Warren Haynes tone?

[Soulman13]

Hey all,

First post here. Listening to Gov't Mule's "Dose" album at the moment, and can't get over the tone of the guitar. It is huge and beefy, but there is so much space and air in it. Other than renting your very own Warren Haynes, could anyone point me in the general direction of how to achieve this? I realize that with the Greats, alot of it is just in thier fingers, and that I can't get that tone out of my POD.

Thanks,
Chris

[Tom Hicks]

Warren Hanes,late of Allman Bros and Govt Mule is of course a tonal devotee of Duane Allman,who played a Les Paul Standard into a 1969 Marshall Plexi.(Coricidin glass slide bottle extra)
Haynes plays a Paul,but uses Dumble for his amp,eg EL 34/84 Brit soft distortion vs heavy 5880 american type.Basically,a boutique Marshall IMHO.
Short and sweet,humbuckers into saturated output tubes will point you in the right direction.
The Govt. Mule stuff is kinda blues-fusiony compared to their Allman Bros stuff.Alan Woody I think just died weeks ago so both Allman Bros and Govt Mule are now both kaput.

Tom

[Soulman13]

Wrong on both bands. Warren left the Allman's a few years ago. Woody died about a year ago, but Mule is back on tour(playing DC in a few weeks).

I thought Warren was playing Soldano amps these days? At least that was his live rigs when last I last saw him.

[effedupstrat]

Good to see another Mule fan in here. I've seen them a few times and it was Soldanos as I recall. In the studio it could probably be anything, though I've read that he likes to use smaller amps and crank them for the power-tube distortion Tom was speaking of. That's important when you are trying to get distorted chords to speak clearly. The guitar is important, too. We're talking LP's : mahogany/maple top/humbuckers. I used to cover the song "Mule" from their first album and my Hamer Special sounded pretty convincing. If you can mess around with the POD's amp models, try for something with less pre-gain and more post-gain. Of course having that much musicality and experience (Warren was in the Allmans longer than Duane) wouldn't hurt either. A lot of the tone is in the attack, Warren just PLAYS huge.

peace.

[Tom Hicks]

Thanks for correcting me on the time frame.I'm 46 now and i'm getting that peculiar time-distortion age effect starting to kick in on me(Woody dead for a year now but it still seems like yesterday).With Haynes gone from the Allmans and Dickie Betts fired for alcohol,they certainly seem toast(please don't reform with Kenny Wayne...).I'm glad to hear the Mule has reformed and is playing again.Warren Haynes bluesy-fusion style in Mule I always liked better than his copying Duane in Allman Bros anyway.

Tom

[Soulman13]

Couldn't agree with you more, Tom. Mule has added a keyboard player, if I'm not mistaken. Should make the new stuff sound a little different. The huge prescence of Woody on bass will be hard to fill.