Anybody in a Suede covers band?

ijonty

I need advice on how to get the sounds of Bernard Butler from his time with Suede. I know he used a RAT a lot, but can anyone help with specific settings for specific songs?

Cheers,

Jon

vale

he swears by his es355 for the warm bassy/trebly mids-scooped tone. an epi dot would get you near enough on a budget.
around suede days he used a boss turbo distortion & rat for dirt, crybaby wah & the flangers/phasers may have been boss but have never really heard much about those. anything would do as he's not maxing them out beyond what anything decent would cover.
for amps he's totally vox ac30 & when he records he sticks a mic in the space in the back of the cab, as well as the usual speaker&amb mics. if you're doing it on a budget then get one of those ac-tone amp-in-a-pedal things. joyo do one sub£30.

i'm a big bernard fan & first two suede albums have some killer guitar work wrapped up in some very ronson-esque tones.
because he's such a sweet&quiet gets-on-with-it guy he gets unfairly overlooked by punters chasing the next big personality face. but among players i think he gets the respect he deserves. he deserves a lot.

ijonty

Thanks! Do you play Suede stuff yourself?

vale

not for twenty years. but suede were one of the first proper bands i ever saw (with bernard) when i was 14. i was into siouxsie/shoegaze/sonicyouth but a friend's mum was going so i tagged along for the price of a ticket & remember being really impressed.

bertie was prowling around all sweaty & athletic, & bernard was manic, thrashing&strangling every note out. they were driven & sweaty in the flesh, not fey like they were on totp.
& lots of feedback & delay too. their singles always sounded tinny & compressed.

i think i ended up being able to play the spacious moodier songs on the debut album (pills/breakdown/nextlife) but wasn't mad about the singles (mickey/nitrate/etc). too pop.

good luck with getting it out there. i don't know about the modulation. try suede fan sites or youtube suede guitar covers that list gear.

vale

this is how i remember them. quite shoegazey in a way but albums never got that side.
maybe that's why bernard left. he was clearly on a mission & maybe not into chasing the blur market.

ijonty

Was that clip from the Love and Poison film? Some brilliant stuff on that. 

Totally agree with you  - I think he's an incredible guitarist and the moodier stuff on Suede and Dog Man Star are gorgeous. Loved DMS when it came out and still listen to it now. The weaving guitar lines he created that sort of sprawl out all over the place are great.

Been learning Asphalt World, and now trying to get the right sound for We Are The Pigs before rehearsal tomorrow. Recently bought a Rat but still trying to get the distortion and filter settings right. (Not in a Suede covers band, just doing WATP with a bunch of other stuff.)

Thanks for all your advice!

MagicPigDetective

The first two albums are genius. At the time they were way beyond my plodding pentatonic powers. I bought the NME which declared them the best new band in britain. They were right. Now I feel the need to go back and learn those tunes. Tuned to Eb if I remember correctly. 

ijonty

MagicPigDetective said:

The first two albums are genius. At the time they were way beyond my plodding pentatonic powers. I bought the NME which declared them the best new band in britain. They were right. Now I feel the need to go back and learn those tunes. Tuned to Eb if I remember correctly. 

Definitely worth playing some of that early stuff in my opinion. Great guitar lines. 

darthed1981

The most under-rated British band of the 90s given their mainstream success.

Bernard is one of the reasons I first picked up the guitar, and he's such a nice guy too, so I won't tell my neighbours its his fault.

BintyTwanger77

I think his main distortion tone on the first album was thanks to a Boss Turbo Distortion (and/or possibly an HM-2?) into an AC30.

BintyTwanger77

darthed1981 said:

The most under-rated British band of the 90s given their mainstream success.

Bernard is one of the reasons I first picked up the guitar, and he's such a nice guy too, so I won't tell my neighbours its his fault.

Same here. I idolised BB when I first started playing guitar, trying to learn the whole of the first album.

Heartfeltdawn

First album then. 

Guitar. : Les Paul, baby. Or more accurately a 1981 Gibson Les Paul Heritage Elite 80.

http://www.pressreader.com/australia/guitarist/20140307/281505044158987

I think the Les Paul he had before that, the one Justine lent him the cash to get, was the one he described in a different Guitarist interview as crap. Pretty sure that's the one he has here in 1992 at the Boardwalk (watch The Drowners and you'll see it well). 



Effects: really basic. Turbo Distortion and Rats. When he was in the Tears, he had two Turbo Rats and a normal Rat on his board. 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/14/f2/8a/14f28afe7f52e156afeca8ea0e4d1372.jpg

Flanger and phaser obviously for the first record. I've also seen shots of him using a Yamaha pedalboard of the type which could be connected to stuff like the Yamaha FX-500 and SPX-90. You can see this Yammie board just by his head in the shot below which was taken from a Vox interview not long before he left Suede. 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/34/4e/89/344e89b04251637b32b8714aaace7ade.jpg

Amps: Vox and Selmer. 

Pedalboard from 2014 is pretty much what I could see at the McAlmont & Butler gig last year in Bristol.

http://content.sitezoogle.com/u/143781/d7dab9cceb730029edb9e96ac63ac19e4ad0ecdc/photo/2655730.jpg?1422034841

tone1

Have you seen this?...

BintyTwanger77

Heartfeltdawn said:

First album then. 

Guitar. : Les Paul, baby. Or more accurately a 1981 Gibson Les Paul Heritage Elite 80.

http://www.pressreader.com/australia/guitarist/20140307/281505044158987

I think the Les Paul he had before that, the one Justine lent him the cash to get, was the one he described in a different Guitarist interview as crap. Pretty sure that's the one he has here in 1992 at the Boardwalk (watch The Drowners and you'll see it well). 



Effects: really basic. Turbo Distortion and Rats. When he was in the Tears, he had two Turbo Rats and a normal Rat on his board. 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/14/f2/8a/14f28afe7f52e156afeca8ea0e4d1372.jpg

Flanger and phaser obviously for the first record. I've also seen shots of him using a Yamaha pedalboard of the type which could be connected to stuff like the Yamaha FX-500 and SPX-90. You can see this Yammie board just by his head in the shot below which was taken from a Vox interview not long before he left Suede. 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/34/4e/89/344e89b04251637b32b8714aaace7ade.jpg

Amps: Vox and Selmer. 

Pedalboard from 2014 is pretty much what I could see at the McAlmont & Butler gig last year in Bristol.

http://content.sitezoogle.com/u/143781/d7dab9cceb730029edb9e96ac63ac19e4ad0ecdc/photo/2655730.jpg?1422034841

Is that a Timeline on his 2014 board?

Heartfeltdawn

Yep. Timeline indeed. 

One post from someone who talked to Bernard in 1994 from TGP:

"I met Bernard at his home in 1994 and at the time he told me was using the one AC30 and a Boogie set much cleaner and brighter, a Turbo Rat, a Boss DS-2 and 'a little Yamaha processor that I've set up to give little level changes and a slapback delay and a little flanging - nothing radical.' He had his second red ES355 (the first one was stolen in Canada) and though he stuck to Varitone position 1 live, he would sometimes use 2 and 3 for recording. Suede had just recorded 'Stay Together', one of the last (the last?) thing he recorded with the band: that song started with a Martin 12-string through a Leslie cab then went to the 355 playing feedback through the AC30 via a Boss DS-2, main riff on 355/Boogie, rhythm on a J-200, fuzz in chorus section on 355 or possibly Les Paul, second verse parts on a Fender XII... and the mini plastic Fender Bassman was used at some points. A lovely guy and very honest and straightforward."

That confirms the use of the Yamaha unit. Description of it being little and the type of floorboard pictured above suggests it was the FX-500. 

mudslide73

He used a modded Mesa V-Twin (extra side switch added for extra flexibilty) in M&B the first time around. 

St_Hubbins

The thing I love about Butler's playing in Suede is that the records were quite layered guitar wise, but he had a way of interpreting it live that sounded equally powerful, but in a different way.

I have to say, hats off to Richard Oakes too -  a great player, and form him to hold his nerve at that age to tour Dog Man Star, and then co-write Coming Up was incredible. I remember reading a cover feature he did for one of the guitar mags after Coming Up. He used a Marshall JMP-1 pre-amp for most of that album as I recall.

gusman2x

Did Richard Oaks not reply to an add in the NME (or MM), to a band looking for a guitarist, that cited Suede as an influence? Can you imagine that, it must have been the best day of his life.

John_A

gusman2x said:

Did Richard Oaks not reply to an add in the NME (or MM), to a band looking for a guitarist, that cited Suede as an influence? Can you imagine that, it must have been the best day of his life.

I heard Suede had just about given up looking when Richard wrote in as a fan club member saying if they were still looking he'd like to apply for the job.  At the time one of the guitarist columnists also auditioned and wrote an article about he audition.

Both great guitarists, saw suede with Richard at teeside uni when I was there

St_Hubbins

Incredible story about him joining the band. I am slightly younger than him, but remember when the story broke at the time wishing that the same would happen to me (it didn't, alas)!

There's a fantastic Suede biography called Love and Poison with some great insight into the band. Worth a read...

Jalapeno

This collection of off-cuts is my favourite Suede album .....