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Looper's Delight
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<< 3) Separation of a complex signal. Brian May's wall of > AC30s allowed him to send the different delayed > signals from his tape echoes to different amps to > avoid having them mush all together into mud. (This > reason is the most applicable to us as loopers...) It's probably also to get additional sounds, since the AC30 has both a cool overdrive and a great clean sound, but it doesn't have multiple channels, so if you want instant access to both, you need two amps. I know people like Eric Johnson and Stevie Ray Vaughn had lots of amps on stage, but it was for the variety.>> Eric Johnson uses three sets (each with it's own effects chain of amp that he switches between, but I remember reading that Stevie Ray used something four or five amps AT ONCE!!!! As for the Brian May setup, my understanding was he used the three sets of AC-30's for his echo effects. One set of amps (or at least one amp, anyway) had his main guitar signal. Now, what he'd do is he'd plug into a delay unit (in the early days it was a customized Echoplex, but I think he went digital later on), set for just one repeat, about a second after the original signal. He'd feed the dry signal from the delay into amp number, and he'd feed the wet signal into a second delay unit, set up the same way as the first. The dry signal from delay unit two (which would be the signal repeat from the first delay unit) would go into amp rig number two, while the wet signat signal from the second delay unit (which would give him another repeat) would go into the third amp rig. This allowed him to make each signal clearly heard, and also allowed him to pan the individual signals in stereo (though I don't know how much he would have done that live, he clearly did this on the studio version of Brighton Rock), instead of turning into sonic mud, as someone else mentioned. I've never heard of him using them to get different tones (other than dialing in a different tone on each repeat), though I suppose it's possible. Someone mentioned once to me that he used a wah wah pedal, saying that he used one when he saw Queen in concert in 74. I had never seen it mentioned in any article I had ever read, but I had to concede if this guy was sure that he saw May using one, he must have used one. Anyway, I always had the impression that his overdrive sound came from a preamp pedal, which I think he built himself. Another interesting point: someone mentioned Kiss touring with empty speaker cabinets. In the infamous Tom Snyder interview from 1979 (if you ever saw it, you'd know why it's infamous, at least amongst Kiss fans) Paul Stanley mentions that in the early days, they did that because they couldn't afford to have a big wall of real amps, and that they'd have to tell the lighting guys not to put a spotlight on the cabinets, otherwise you'd be able to see a hole where the speaker was supposed to be. I think once they started making big money, they actually started putting speakers in the cabinets (though obviously they didn't actually plug in all of them). Each of the times I saw them, it certainly looked the cabs actually had speakers in them. ===== May you never thirst! The Scuba Diver Presently Known As Chris "What do you get when you give a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?"-James Earl Jones __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com