Great dark and brooding tone that just crushes you when the slowed down riffing begins.ġ990 - Eric Johnson's tone on "Ah Via Musicom". One word - crushing! Doom the way doom should be. Chorus upon chorus, muli-layered delays, compression, active single coil pickups and those beautiful super-strat Signature Aurora guitars.ġ986 - "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" by Candlemass. Also one of the most difficult to nail sounds simply because of the amount of processing he was playing around at that time. Pure solid state, heavily processed sounds, but just so tasty. Just dialing in a similar tone gets my head a bobbing.ġ984 - Alex Lifeson's "Grace Under Pressure" (especially on the Grace tour video) tones. 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. I think it is and always will be THE tone of straight out Rock n' Roll.ġ982 - Accept's "Balls to the Wall" - great songs and great tone. In 1992, "Cliffs of Dover" won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, beating the Allman Brothers Band ("Kind of Bird"), Danny Gatton ("Elmira Street Boogie"), Rush ("Where's My Thing?"), and Yes ("Masquerade").My 80's favorite tones - strictly from guitar tone only, ones that I found to be great regardless of genre.ġ980 - 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. "Cliffs of Dover" was voted number 17 in Guitar World magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitar Solos, placing it between 16, "Heartbreaker" (by Led Zeppelin) and 18 "Little Wing" (by The Jimi Hendrix Experience). He got playful remarks about it from engineer Richard Mullen, saying "You can't do that!" but it was agreed that it sounded like Johnson simply enabled an effect pedal halfway through the solo.
Halfway through the solo, around 3:03, there is a noticeable change in tone when the guitar switches back to the original Gibson lead track.
#Cliffs of dover guitar tone driver
The first part of the solo Johnson recorded with ES-335 was no good, so he cut it out and recorded the Stratocaster with a 1980s Tube Driver in its place. When the band comes, the guitar is a stop-tail Gibson ES-335 (either a 1963 or 1964) until the solo. Johnson has stated that the guitar he used in the intro before the band kicks in is a 1954 Strat (possibly "Virginia"). We just have to listen for it and be available to receive it." Equipment used kind of a gift from a higher place that all of us are eligible for.
#Cliffs of dover guitar tone full
While he did indeed compose "Cliffs of Dover", Johnson does not take full credit, saying "I don't even know if I can take credit for writing 'Cliffs of Dover'. The outro or coda then recalls the freestyle mood and timing of the ad-libbed intro. Drums are then added as the song settles into a 4Ĥ rhythmic shuffle verse accompanied by a very accessible set of melodies that, throughout the song intro, feature variations (octavations for example) on the main chorus.
In the solo intro, Johnson does not adhere to any distinct time signature.
"Cliffs of Dover" begins with an ad-libbed electric guitar solo, using techniques such as string skipping and hybrid picking.