low volume ..neil young.. anyone?

zazz

hmmmm
yeah i know ...contradiction in terms right......

Just wondering with all these new fangled gizmos these days if anyone has come close to that sound at resonable volumes....you know that sound where the tubes in neils amp seem to be breaking up ..barely holding it ..like a bleeding heart electrical storm with a sort of square wave clipping underneath it all..and sort of boxy in tone....like in the wake of the opening chords to "hey hey"...live.

Probably has as much to do with p90s as the amp itself all turned to 11 no doubt.

Saw him im hong kong a few months ago with crazy horse...i swear that his sound is just getting better and better with age ...i was pretty much as near to him as you could get and i think i caught a distant whiff of smokin tubes at one stage when he really let rip ...amazing.

He seemed to be using some kind of grungy combo ..i wish had taken a closer look now.
 
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zazz said:
yeah i know ...contradiction in terms right......

Just wondering with all these new fangled gizmos these days if anyone has come close to that sound at resonable volumes....you know that sound where the tubes in neils amp seem to be breaking up ..barely holding it ..like a bleeding heart electrical storm with a sort of square wave clipping underneath it all..and sort of boxy in tone....like in the wake of the opening chords to "hey hey"...live.

Probably has as much to do with p90s as the amp itself all turned to 11 no doubt.

Saw him im hong kong a few months ago with crazy horse...i swear that his sound is just getting better and better with age ...i was pretty much as near to him as you could get and i think i caught a distant whiff of smokin tubes at one stage when he really let rip ...amazing.

He seemed to be using some kind of grungy combo ..i wish had taken a closer look now.
Not me... I haven't seen any Neil Young in a box type fangled gizmos... no old southern ohio man down by the river rockin the free world stomp boxes either. :(
 
He uses a tweed deluxe and a big part of that sound is feedback and a bigsby tremelo. You can get pretty close at home with a tweed champ but it's still gonna be fairly loud
 
As with most great guitarists, tons of the sound comes from the fingers, but one of the tricks to that sort of sound is to get a low power tube amp and drive it into submission. Find a little 15 watt tube amp and let her rip.
 
I second the low wattage tube amp suggestion. I just picked up a 25 watt Rivera and that with a guitar with humbuckers will get dangerously close to the Neil sound.
 
I have exactly the amp that does it at relatively low volume:

a Garnet Mohawk.... a what?

5W, 12ax7 pre 6l6 power , SS rectifier, treble boost circuit, a NOS 1950's Celestion alnico 12"speaker. I play a Epi Wildkat (P90 guitar) through it and I can nail the "Rust Never Sleeps" tone.
 
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