Best Guitar Tones Of the 80s

[guitarguru777]

Inspired by Lasses GAS for the Marshall AFD 100, lets talk about your fave tones from the 80s. I will consider early 90s (90 to 94) and late 70s (77 - 79) viable options as well. Eddie's "Brown Sound" is not an option though as everyone in the world loves it, and if you don't you can eat a dick ....lol

My Top 5:
Slash - GnR - Appetite For Destruction
Michael Sweet & Oz Fox - Stryper - Soldiers Under Command
Snake Sabo & Scotty Hill - Skid Row - Skid Row
James Hetfield & Kirk Hammet - Metallica - Master Of Puppets
Tom Sholz - Boston - Dont Look Back

 

[tarbh666]

Scott Ian - Among the Living
Dave Sabo - Skid Row
Quorthon - Blood Fire Death
Hetfield - And Justice For All
Malcolm Young - Back In Black

 

[Notuern]

George Lynch - Dokken - Back For The Attack
George Lynch - Dokken - Under Lock And Key
John Sykes - Whitesnake - Whitesnake(1987)
Tom Keifer - Cinderella - Night Songs
Brian Bart/John O'Neil - Dare Force - Firepower

"Back For The Attack" to me has the ultimate guitar sound.. its tight as hell, but it still has that warm fuzzy low end, tight crunchy mids and kind of scraping highs.
It has that light crunch punch, but its still so full sounding.. just insane how good it is. *drools*

 

[guitarguru777]

+1 on the Lynch and Whitesnake they are def in my top 10, in fact Sykes was the next on the list ...lol

The Stryper tone just beat him out. The tone on Soldiers Under Command was SO FUCKING HEAVY! Especially for when it came out in 1985. NO ONE had a tone like that yet. Those modded to fuck Marshalls had SO MUCH GAIN and crunch it was crazy. I will never forget the first time I heard it I was like WTF!!

The Pussy Jesus Freaks HAD the heaviest guitar tone of the early 80s even heavier then Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer and I was like

Edit:
Wagener did an AMAZING job on that CD too. Sounds fucking great

Oh and for those of you who never have heard it cause you were afraid to be called a pussy:


hahhahah .. ok one more!

They were SO good live. Crazyness ... see what God Power Does!
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrLK0CeSr6k&feature=related[/ame]

EDIT:
Just found out that this CD and all that followed were a Mesa MK II C+!! Jesus Christ!!!

 

[guitarguru777]

HAHAH ... speaking of Wagener

Almost half this thread so far is his tones ...lol

Stryper, Skids, Dokken,

 

[Auroras]

George Lynch - Dokken - Back For The Attack
George Lynch - Dokken - Under Lock And Key
John Sykes - Whitesnake - Whitesnake(1987)
Tom Keifer - Cinderella - Night Songs
Brian Bart/John O'Neil - Dare Force - Firepower

"Back For The Attack" to me has the ultimate guitar sound.. its tight as hell, but it still has that warm fuzzy low end, tight crunchy mids and kind of scraping highs.
It has that light crunch punch, but its still so full sounding.. just insane how good it is. *drools*

wasn't the george lynch tone on BFTA the same amp as used on AFD somehow i remeber seeing and interview with him saying that the amp was everywhere

 

[zakky]

tony macalpine - maximum security
king diamond - abigail
dio - sacred heart
extreme - get the funk out
loudness - lightning strikes
ratt - invasion of your privacy

 

[greyskull]

Afd

 

[amarshism]

George lynch, nuno, images and words, bon jovi. Makes me wanna play gta: vice city, cruising around listening to vrock again.

 

[Mattayus]

I know it's not technically 80's because it was 1990, but can we let this one slide because it's SO 80's in style?



Fucking LOVE Nuno's tone on this, it's so crisp and big for the day.

 

[JonWormwood]

Stone!
And akira

 

[grywolf627]

George Lynch - Dokken - Back For The Attack
George Lynch - Dokken - Under Lock And Key
John Sykes - Whitesnake - Whitesnake(1987)
Tom Keifer - Cinderella - Night Songs
Brian Bart/John O'Neil - Dare Force - Firepower

"Back For The Attack" to me has the ultimate guitar sound.. its tight as hell, but it still has that warm fuzzy low end, tight crunchy mids and kind of scraping highs.
It has that light crunch punch, but its still so full sounding.. just insane how good it is. *drools*

Amen to that, brother! /end thread.

 

[Notuern]

wasn't the george lynch tone on BFTA the same amp as used on AFD somehow i remeber seeing and interview with him saying that the amp was everywhere

Nopes, he used that amp on the first leg of the "Under Lock And Key"-tour.
It was the legendary red Marshall 1959SLT modified by Caswell(He used the tremolo's tube as an extra gain stage.).

The recording of "Under Lock And Key" used a Lee Jackson-modified Marshall 1959SLP, which i would assume is very similar to the Caswell mod(As its basically another gainstage and a few minor tweaks.).

 

[grywolf627]

...The recording of "Under Lock And Key" used a Lee Jackson-modified Marshall 1959SLP, which i would assume is very similar to the Caswell mod(As its basically another gainstage and a few minor tweaks.).

And a Laney, about 10,000 mics, a fostex 4-track tape recorder, and a Rockman thrown in there for good measure...if I'm remembering correctly.

 

[Notuern]

And a Laney, about 10,000 mics, a fostex 4-track tape recorder, and a Rockman thrown in there for good measure...if I'm remembering correctly.

Yeah, the worst part about the Fostex is that it was used as a guitar amp. o,0
But the main sound came from the Marshall, but if you listen to it its pretty obvious that its ALLOT going on to get that tone.

 

[Force666]

Exodus - Fabulous Disaster

 

[tarbh666]

Exodus - Fabulous Disaster

+1

Also,
Death - Leprosy
Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion /Obituary - Slowly We Rot
Carcass - Symphonies Of Sickness
Entombed - Left Hand Path
Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness
Jake E Lee - The Ultimate Sin
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Iron Maiden - Somewhere In Time

 

[Jind]

My 80's favorite tones - strictly from guitar tone only, ones that I found to be great regardless of genre.

1980 - Angus and Malcolm Young on "Back in Black" - a mix of several 50w and up Marshall's as Tony Platt was kind enough to give some details of in this great thread about the production of "Back in Black" along with stuff from Terry Manning. I think it is and always will be THE tone of straight out Rock n' Roll.

1982 - Accept's "Balls to the Wall" - great songs and great tone. Michael Wagener did a great job on the production of this album and provided a great base for the dual guitar riffing of Wolf Hoffmann and Herman Frank. Just dialing in a similar tone gets my head a bobbing.

1984 - Alex Lifeson's "Grace Under Pressure" (especially on the Grace tour video) tones. Pure solid state, heavily processed sounds, but just so tasty. Also one of the most difficult to nail sounds simply because of the amount of processing he was playing around at that time. Chorus upon chorus, muli-layered delays, compression, active single coil pickups and those beautiful super-strat Signature Aurora guitars.

1986 - "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" by Candlemass. One word - crushing! Doom the way doom should be. Great dark and brooding tone that just crushes you when the slowed down riffing begins.

1990 - Eric Johnson's tone on "Ah Via Musicom". The man after the worlds most perfect tone (if you've never read about his obsession with tone than you really should) created such a wonderful sound on this album. A guitarists guitar album that also crossed over into the mainstream. With songs like "Cliffs of Dover" and "Rightous" - just great great tone all over this album.

My choices are not really that metal (well some of them), but then again I'm more impressed with great lower gain tones than I am over gained ones.

As always your mileage may vary.

 

[iekobrid]

fave tones from the 80s. I will consider early 90s (90 to 94) and late 70s (77 - 79) viable options as well.

I would never want to try playing "80s metal" through either rig, but I recall Brian May and Ty Tabor getting some pretty sweet tones during those periods.

They were SO good live. Crazyness ... see what God Power Does!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrLK0CeSr6k&feature=related

The fuck is up with the drumming in that video? It sounds like it was overdubbed by a little kid randomly slapping the pads of a Dr Rhythm. :zombie:

 

[guitarguru777]

My 80's favorite tones - strictly from guitar tone only, ones that I found to be great regardless of genre.

1980 - Angus and Malcolm Young on "Back in Black" - a mix of several 50w and up Marshall's as Tony Platt was kind enough to give some details of in this great thread about the production of "Back in Black" along with stuff from Terry Manning. I think it is and always will be THE tone of straight out Rock n' Roll.

1982 - Accept's "Balls to the Wall" - great songs and great tone. Michael Wagener did a great job on the production of this album and provided a great base for the dual guitar riffing of Wolf Hoffmann and Herman Frank. Just dialing in a similar tone gets my head a bobbing.

1984 - Alex Lifeson's "Grace Under Pressure" (especially on the Grace tour video) tones. Pure solid state, heavily processed sounds, but just so tasty. Also one of the most difficult to nail sounds simply because of the amount of processing he was playing around at that time. Chorus upon chorus, muli-layered delays, compression, active single coil pickups and those beautiful super-strat Signature Aurora guitars.

1986 - "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" by Candlemass. One word - crushing! Doom the way doom should be. Great dark and brooding tone that just crushes you when the slowed down riffing begins.

1990 - Eric Johnson's tone on "Ah Via Musicom". The man after the worlds most perfect tone (if you've never read about his obsession with tone than you really should) created such a wonderful sound on this album. A guitarists guitar album that also crossed over into the mainstream. With songs like "Cliffs of Dover" and "Rightous" - just great great tone all over this album.

My choices are not really that metal (well some of them), but then again I'm more impressed with great lower gain tones than I am over gained ones.

As always your mileage may vary.

+10000 on the Eric Johnson, man makes the guitar sing like no one else.