The "Spirit in the Sky" fuzz tone is definitely one of the Holy Grail tones of electric guitar. This was a good watch, but somewhere along the line "sag" and "gating" got confused. The "ripping velcro" sound can be summoned on command in many fuzzes by controlling the bias of the transistors (germanium or silicon) that actually produce the fuzz phenomenon. Several new-generation fuzzes (like the Keeley Fuzz Bender) have top-of-pedal bias controls, and can go from glitchy to gated with a turn of the wrist. To nail the Spirit tone takes more than that, though - like the right transistors, pickups, speaker, eq, reverb, etc. The quest continues - I know 'cuz I'm on it...
Glad you know what your are saying. I took a chance and wrote to Norman in 2007 and he replied directly to me and said the same thing. Fuzz built in to the tele. I still have the saved email. I was shocked he replied. He was humble and nice. Still my all time favorite Fuzz ever.
What's interesting is as the pedal starves at a certain point you get an upper octave ring modulation thing kicking in and it suddenly sounds almost exactly like a vintage Ampeg Scrambler, which was an old bass fuzz used by Bootsy Collins
Sometimes if you’re really the shit you get them back. Just ask Sonic Youth. Edit: Or Billy Corgan. I just remembered he got his Gish Strat back recently.
There are 2 "Holy Grail" guitar tones that I have lusted after for 5 decades. The Greenbaum "Spirit In The Sky" tone is one. The other is Henry Vestine's (the Sunflower) tone when he was the lead guitarist for Canned Heat - specifically on the live version of "Refried Boogie" on the "Livin' The Blues" double LP. I can't die in peace until I find them.
I thought it sounded pretty close. Didn’t the mosrites use germanium in the beginning? Maybe the caitlainbread one might be a closer representation? Great video!
The one song in history that a band actually opened with, played on repeat for their entire live set and still left the audience screaming for more. This one off song reaches spiritual places like no other. Even straight laced Norman Greenbaum didn't really know what made his masterpiece so good or why, but being a good soul he rolled with it, what a legend! Good fun attempt at reverse engineering man Good luck and treasure that battery!
Hehe. Yep. What made me laugh was he got hate mail because his lyric claimed that "I'm not a sinner, I've never sinned" but some faiths believe you are born with sin. So he was being trolled... A nice guy getting hate. Haha. Just like the internet.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Yep So right, gotta love the internet. Get your filthy wicked sin contaminated newborn babies corrected right away at our loving church to save them from eternal Hell or be forever guilty. Ha ha!
Holy Fuzz-Blowing-Out-A-Speaker, Batman! All respect to @circleoftone for this video and effort and the result he achieves here, but that Jordan Boss Tone is 100% it, incredible.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE whats pretty hilarious, is this totally could be jimmy page, and he totally could be watching your videos with david gilmour, but noone would ever believe it.
My high school buddy played a Tele, and he patched it through a Carvin amp. After he tuned the strings down a half step, he got some nasty distortion. I don't remember if he had a fuzz box or not. This was in the mid 1970's. He also used a Fender twin reverb.
By the way I was using a fuzz by boss last year and during a rehearsal with a band, I got that exact Spirit in sky tone. My battery was dying right there in the middle of this song, but didn't last for the 3:20 of the song.
My thought was, it was always a cab with a fried speaker in it possibly maybe even done on purpose they may have slipped the cone a little bit. That was what I always figured was going on. 12:47
This is one of the really cool things about distortions and fuzzes that don't use clipping diodes: you can change the sound quite a bit just by changing the power supply voltage.
I've been obsessed with this every since I heard the story behind it. Damn you're close. I always had the assumption that broke musician wornout amp plus homemade circuit equals badass fuzz.
Super great video. I just love this song and yes the fuzz tone in on that track is one of the best. I’m loving that dying battery effect. Do you think it could have been the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz?
Years ago i had an old Foxx Tone machine (octave)fuzz that had a very leaky transistor and that used to splutter and spit like crazy ( think it was the imbalance between the good and leaky transistor) often wondered if that combined with a dying battery was what was happening in the spirit in the sky tone .
Hey Owen! I'm not sure if you want to try this, but a "velcro fuzz" might just be able to nail this tone. I just got a DOD Carcosa Fuzz for specifically this sort of sound, among many others. It's based on a '70s Maestro Fuzzrite FZ-1S, which is not what was used, but the Carcosa can do '60s tones too. Anyway, the "After" knob is actually a bias pot and the more you crank it the more splatty/sputtery it gets. You can get them new for $69 on ebay or Reverb if you shop around. Right now I'm using it for Electric Wizard Stoner/Doom type shit since it can cop a pretty good FZ-2 sound. I really dug this tone you got here though even if you haven't nailed it yet. It's pretty damn close and a killer tone in it's own right.
I was experimenting with a simple fuzz face circuit design and the sag does have a noticeable effect but I'd say that the bias transistors have a way more dramatic impact on the spluttery sound. Lower the one that's right next to the second transistor and there you go!
Close, it just sounded a little too hot. I'm glad I watched this video though. I have an Ibanez distortion pedal that sounds great with a dead battery. I've been trying to figure how to make something to get it to sound that way all the time.
Bloody interesting - Brought back lots of memories and sparked some curiosity. There's an interesting RUclips vid with Norman Greebaum on his 75 birthday doing a rendition of the song, plus the ever present Wikipedea has a reasonable breakdown on him, including his later musical involvements.. Cheers for the memory spark
I got really great Spirit tone with just guitar-amp . Lab Series L5 with the compression at -18, multifilter at 7.5, and midrange maxed at 4 at 1000Hz. 1961 Epiphone 452TD with ebony board. . .
My thought is that since the device was installed in the body of the guitar the components, wires and battery would be subject to sympathetic vibration. Like playing a c note at a c tuning fork will make it vibrate. Some 70's era transistors were not potted inside around the die and the less than hair-thin gold connection wires were susceptible to coming loose from vibration. That intermittent connection, being caused by vibration, could be adding to the overall sound as well.
Yep. Like a squirrelly gate. But if that was the case the sputter would happen on the first note right? The initial notes are strong and that would be where the initial impact/cut out would be stronger. I haven't listened close enough to see if it's the trailing note or initial pluck/pick. But guitars do vibrate parts on certain notes for sure so that could be it. Great post.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE In the 70's I used to build kits from heath and radio shack. My favorite kits were the theremin and wave generators I could use to make all sorts of interesting sounds. I built an amplifier kit and coupled it with a reverberator that was literally a couple of springs inside a small box with a magnet. Some sounds had what I can only describe as a wait time as it took a bit to make them resonate. The delay was sometimes influenced by the other notes at play and sometimes by the volume. I could even flick a transistor with my finger and get a change in the tones. In order to make some sounds, I had to get all of the above in the right order to make the sound. So my thinking is that the device installed in the guitar may have needed the same "Sweet Spot" of notes and duration to make it work. Like this bit of wire near this pickup with just the right voltage to make a field that caused that pickup to reverb or echo or... Maybe a string. A loose connection would do pretty much the same every time you did something to move it but combine all of the above and you get a one time awesome sound that defies explanation. I would really like to see any info he has on how the device was installed. I never actually got into playing music, I think had I stayed on that track I would have ended up in the sound effects industry but... around that time "1976" Radio Shack aka Tandy came out with a "computer kit" that caught my attention. I built my first computer in 78 and my second in 82 and in 84 I think I got my first hard drive! it was 10 megs!!! OMG, that sounds so small now. Up until my first hard drive, the programs were loaded to the RAM from a cassette tape player. Yes, a cassette tape player. After the BIOS was up you typed C Load, pressed play and away you went. Ya know playing those tapes through an amplifier made some really weird sounds!
I was an early PC adopter too. I started off on the vic20 and BBC. My first proper pc was a 386dx. I never got into the electrical engineering thing though. My memory was never good enough for that. Haha.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE What I'm hearing is a sputter on the first notes. Also, your position changes the tone and thus the distortion very seriously. Norman capo'd 2 and played an open G position. I tried that today and got some fantastic overtone/distortions that sounded a lot closer to the orig recording. Hitting the open G (3rd string) and letting your thumb brush the low G while getting the Bb and F natural -- But the farting sputter? I think it was in the circuit Norman's friend put in his guitar. . .
BTW there is a clip of the Tele with build in fuzz!!! It was tele custom with binding sunburst finish and Josh from JHS says the pedal inside was, behold. It should be Jordan Bosstone.
Once again a great job getting those origional tones dialed in and with the plethera of variables in the origional signal chains that's no small feat. I love knowing theirs players out there who actually care to get it right not just "kinda sorta not really close but let's use it anyway". Even if you don't think so that was still pretty damn close lol.
I think it might have been an electroharmonix LPB1 before it became a pedal it was a device like a tiny box with one knob on it and a 1/4" jack on one end that plugged into the guitar and your guitar cable plugged into it It was cumbersome looking but it had a nice distortion that broke up sporadically.
I used to let my batteries run down in voltage in my old MXR Distortion Plus when I used to use one all the time. It seemed to add to the quality of the distortion -- a little bit of grittiness and warmth. So the dying battery thing makes sense to me, anyway. Sounds closer to Greenbaum's tone with the lower voltage. The lead guitar tone on that song seems different from the main riff (Greenbaum's Tele). His other guitar player used a Les Paul. I wonder if he did the solo?
Putting the fuzz in the guitar changes the overall signal path and the way the electricity flows. I'm not a tech but I recently saw a video describing how a fuzz can change if put after anything else in your pedal chain.
CIRCLE OF TONE. True, verrrry true.. haha Just listened to ‘SitS’ for the first time in a whiiiiile.. and FWIW, my ear is picking up what sounds like maybe could* be a little Mic-Pre *Clipping* on his fuzz guitar track (listening on my iPhone mind you..). It just really reminds me of that unique edge that can come from somewhat-aggressively clipping a microphone preamplifier (obviously many different circuit topologies and flavors of those..) prob would be hard to figure out the exact one, but I imagine that the most likely Pre they would have used would’ve just been from the Console they used in the studio for the recording. Could’ve been some other outboard gear too but that would be even more difficult to track down (at least I imagine so...). And the exact Pre isn’t really *that* important IMO just would try to get something in the similar kind of family/topology...ish... Again, this isn’t for sure obviously, but I’m operating here under the hypothetical that they did in fact clip the Pre for *xxtra tonez* for SitS. Fun thought experiment tho. Also, mannnn the mix of the track is really ‘sputtery’ itself!! They slammed those drums n basically everything else harddd into that tape! I love it! Feels like everything is like *quasi-side-chained* dynamically together by that tape slam (or actual sidechain compression?/other process), so that could* be another aspect of the tone to potentially look into on your quest. It sounds (to me) like that SC effect I’m talking about has a big impact on a lot of the mix’s elements and not just* the guitar, tho it does sound like the gtr is effected (affected?) the most. Love your work BTW! Keep up the great stuff man, also love your honest and open/ongoing discussions of the current state of “music”.. Pretty much naturally agree with damn near anything that comes out of your mouth! Btw dig your guitar playing too Also LOVED the story of how you met your wife!! That is AWESOME. Mike Matthews is the man! It’s simply amazing how the smallest and most nuanced of little things.. like what shirt you wear on a night out, can have such a dramatic and awesome effect on the outcome of any one’s life.. that’s fuckn nutz! So cool :D Sorry for the long ass msg lol.. Cheers
Josh Scott of JHS pedals seems to think it was a Jordan Boss tone plug in fuzz. Check out his Jordan Boss tone vid to see him playing the song in it and see what you think. I think he nails it.
If you like dying battery sounds EHX Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi is a great pedal. It's distortion section has a built in Volts knob that starves the circuit, but it also has a bias knob, which let's you adjust the bias on the circuit, so you can starve it even more, and a drive section so you can regain the lost volume and shape the tone of the sputtering distortion section. And when not starving it can act as a really nice plain distortion/drive pedal - one of my favourites for that role. Funny enough it sounds nothing like an actual Big Muff.
Hey brother, you are the first person that I have seen that has nailed that tone. I do think it is the weak battery that makes it break up like that. And of course a Telecaster. :-) Kudos from the D! :-)
I would suggest the jhs color box or that Benson preamp (new autotone when available), but then again, I thought you nailed it with the saggy battery? You've definitely proven that your ears are far more tuned into those subtle nuances than mine are, for better or for worse. Thanks for the power sag pedal and the Queens tip. That with the Dual Range Bastard from Echopark should do most of those tricks.
I know this is a little over 2 months too late, but I think it could be a Fuzzrite with Germanium Transistors. It's not worth the time to test it out because Germanium Transistors are so inconsistent, but that would explain the sputtery tone (especially if it's a poorly biased pair of transistors) and the tone (Germanium Fuzzes tend to be more low-midrangy compared to Silicon, which would result in a lower ranged sputter). This is something I might try in a DIY pedal build one of these days.
Put two tablespoons of bragg's apple cider vinegar and one tablespoon of honey in about four ounces of warm/hot water. stir and drink, takes a little getting use to, but the fingers will work much better. the pain in my joints was unbearable, after about four weeks I saw great relief. it worked. can't play that well but have learned to make a "Racket". Write songs, words and music, rhyming and alliteration. At one time it was more important what you had to say than how well you could play, but not today.
have you ever done a demo of the traynor yba1 ?its canadian and is a cross between the 59 bassman circuit and the marshall jtm 45. that would be a cool vid
You can get the same thing using a 6V 250mA Casio calculator plug (EBay) instead of the 9V plug that came with the pedal. Just make sure your pedal is +/- and not -/+. The fuzz circuit in the guitar was a DIY, not from a pedal. The circuit is very simple and easily fits under the control plate on a Telecaster if you run the battery wires through the base of the output jack and tape the battery to the strap or the back of the guitar. Duane Allman made one and put it in his Telecaster when he was with Hourglass. In guitar circles, it was relatively well known in the sixties. I have found that playing through a 12" speaker will sound great, but a 10" speaker at breakup gets the tone spot on. ** Note ** The problem with the in body fuzz is that you need to unplug the battery for every song that you don't want fuzz on.
Anybody else get just a guitar-amp to do it? I put the compression at -18, multifilter at 7.5, and midrange maxed at 4 at 1000Hz. 1961 Epiphone 452TD with ebony board. . .
Good video, I thought he used a super fuzz the red and blue pedal, I used to have one and it killed the battery quick, Pete Townsend was using one at that time too..
Love this kinda fuzz and the tone on this song, more raw and electric sounding rather than the more "clean" and to me damp and distant more modern fuzz sounds, Ron Asheton always sounded so cool too. Great stuff man! Peace.
i think if you rolled the tone off and had a real tele pickup and used the sag with a germanium fuzz you'd be alright. it was very close actually. Most of the time he plays a no fuz sound, rtone control roloed off a bit, with his fingers probably into a champ or a princeton or something. not likely to be anything bigger than that
Have you tried playing the La Grange riff in the first position/open A chord and using your smallest finger to play the accent/turnaround notes? I like the extra thickness you're getting from playing it in the second position but you're missing a few of OG ghost highlights. All subjective of course. Awesome video would love to hear more on sag uses.
i was obsessed with fuzzrites about a decade ago and bought a couple of clones. i think i read that the initial batch were germanium, which proved too unstable, so could he have used the circuit from one of them ?
@@CIRCLEOFTONE apparently the first 200 fuzzrites were germanium but the transistors were too sensitive to changes in room temperature. i cant find any accounts of how this problem affected the sound quality. though what was discarded as a bad noise over 50 years ago might be the ultimate fuzz to our ears...?????
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Funny thing is, back in 1978 i bought a mail order Big Muff [op amp version ???]. Waited eagerly in anticipation, but it sounded shite through my big loud HH solid state combo. Not much better than the onboard distortion circuit. So I sold the muff within days, Now both are fairly pricey collector's items...???
This has been my personal go-too fuzz tone for the last 10 years. I came the closest with a wrightsounds fuzzstang mkii (sag control on board in this pedal). I think the original greenbaum fuzz was a homemade fuzz with a 1.5v battery or two.
Try an old vintage Foxx fuzz tone, the Pedal that almost seemed like fur, or "fuzz" on the chassis of the pedal. You could even get like an octave fuzz out of it. It actually had an octave switch on it if I remember correctly. Or the fender blender which was kind of the Grand Funk Mark Farner tone which was pretty unique too that was def around during that period. I used to have both, plus a vintage Gibson Meistro pedal, that also got stolen.
I don't think you failed - the tone at 4:40 with the low power battery comes pretty close. Add a piece of paper rattling on a horizontal speaker cone, and you've got it!
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Thanks for the reply! Probably sounds more like a Tele. than anything new, these days. I had an old one at one time and I couldn't use it, but I could now. I've still got the pickup that was in that guitar and heard it was worth a lot. Maybe I'll do what you did.......hmmmmmm.
Can someone show how they did the triplet polyrhythm delay chord stabs? You also hear something similar in the song "damned for all time" on Jesus Christ Superstar. Its definitely a certain pedal or technique.
In my opinion that could be the pedal, maybe something in the amp circuit made it break up. I think there was probably some reverb and could it have been a solid state amp ?
i remember back in the day we`d get sounds like that.and i too found a lot of that sputtering and crackeling was a weak 9v in whatever pedal. maybe try a row of various period pedals and limit the volts on one or more?
You got it, the main solo is easy to do, but you got the Spitty part. Dan Armstrong had a Fuzz that plugged into the guitar itself, real small square box pedals, Other than that back then you had the NuFuzz, Maestro/Gibson, and Tonebenders. I think you came as close As I ever heard for sure. Supposedly one of the Strings on his guitar was a bit wronky at the time, and one could retune the A string to make it easier to play for sure. But I think you really Nailed it good and SKRONKY for sure.
Russell dashiell played in this band. Also with harvey mandel. Harvey was finger tapping in 1968. Richard played a strat with les paul humbucker. George lynch and eddie van halen went to see harvey with richard play in the early 70s. I think those 2 guys got some great idea's from that gig. Type richard dashiell harvey mandel a woodytone article comes up from 2009 with video, photo's and info.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE in a interview ritchie blackmore was at la gig in 68. Hendrix was there. Jim morrison was as well. He was drunk. When harvey started finger tapping everyone stopped and looked at the band. Jim got kicked out for yelling abuse at harvey. Also Chris holmes done a evh tribute on metal voice youtube show. He was painting houses. He painted harvey mandel's house. Found out he was a guitar player. Told his mate terry kilgore who was really good guitarist. Terry played with roth in 93. Terry showed evh the tapping as well. If you type blackmore harvey mandel tapping the articles come up.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE i emailed russel dashiell about the strat he's 73 now. He said in 1969 he was playing with harvey mandel on "games guitars play lp". He was playing a 61 sg les paul. Harvey came in with a strat with shaved neck, harvey had small hands . Russell like it harvey said he should get one. So he sold his sg lp for 1965 strat and shaved the neck. He's still wishers he had the sg lp. Then stated recording his solo album crowfoot finished in 1970. When it came time to do leads the bridge sounded to thin. So russell put a les paul humbucker in the bridge position. Still has the guitar to this day. But changed the neck years later to a telecaster neck. Strat neck got bowed out of shape. Russell had a solo lp "elevator" in1978. played with harvey mandel, norman greenbaum, phil everly, and don harrison band you can see the guitar in his video "rock n roll records" something. Now lives in hawaii. Photo in b/w with the strat from 1970 holding guitar in on the web. i have it. Russell said he think he was the first to put humbucker in strat. Hadn't seen it before. ✌✌
Try tuning a bass up a little and running it through a buzz box. The player would need very strong hands and be backed by a tele player. I think the riff was played on a bass with a telecaster playing the higher notes. The buzz and sustain effects give the impression of chords, but the song only contains single blurred notes. Whatever, Norman Greenbaum is a superb musician.
This technique could work for the over the top distortion used on Neil Youngs Hey Hey My My as well. I've always struggled to push enough gain / mud to pull off that tone. Sounded amazingly close to Norman at the start of the video. This song has always fascinated me for the tone he had. I always thought it sounded like a guitar getting jammed through a saxophone haha.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE That's awesome. Kempers have their place. A touring band that uses more modern tones is the perfect example. They are rock steady and sound the same all the time. That being said I love my H&K 18 watt tube head. I can play anything on it with the right pedals and sound as modern or classic as I want.
Neil Young has always played through a 1950's Fender Deluxe amp using his old Les Paul. What you're hearing in that song is the amp on full volume. There is no pedal making that tone. That is the tone of a 1950's Fender Deluxe at full volume.
I am able to get pretty close to Greenbaum’s tone with using a Fender Champ from the 1970s. Volume 7, Treble 7, Bass 5. As far as the lack of headroom goes, look at the earliest design Fuzzes like the Maestro Fuzz Tone, or Sunn Buzz circuits. Those early designs did not use a 9v battery, but rather ran on a 1.5v power supply from a single AA battery. This gave them near zero headroom and a signature, spitting tone. There were also completely passive mods done to many guitars and basses of the time, where two germanium diodes-each oriented in different directions-would be soldered together into the main signal line. This was famously done with Jack Bruce’s bass in Cream, and may give you the tone you seek.
@@powerdog242 not to push further down the rabbit hole but, the guitar preamp that was installed could have very easily been pulled from a Supro or something similar. I say Supro because my dad told me a story about a guitar he had (or maybe a bandmates') in high school, that had a tone switch with one position labeled "Dog" that was the snarliest sound he ever heard, then--around '65 or '66. Then again, my dad took a bunch of drugs and drank a lot and maybe things had gotten jumbled up...he graduated from HS in 67 and went down hill from there...
The lead playing which is equally memorable was apparently by Russell DaShiell playing an SG through a plexi.... dangerousminds.net/comments/spirit_in_the_sky_youve_know_the_song_you_entire_life_here_is_the_music_vid
Dont give up on the battery path just yet therr are a few things that could be different. The power supply may only drop the voltage where a dying batterys voltage would fluctuate when a heavy load was applied, the pedal could also have a different power input with filter capacitors that would keep voltage from fluctuating and another thing batteries them selves if alkaline batteries where available they would have been much more expensive than heavy duty batteries may act different when dying.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Update: Jordan Boss Tone looks like it fits the bill. I just need a loaner to confirm the sputtery goodness.
JHS pedals has a pedal based on the Jordon Boss Tone. It's called "PLUGIN."
The "Spirit in the Sky" fuzz tone is definitely one of the Holy Grail tones of electric guitar. This was a good watch, but somewhere along the line "sag" and "gating" got confused. The "ripping velcro" sound can be summoned on command in many fuzzes by controlling the bias of the transistors (germanium or silicon) that actually produce the fuzz phenomenon. Several new-generation fuzzes (like the Keeley Fuzz Bender) have top-of-pedal bias controls, and can go from glitchy to gated with a turn of the wrist. To nail the Spirit tone takes more than that, though - like the right transistors, pickups, speaker, eq, reverb, etc. The quest continues - I know 'cuz I'm on it...
If you're still hunting for it, check out the Jordan Boss Tone!
Glad you know what your are saying. I took a chance and wrote to Norman in 2007 and he replied directly to me and said the same thing. Fuzz built in to the tele. I still have the saved email. I was shocked he replied. He was humble and nice. Still my all time favorite Fuzz ever.
that's awesome
I did the same thing I even saved the email. Super cool dude.,
@@BicycleJoeTomasello Same, I emailed him about 25 years ago and he replied ha!
One of the most iconic riffs of all time. I definitely love the old school fuzz tone, much better than modern fuzzes.
What's interesting is as the pedal starves at a certain point you get an upper octave ring modulation thing kicking in and it suddenly sounds almost exactly like a vintage Ampeg Scrambler, which was an old bass fuzz used by Bootsy Collins
Gotta love those five fret chords. Especially the lower register ones. My hand hurts just watching them.
Gonna send me up to the carpal tunnel in the sky.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Whey I try to play this song/Something feels so very wrong/When my tendons slowly die/Seems my carpal tunnel will reach up to the sky
Can you even be a famous guitarist if you've never had a guitar stolen from you?
You don't need to be a victim of petty thievery to be a legend...but it helps.
It is a rite of passage. Hehe
Sometimes if you’re really the shit you get them back. Just ask Sonic Youth.
Edit: Or Billy Corgan. I just remembered he got his Gish Strat back recently.
Only of you steal a guitar first, like John Lennon.
Steve Jones was responsible for every guitar ever stolen. Ever!
There are 2 "Holy Grail" guitar tones that I have lusted after for 5 decades. The Greenbaum "Spirit In The Sky" tone is one. The other is Henry Vestine's (the Sunflower) tone when he was the lead guitarist for Canned Heat - specifically on the live version of "Refried Boogie" on the "Livin' The Blues" double LP. I can't die in peace until I find them.
Love it. I can relate.
"World in a Jug" from Boogie with Canned Heat--in fact the entire Boogie with album is stellar Henry Vestine
Look at the Jordan Boss Tone for a Spirit Sound-alike.
I always assumed it was a voltage starved single transistor fuzz something like the bazz fuss circuit. Awesome video dude
Wow! That sounds like Norman Greenbaum. Closer than I have ever heard before.
Cheers Sean.
Yeah and on the cheap squier no less! No heavy relic heavy expensive custom shop masterbuilt tele
I thought it sounded pretty close. Didn’t the mosrites use germanium in the beginning? Maybe the caitlainbread one might be a closer representation? Great video!
Spirit in the sky has one of those riffs that i can never get enough of love it great song.
Yep. It has that something
You say fail, I say huge win! Ya made some absolutely awesome fuzz tones in my opinion. Plus I learned about a new piece of gear.
Thanks man!
That sag knob is plain brilliant! Awesome video
Cheers Albert
The one song in history that a band actually opened with, played on repeat for their entire live set and still left the audience screaming for more. This one off song reaches spiritual places like no other. Even straight laced Norman Greenbaum didn't really know what made his masterpiece so good or why, but being a good soul he rolled with it, what a legend!
Good fun attempt at reverse engineering man Good luck and treasure that battery!
Hehe. Yep. What made me laugh was he got hate mail because his lyric claimed that "I'm not a sinner, I've never sinned" but some faiths believe you are born with sin. So he was being trolled... A nice guy getting hate. Haha. Just like the internet.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Yep So right, gotta love the internet. Get your filthy wicked sin contaminated newborn babies corrected right away at our loving church to save them from eternal Hell or be forever guilty. Ha ha!
Alex Jones Of Tone Good One
Me and Alex could wrestle for RUclips PPV. Two men enter, one man leaves.
Pretty sure it was the Jordan Boss Tone. There’s actually a JHS Show episode where he plays the riff on it and absolutely nails it.
Do you know which one? There were a few versions.
CIRCLE OF TONE. It's the Jordan Boss Tone episode - it's super recent.
Story checks out
@@CIRCLEOFTONE The "version one" (germanium devices, I think?) Boss Tone, is what Josh plays first on the video... sounds perfect.
Holy Fuzz-Blowing-Out-A-Speaker, Batman!
All respect to @circleoftone for this video and effort and the result he achieves here, but that Jordan Boss Tone is 100% it, incredible.
Pretty fun video. Thanks for it, Alex. ❤️
I'm still waiting for the Badfinger episode though.
Hehe. One day.
So weird how I was listening to song for the first time in years and this video appears
I just heard it a few days ago on Deja Vu with Rockin' Rollin. Synchronicity.
Welcome to the algorithm. We have you now.
Ireland they’re watching you man. Big brother knows all 🧐
Hey, this is Jimmy Page. I love getting loaded with my buddy David Gilmour watching your vids! Keep rockin'! ;)
I'm Alex Jones so anything is possible.
@Beel Zebub they are gay for metal
@@CIRCLEOFTONE whats pretty hilarious, is this totally could be jimmy page, and he totally could be watching your videos with david gilmour, but noone would ever believe it.
I have wondered for years what effect was used on spirit in the Sky..thanks for a great video!
A more modern usage of that tone is found in "Gold on the Ceiling" by the Black Keys.
My high school buddy played a Tele, and he patched it through a Carvin amp. After he tuned the strings down a half step, he got some nasty distortion. I don't remember if he had a fuzz box or not. This was in the mid 1970's. He also used a Fender twin reverb.
By the way I was using a fuzz by boss last year and during a rehearsal with a band, I got that exact Spirit in sky tone. My battery was dying right there in the middle of this song, but didn't last for the 3:20 of the song.
My thought was, it was always a cab with a fried speaker in it possibly maybe even done on purpose they may have slipped the cone a little bit. That was what I always figured was going on. 12:47
Yeah I thought something sounded broken.
This is one of the really cool things about distortions and fuzzes that don't use clipping diodes: you can change the sound quite a bit just by changing the power supply voltage.
I've been obsessed with this every since I heard the story behind it. Damn you're close. I always had the assumption that broke musician wornout amp plus homemade circuit equals badass fuzz.
Super great video. I just love this song and yes the fuzz tone in on that track is one of the best. I’m loving that dying battery effect. Do you think it could have been the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz?
Years ago i had an old Foxx Tone machine (octave)fuzz that had a very leaky transistor and that used to splutter and spit like crazy ( think it was the imbalance between the good and leaky transistor)
often wondered if that combined with a dying battery was what was happening in the spirit in the sky tone .
That's awesome. I have an amp that's broken but in a great way. Broken gear is often behind mojo. Haha.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE
It certainly didn't sound like a standard tone machine ha ha ha
Hey Owen! I'm not sure if you want to try this, but a "velcro fuzz" might just be able to nail this tone. I just got a DOD Carcosa Fuzz for specifically this sort of sound, among many others. It's based on a '70s Maestro Fuzzrite FZ-1S, which is not what was used, but the Carcosa can do '60s tones too. Anyway, the "After" knob is actually a bias pot and the more you crank it the more splatty/sputtery it gets. You can get them new for $69 on ebay or Reverb if you shop around. Right now I'm using it for Electric Wizard Stoner/Doom type shit since it can cop a pretty good FZ-2 sound.
I really dug this tone you got here though even if you haven't nailed it yet. It's pretty damn close and a killer tone in it's own right.
Thanks man. Good to know.
Electro harmonix has a pedal called germanium OD which has controls for volts and bias as well as gain. You should check it out if you havent.
Good to know. Thanks.
I was experimenting with a simple fuzz face circuit design and the sag does have a noticeable effect but I'd say that the bias transistors have a way more dramatic impact on the spluttery sound. Lower the one that's right next to the second transistor and there you go!
Also I can build one for you but I'll have to wait until I can go out of my house to get the parts!
@@juanfichtl2011 that would be great. Contact me via Facebook. Owen Gibbins.
@@juanfichtl2011 I can have the parts shipped to your door. If you'll make one for me - joie99@protonmail.com
Close, it just sounded a little too hot. I'm glad I watched this video though. I have an Ibanez distortion pedal that sounds great with a dead battery. I've been trying to figure how to make something to get it to sound that way all the time.
Bloody interesting - Brought back lots of memories and sparked some curiosity. There's an interesting RUclips vid with Norman Greebaum on his 75 birthday doing a rendition of the song, plus the ever present Wikipedea has a reasonable breakdown on him, including his later musical involvements..
Cheers for the memory spark
Cheers Sid!
I get a pretty close tone to Norman's using a cuvave fuzz pedal, Squire strat and Laney Cub 15R amp.
I got really great Spirit tone with just guitar-amp . Lab Series L5 with the compression at -18, multifilter at 7.5, and midrange maxed at 4 at 1000Hz. 1961 Epiphone 452TD with ebony board. . .
My thought is that since the device was installed in the body of the guitar the components, wires and battery would be subject to sympathetic vibration. Like playing a c note at a c tuning fork will make it vibrate. Some 70's era transistors were not potted inside around the die and the less than hair-thin gold connection wires were susceptible to coming loose from vibration. That intermittent connection, being caused by vibration, could be adding to the overall sound as well.
Yep. Like a squirrelly gate. But if that was the case the sputter would happen on the first note right? The initial notes are strong and that would be where the initial impact/cut out would be stronger. I haven't listened close enough to see if it's the trailing note or initial pluck/pick. But guitars do vibrate parts on certain notes for sure so that could be it. Great post.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE In the 70's I used to build kits from heath and radio shack. My favorite kits were the theremin and wave generators I could use to make all sorts of interesting sounds. I built an amplifier kit and coupled it with a reverberator that was literally a couple of springs inside a small box with a magnet. Some sounds had what I can only describe as a wait time as it took a bit to make them resonate. The delay was sometimes influenced by the other notes at play and sometimes by the volume. I could even flick a transistor with my finger and get a change in the tones. In order to make some sounds, I had to get all of the above in the right order to make the sound. So my thinking is that the device installed in the guitar may have needed the same "Sweet Spot" of notes and duration to make it work. Like this bit of wire near this pickup with just the right voltage to make a field that caused that pickup to reverb or echo or... Maybe a string. A loose connection would do pretty much the same every time you did something to move it but combine all of the above and you get a one time awesome sound that defies explanation. I would really like to see any info he has on how the device was installed.
I never actually got into playing music, I think had I stayed on that track I would have ended up in the sound effects industry but... around that time "1976" Radio Shack aka Tandy came out with a "computer kit" that caught my attention. I built my first computer in 78 and my second in 82 and in 84 I think I got my first hard drive! it was 10 megs!!! OMG, that sounds so small now. Up until my first hard drive, the programs were loaded to the RAM from a cassette tape player. Yes, a cassette tape player. After the BIOS was up you typed C Load, pressed play and away you went. Ya know playing those tapes through an amplifier made some really weird sounds!
I was an early PC adopter too. I started off on the vic20 and BBC. My first proper pc was a 386dx. I never got into the electrical engineering thing though. My memory was never good enough for that. Haha.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE What I'm hearing is a sputter on the first notes. Also, your position changes the tone and thus the distortion very seriously. Norman capo'd 2 and played an open G position. I tried that today and got some fantastic overtone/distortions that sounded a lot closer to the orig recording. Hitting the open G (3rd string) and letting your thumb brush the low G while getting the Bb and F natural -- But the farting sputter? I think it was in the circuit Norman's friend put in his guitar. . .
BTW there is a clip of the Tele with build in fuzz!!! It was tele custom with binding sunburst finish and Josh from JHS says the pedal inside was, behold. It should be Jordan Bosstone.
Great channel. If anyone would know, it's Josh.
That clean tone at the beginning is awesome!
Yep you can't beat that AC30 chime
Once again a great job getting those origional tones dialed in and with the plethera of variables in the origional signal chains that's no small feat. I love knowing theirs players out there who actually care to get it right not just "kinda sorta not really close but let's use it anyway". Even if you don't think so that was still pretty damn close lol.
Thanks man!
I think it might have been an electroharmonix LPB1 before it became a pedal it was a device like a tiny box with one knob on it and a 1/4" jack on one end that plugged into the guitar and your guitar cable plugged into it It was cumbersome looking but it had a nice distortion that broke up sporadically.
I've owned that little plug and it was a bit more of an overdrive boost than a fuzz. It would def fit the cavity though.
I used to let my batteries run down in voltage in my old MXR Distortion Plus when I used to use one all the time. It seemed to add to the quality of the distortion -- a little bit of grittiness and warmth. So the dying battery thing makes sense to me, anyway. Sounds closer to Greenbaum's tone with the lower voltage. The lead guitar tone on that song seems different from the main riff (Greenbaum's Tele). His other guitar player used a Les Paul. I wonder if he did the solo?
Putting the fuzz in the guitar changes the overall signal path and the way the electricity flows. I'm not a tech but I recently saw a video describing how a fuzz can change if put after anything else in your pedal chain.
I, for one, dug the tone of the brighter fuzz with the tone knob NOT rolled down 😉 super dynamic
Yep! but I'm trying to match the tone which was pretty mutedish.
CIRCLE OF TONE. True, verrrry true.. haha
Just listened to ‘SitS’ for the first time in a whiiiiile.. and FWIW, my ear is picking up what sounds like maybe could* be a little Mic-Pre *Clipping* on his fuzz guitar track (listening on my iPhone mind you..). It just really reminds me of that unique edge that can come from somewhat-aggressively clipping a microphone preamplifier (obviously many different circuit topologies and flavors of those..) prob would be hard to figure out the exact one, but I imagine that the most likely Pre they would have used would’ve just been from the Console they used in the studio for the recording. Could’ve been some other outboard gear too but that would be even more difficult to track down (at least I imagine so...). And the exact Pre isn’t really *that* important IMO just would try to get something in the similar kind of family/topology...ish...
Again, this isn’t for sure obviously, but I’m operating here under the hypothetical that they did in fact clip the Pre for *xxtra tonez* for SitS. Fun thought experiment tho.
Also, mannnn the mix of the track is really ‘sputtery’ itself!! They slammed those drums n basically everything else harddd into that tape! I love it! Feels like everything is like *quasi-side-chained* dynamically together by that tape slam (or actual sidechain compression?/other process), so that could* be another aspect of the tone to potentially look into on your quest. It sounds (to me) like that SC effect I’m talking about has a big impact on a lot of the mix’s elements and not just* the guitar, tho it does sound like the gtr is effected (affected?) the most.
Love your work BTW! Keep up the great stuff man, also love your honest and open/ongoing discussions of the current state of “music”.. Pretty much naturally agree with damn near anything that comes out of your mouth! Btw dig your guitar playing too
Also LOVED the story of how you met your wife!! That is AWESOME. Mike Matthews is the man! It’s simply amazing how the smallest and most nuanced of little things.. like what shirt you wear on a night out, can have such a dramatic and awesome effect on the outcome of any one’s life.. that’s fuckn nutz! So cool :D
Sorry for the long ass msg lol..
Cheers
Josh Scott of JHS pedals seems to think it was a Jordan Boss tone plug in fuzz. Check out his Jordan Boss tone vid to see him playing the song in it and see what you think. I think he nails it.
Awesome. Thanks for the info. JHS goes deep pedal wise so if anyone knows, he does.
If you like dying battery sounds EHX Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi is a great pedal. It's distortion section has a built in Volts knob that starves the circuit, but it also has a bias knob, which let's you adjust the bias on the circuit, so you can starve it even more, and a drive section so you can regain the lost volume and shape the tone of the sputtering distortion section. And when not starving it can act as a really nice plain distortion/drive pedal - one of my favourites for that role. Funny enough it sounds nothing like an actual Big Muff.
Good to know.
Hey brother, you are the first person that I have seen that has nailed that tone. I do think it is the weak battery that makes it break up like that. And of course a Telecaster. :-) Kudos from the D! :-)
Excellent demo. Good ideas.
I would suggest the jhs color box or that Benson preamp (new autotone when available), but then again, I thought you nailed it with the saggy battery? You've definitely proven that your ears are far more tuned into those subtle nuances than mine are, for better or for worse. Thanks for the power sag pedal and the Queens tip. That with the Dual Range Bastard from Echopark should do most of those tricks.
Cheers Scott. I actually have that color box. So I could try the boosted chanel strip thing but Norman said it was a Fender amp and the fuzz.
I know this is a little over 2 months too late, but I think it could be a Fuzzrite with Germanium Transistors. It's not worth the time to test it out because Germanium Transistors are so inconsistent, but that would explain the sputtery tone (especially if it's a poorly biased pair of transistors) and the tone (Germanium Fuzzes tend to be more low-midrangy compared to Silicon, which would result in a lower ranged sputter). This is something I might try in a DIY pedal build one of these days.
Good job you’re so close we’ll be watching to see what you come up with.👍🏻
Closest I could get was the Big Muff Germanium 4 with a built in voltage pot. You get a definite splutter but it's not identical to Greenbaum's tone.
You nailed it. For sure
That was great.
I'd never heard of a pedal for that.
Than,you
Put two tablespoons of bragg's apple cider vinegar and one tablespoon of honey in about four ounces of warm/hot water. stir and drink, takes a little getting use to, but the fingers will work much better. the pain in my joints was unbearable, after about four weeks I saw great relief. it worked. can't play that well but have learned to make a "Racket". Write songs, words and music, rhyming and alliteration. At one time it was more important what you had to say than how well you could play, but not today.
have you ever done a demo of the traynor yba1 ?its canadian and is a cross between the 59 bassman circuit and the marshall jtm 45. that would be a cool vid
It's kinda hard tracking down what was what when it comes to Traynor. I didn't even know what my amp was called until I did my video. Haha.
Thoroughly enjoyed the journey to center of NGs secret of the ‘fuzz’ 🤘🏼
I’m a year behind but I’ve gotten a time similar with a TC Electronics tube pilot pedal. Driven to the max of course but it was very very similar.
You can get the same thing using a 6V 250mA Casio calculator plug (EBay) instead of the 9V plug that came with the pedal. Just make sure your pedal is +/- and not -/+. The fuzz circuit in the guitar was a DIY, not from a pedal. The circuit is very simple and easily fits under the control plate on a Telecaster if you run the battery wires through the base of the output jack and tape the battery to the strap or the back of the guitar. Duane Allman made one and put it in his Telecaster when he was with Hourglass. In guitar circles, it was relatively well known in the sixties. I have found that playing through a 12" speaker will sound great, but a 10" speaker at breakup gets the tone spot on. ** Note ** The problem with the in body fuzz is that you need to unplug the battery for every song that you don't want fuzz on.
Anybody else get just a guitar-amp to do it? I put the compression at -18, multifilter at 7.5, and midrange maxed at 4 at 1000Hz. 1961 Epiphone 452TD with ebony board. . .
Can you change the polarity of the fuzz. i think they wired it backwards in the guitar
Love your shirt, Close enough for rock 'n' roll
Good video, I thought he used a super fuzz the red and blue pedal, I used to have one and it killed the battery quick, Pete Townsend was using one at that time too..
The lead was done on a les Paul on the original recording, and the fender did the fuzz rhythm
Ur channel is about to grow man keep at it! You just got a shoutout from glenn fricker
Cheers Jeff.
Love this kinda fuzz and the tone on this song, more raw and electric sounding rather than the more "clean" and to me damp and distant more modern fuzz sounds, Ron Asheton always sounded so cool too. Great stuff man! Peace.
Cheers Larry. Agreed.
You nailed it the guitar SOUND at the beginning of the video
i think if you rolled the tone off and had a real tele pickup and used the sag with a germanium fuzz you'd be alright. it was very close actually. Most of the time he plays a no fuz sound, rtone control roloed off a bit, with his fingers probably into a champ or a princeton or something. not likely to be anything bigger than that
Agreed. My guitar was newish but the electronics are old/fender USA. I do need a champ and Princeton in my life.
Which newer fuzz pedals can get those very spluttery? sound like spirit in the sky has that splutter fuzz tone
I wish I knew
OMG! Finally someone who can recreate this! awesome !!
Hey Owen, try the MXR Super Bas Ass with the Variax switch, which sags it and it has a very nasty tone.
Very cool. Unique mystery. You'll get it eventually. I've subbed.
Have you tried the Jordan boss tone
Have you tried playing the La Grange riff in the first position/open A chord and using your smallest finger to play the accent/turnaround notes? I like the extra thickness you're getting from playing it in the second position but you're missing a few of OG ghost highlights. All subjective of course. Awesome video would love to hear more on sag uses.
Yeah I need to chicken and hybrid pick too. I always fail when trying things outside my wheelhouse like slide guitar etc.
Good point the cowboy chords give a false impression of how difficult it is to master this instrument.
@@Atttuner The simpler the technique, the better you have to play. Earl Scruggs Mother Maybelle Carter. Sam Hopkins . . .
Love that song spirit in the sky!!! 😄😄😄
It's a banger.
CIRCLE OF TONE. Yea the intro is the most recognizable guitar riff ever
i was obsessed with fuzzrites about a decade ago
and bought a couple of clones.
i think i read that the initial batch were germanium, which proved too unstable,
so could he have used the circuit from one of them ?
Yep. Something was gloriously broken.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE apparently the first 200 fuzzrites were germanium
but the transistors were too sensitive to changes in room temperature.
i cant find any accounts of how this problem affected the sound quality.
though what was discarded as a bad noise over 50 years ago
might be the ultimate fuzz to our ears...?????
@@garycrant4511 yep. There is a reason why the originals are so expensive.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Funny thing is, back in 1978 i bought a mail order Big Muff [op amp version ???].
Waited eagerly in anticipation, but it sounded shite through my big loud HH solid state combo.
Not much better than the onboard distortion circuit.
So I sold the muff within days,
Now both are fairly pricey collector's items...???
Outstanding! Knowledge rocks.
What about starving voltage then try 1/4 or 1/2 step down tuning
This has been my personal go-too fuzz tone for the last 10 years. I came the closest with a wrightsounds fuzzstang mkii (sag control on board in this pedal). I think the original greenbaum fuzz was a homemade fuzz with a 1.5v battery or two.
The national Eurivision final in Norway was just a few hours ago. The winning melody is called "Spirit In The Sky". Coincidence??? Hmmmmm...
The algorithm has you now.
Play the A octave on the g-string at the second fret, then reach up with the pinky for the low D...
I always assumed it was because the cone of the amp was cut up?
I've done that and it didn't sound right. ruclips.net/video/l0jZVoBhzho/видео.html
the jordan boss tone was installed in that tele, jhs has a good vid of it.
Try an old vintage Foxx fuzz tone, the
Pedal that almost seemed like fur, or "fuzz" on the chassis of the pedal. You could even get like an octave fuzz out of it. It actually had an octave switch on it if I remember correctly. Or the fender blender which was kind of the Grand Funk Mark Farner tone which was pretty unique too that was def around during that period. I used to have both, plus a vintage Gibson Meistro pedal, that also got stolen.
I don't think you failed - the tone at 4:40 with the low power battery comes pretty close. Add a piece of paper rattling on a horizontal speaker cone, and you've got it!
For the guitar, did the Fender Squier, sound closer or was it just a random pick.
It's the guitar that I have vintage USA fender pickups in so it dates it a bit better.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE Thanks for the reply! Probably sounds more like a Tele. than anything new, these days. I had an old one at one time and I couldn't use it, but I could now. I've still got the pickup that was in that guitar and heard it was worth a lot. Maybe I'll do what you did.......hmmmmmm.
Can someone show how they did the triplet polyrhythm delay chord stabs?
You also hear something similar in the song "damned for all time" on Jesus Christ Superstar. Its definitely a certain pedal or technique.
Tele sounds fantastic in the intro!
A version one Jordan boss tone seems to sound the most similar to the original recording
Best replica of the tone I have heard is the Peppermint Fuzz pedal. Check out the demos on RUclips.
In my opinion that could be the pedal, maybe something in the amp circuit made it break up. I think there was probably some reverb and could it have been a solid state amp ?
i remember back in the day we`d get sounds like that.and i too found a lot of that sputtering and crackeling was a weak 9v in whatever pedal. maybe try a row of various period pedals and limit the volts on one or more?
You got it, the main solo is easy to do, but you got the Spitty part. Dan Armstrong had a Fuzz that plugged into the guitar itself, real small square box pedals, Other than that back then you had the NuFuzz, Maestro/Gibson, and Tonebenders. I think you came as close As I ever heard for sure. Supposedly one of the Strings on his guitar was a bit wronky at the time, and one could retune the A string to make it easier to play for sure. But I think you really Nailed it good and SKRONKY for sure.
Great fun, thanks!
Russell dashiell played in this band. Also with harvey mandel. Harvey was finger tapping in 1968. Richard played a strat with les paul humbucker. George lynch and eddie van halen went to see harvey with richard play in the early 70s. I think those 2 guys got some great idea's from that gig. Type richard dashiell harvey mandel a woodytone article comes up from 2009 with video, photo's and info.
Awesome info
@@CIRCLEOFTONE in a interview ritchie blackmore was at la gig in 68. Hendrix was there. Jim morrison was as well. He was drunk. When harvey started finger tapping everyone stopped and looked at the band. Jim got kicked out for yelling abuse at harvey. Also Chris holmes done a evh tribute on metal voice youtube show. He was painting houses. He painted harvey mandel's house. Found out he was a guitar player. Told his mate terry kilgore who was really good guitarist. Terry played with roth in 93. Terry showed evh the tapping as well. If you type blackmore harvey mandel tapping the articles come up.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE i emailed russel dashiell about the strat he's 73 now. He said in 1969 he was playing with harvey mandel on "games guitars play lp". He was playing a 61 sg les paul. Harvey came in with a strat with shaved neck, harvey had small hands . Russell like it harvey said he should get one. So he sold his sg lp for 1965 strat and shaved the neck. He's still wishers he had the sg lp. Then stated recording his solo album crowfoot finished in 1970. When it came time to do leads the bridge sounded to thin. So russell put a les paul humbucker in the bridge position. Still has the guitar to this day. But changed the neck years later to a telecaster neck. Strat neck got bowed out of shape. Russell had a solo lp "elevator" in1978. played with harvey mandel, norman greenbaum, phil everly, and don harrison band you can see the guitar in his video "rock n roll records" something. Now lives in hawaii. Photo in b/w with the strat from 1970 holding guitar in on the web. i have it. Russell said he think he was the first to put humbucker in strat. Hadn't seen it before. ✌✌
Try tuning a bass up a little and running it through a buzz box.
The player would need very strong hands and be backed by a tele player.
I think the riff was played on a bass with a telecaster playing the higher notes.
The buzz and sustain effects give the impression of chords, but the song only contains single blurred notes.
Whatever, Norman Greenbaum is a superb musician.
This technique could work for the over the top distortion used on Neil Youngs Hey Hey My My as well. I've always struggled to push enough gain / mud to pull off that tone. Sounded amazingly close to Norman at the start of the video. This song has always fascinated me for the tone he had. I always thought it sounded like a guitar getting jammed through a saxophone haha.
When people tell me a Kemper is indistinguishable from real amps, I trell them to recreate the hey hey live tone of Neil and Crazy Horse. Haha.
@@CIRCLEOFTONE That's awesome. Kempers have their place. A touring band that uses more modern tones is the perfect example. They are rock steady and sound the same all the time. That being said I love my H&K 18 watt tube head. I can play anything on it with the right pedals and sound as modern or classic as I want.
Neil Young has always played through a 1950's Fender Deluxe amp using his old Les Paul. What you're hearing in that song is the amp on full volume. There is no pedal making that tone. That is the tone of a 1950's Fender Deluxe at full volume.
Did Greenbaum go through a guitar amp? Or did he go straight into a mixing board?
He went though a "fender amp". I thought it may be a maxed out board too.
I am able to get pretty close to Greenbaum’s tone with using a Fender Champ from the 1970s. Volume 7, Treble 7, Bass 5.
As far as the lack of headroom goes, look at the earliest design Fuzzes like the Maestro Fuzz Tone, or Sunn Buzz circuits. Those early designs did not use a 9v battery, but rather ran on a 1.5v power supply from a single AA battery. This gave them near zero headroom and a signature, spitting tone.
There were also completely passive mods done to many guitars and basses of the time, where two germanium diodes-each oriented in different directions-would be soldered together into the main signal line. This was famously done with Jack Bruce’s bass in Cream, and may give you the tone you seek.
@@powerdog242 awesome info. Thanks
@@powerdog242 not to push further down the rabbit hole but, the guitar preamp that was installed could have very easily been pulled from a Supro or something similar. I say Supro because my dad told me a story about a guitar he had (or maybe a bandmates') in high school, that had a tone switch with one position labeled "Dog" that was the snarliest sound he ever heard, then--around '65 or '66. Then again, my dad took a bunch of drugs and drank a lot and maybe things had gotten jumbled up...he graduated from HS in 67 and went down hill from there...
The lead playing which is equally memorable was apparently by Russell DaShiell playing an SG through a plexi....
dangerousminds.net/comments/spirit_in_the_sky_youve_know_the_song_you_entire_life_here_is_the_music_vid
Yep. Amazing tone. I did mention that solo tone setup in the vid but in text.
That's killer. Love the dead battery! My voodoo labs pedal power has 2 sag knobs on it
Great feature. Good to know.
The alex jones of tone!! 😂😂
Dont give up on the battery path just yet therr are a few things that could be different. The power supply may only drop the voltage where a dying batterys voltage would fluctuate when a heavy load was applied, the pedal could also have a different power input with filter capacitors that would keep voltage from fluctuating and another thing batteries them selves if alkaline batteries where available they would have been much more expensive than heavy duty batteries may act different when dying.
Yep. That death rattle could be the key.