‘Classic’ Effects
… And what is it with these guitarists who say they only like ‘classic’ effects?! You know, a nice overdrive, some chorus, a bit of echo maybe?
So many of these effects were developed by people just trying to do something new, they had a crazy new idea they had to test out.
Something compelled them to try and move things forward, to push the envelope.
Apparently in the 1950s and 60s a UK studio engineer was a white middle-aged male, who wore a lab coat, definitely carried a pencil with him - and was probably highly qualified in electrical engineering. He certainly knew the right and wrong way to record sound, and overloading an amplifier into hard clipping was abuse of the equipment. Why would anyone want to degrade the signal and make it less clear?!
But some musicians went against this authority….
Pete Townshend wanted an extra loud guitar amp for Jim Marshall and his company to build (no, louder than that…. no, louder still…) Surely this could harm you, and was dangerous to your ears??! Of course that’s right - but they did it anyway, and in a burst of sheer energy new worlds of living feedback unfolded, and everything changed.
I once interviewed someone for a musicians’ magazine who worked in a studio way back when they were experimenting with the first flanging effect; recording a copy of the song onto another tape machine - to replay almost in sync with the first one, and then record the result onto a third machine. “But didn’t you lose loads of bass?” I asked him. “Oh sure - but so what?! We were hearing flanging for the first time!!! We couldn’t believe it!”
So let me get this straight; in a studio - probably filled with very expensive, top-quality recording gear (we’re talking beautiful warm low-end) - you’d just willfully decimate the sound like that?
And then use a third generation copy as your master tape??! It’s irresponsible.
These guys were wild!
Can you imagine the desperate impulse you’d need, to take a razor blade and slash your speakers?! I don’t know anything about it actually - maybe Dave Davies from the Kinks did it slightly bored in front of the TV one afternoon. But it was certainly an edgy, boundary-pushing thing to do - and the resulting sound got his feeling across.
All the original stuff around today - that’s just people trying to do the same thing as way back then with the classic stuff. Failing plenty at it, but sometimes not.
Actually, I love ‘classic’ effects, but I love lots of others too.
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Blog by David Rainger
