Scott Henderson Discussion

[jonhep]

Hi Scott,

New member here but a long time admirer of your playing.

I would be really interested to know what your favourite Ritchie Blackmore solos are and any particular albums where you think his tone was his best.

I think Ritchie has always one of the best Strat tones going and it is the result of some very secretive mods to Marshalls undertaken in the early 70's and which a lot of folks do not appreciate how innovative he was in the early experiments in modding marshalls. The use of a marshall major and AIWA tape deck are actually red herrings in the secret formula to his tone from what I have heard by someone in the know. It was all about the modded preamp.

Also, are you familar with Uli Roth? Is there any of his stuff you rate?.

thanks
Jon from England.

[Scott Henderson]

I don't have favorite solos of Ritchie's because I love every one of them. I've listened to his solos from Fireball, In Rock, and Machine Head too many times to count. I bought the Jammit software mainly because they have a few Deep Purple songs and I wanted to hear Ritchie's tone without the band tracks.

I consider myself an expert on his tone. I've tried many times to copy it in my studio, but never did it on a record because obviously it's his tone, not mine.

There's much talk about the tape recorder he used before the amp, but that's basically just a type of boost - any good boost pedal will get you the same result. As far as modding his Marshalls, everything I've read tells me that his mods had an impact on volume more than tone. I use Deep Purple Made In Europe as the album to compare tones with, since the guitar on that album was recorded with a 57. Unless you have a 5000 dollar Neumann 47, you'll never get the studio album tones because as far as I can tell from recording photos I've seen, that was the mic.

The tones on Made In Europe confirm what Ritchie says in some of his interviews - the bass on the amp is very slight, the presence is way up, but on my '71 Marshall, if I turn the mid up as Ritchie says he did, it gets further away from the tone on the record. In fact my mid is way down around 3. That could be because the '71 Marshall has more mid that the Marshall Majors or Vox amps he used.

The main difference is the mic - you can hear that the tone on the live records is brighter because he's using a dynamic mic like a 57, while the tone on the old records is really dark from using a condenser mic like a 47.

I've looked hard for interviews with Martin Birch, Deep Purple's engineer, and I can't find anything related to Deep Purple on the web, only some interviews with him from much later, working with other bands. I sure would love to read some Deep Purple interviews with him - he'd have a lot of the answers people are looking for.

Here are a few links with some interesting information:

http://www.treblebooster.net/blackmore.html

http://blacksonata-hihi.blogspot.com/2012/04/gitar-dan-sound-ritchie-blackmore.html

http://www.woodytone.com/2009/04/20/ritchie-blackmores-tone-and-more-part-1/

http://www.woodytone.com/2009/04/27/blackmores-technique-and-opinions-part-2/

[jonhep]

Scott.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I have to confess to having spent a good part of my early 40's mid life crisis trying to nail Blackmores tone and went a bit over the top in terms of gear acquisition such as various pedals, a marshall major and Dawk MTC!!!After hearing a friends modded marshall based on Ritchies mods, I realised that it was not the major which was as important as most people think and ended up selling it on Ebay, to the current guitarist in the Red Hot Chili Peppers last year!. I still own 4 BSM trebleboosters and helped beta test the ‘caljam’ pedal. There are some clips of me playing on the BSM site.

Thanks for the site links. I also recommend
http://www.rblackmoreforum.proboards.com
http://www.dawksound.com/rainbow.html
Dawks forum used to have some great info on it.

I have various Blackmore inspired scalloped strats and have a modded version of the Blackmore Engl which has some of the harsh presence removed based on Bernd from BSMs recommended mods. It has a nice warm tone similar to his more recent tone.

I agree with you, his amp sound has stayed the same over many albums up to mid 90's . I love the Made in Europe tone. The live in London tone is also great. Also the bootleg 'Perks and Tits'.

I have to say I love the tone you get with the Suhr amp and pedals. I also loved your 90s tone as well!

[fusion58]

Coincidence you guys should be discussing Blackmore.

I just did a one-off with a tribute band that covered a lot of DP tunes.

After playing the solo on "Highway Star" on a Strat strung with 10s, I barely have any flesh left on the tips of my left hand fingers! (Those bends on the high E string are downright brutal!)

Has this ever happened to anyone else, or am I just getting old and feeble?

As for DP/Ritchie, I was wowed by "Machine Head" and "Made in Japan" like most teens during that era (right around the time of the advent of FM rock radio) but I was really more of a Jimmy Page man in those days.

At any rate, didn't mean to jack - great thread/info here!