful pickups will be close.

EricTheWeary

Back on the Love album I'm fairly sure Billy was using his Gretsch into a dual amp set up : Marshall plus Roland JC120. So he used the stereo chorus off the JC120 a lot. He also used a flanger and a phaser and has nearly always had a short delay and a long delay on his board ( mostly Boss as Mike says although he also nearly always has an Ibanez tubescreamer as well). By the Electric album he was basically Les Paul into a Marshall via a wah and Boss overdrive ( an OD3 I think) and on subsequent albums started adding more stuff back in again. 
I haven't heard Rain in recent times but he was using quite complex tones then, even Billy didn't replicate them live for many years and went back to having the JC120 in his stage rig only fairly recently ( they used keyboards live for a few years to add spacier sounds). 
Your ID10 has stereo effects I think so try some modulation, chorus being the most likely candidate.

andyp

Thanks guys. I'm kind of glad it wasn't as simple a question as it seemed.

I've got a chorus pedal with my DSL but I've not got delay or flanger so I think I'm going to investigate those as I've been wondering about getting both for a while. I had my eye on the Ibanez mini delay and the Mooer Eleclady but I'll go and check out the Boss range.

andyoz

I'm on a bit of a Cult binge at the moment so interesting in this myself.  Was watching this to catch a glimpse of gear.  Looks like a  Marshall plus Roland JC60.  No wonder I can't get close to it.

andyp

I seem to be too. I wasn't really very aware of them until about 10 years ago and didn't really listen to them much then either but they seem to have grown on me as the years have gone by.

Last night's guitar lesson was She Sells Sanctuary, which seemed borderline impossible when I looked at it, but after a wee bit of practice last night it's coming along really well. I celebrated by ordering an Ibanez mini delay this morning... 

andyoz

This guys lessons are usually spot on (just noticed he's now got >100,000 subscribers).

Vaiai

andyp

The delay pedal arrived today and it's absolutely brilliant! Really like it, and it's a massive step towards helping with the Cult stuff.

There's going to be hours of fun with this!

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll62/andypople/b0097f58-6f9b-448b-b2fe-8cc94a9e0587_zpscabsfepp.jpg

RandallFlagg

I saw The Cult on The Love Tour in 1985 at Norwich University and Billy used the Falcon into 2 Roland JC-120s, no Marshalls in sight. His tone was just like the record.

I think the Rain tone, and most of the Love album is Falcon, JC120, BOSS SD-1 and Chorus from the amp. 

For She Sells Sanctuary intro I read that he turned all the pedals on on his BOSS BCB board on together, phase, flanger, delay and chorus from the amp.

For a long while I though he was using a flanger, something like an Electric Mistress but now realise that the JC Chorus has a lush sweep that can almost sound like a gentle flanger. You can hear the sweep clearly at the start of Black Angel

EricTheWeary

There's a Gear section on Billy's website which is worth a look. He's used quite a bit of stuff over the years.

andyp

That's some in depth info there! Thanks!

Andy