Some excerpts I found online:
What gear did you use on Kill All Control?
"I used the same gear on the whole record. Because it was done very quickly, we didn’t have time to really dial stuff in. I stacked all my heads up in the control room and my cabinets were off in another room. We used an R-121, a Shure 57, a [Randall] Lynch Box cab, and an old Hiwatt cab.
For the rhythms, one side was a [Randall] Lynch Box and the other side was a Diezel Herbert. I used a variety of guitars for the rhythms, but I always try to find two guitars that have chemistry. We do two rhythm tracks for the main chords. So one side would usually be my old Tiger and the other side my Tele-style, and I’d mix that combination up. Sometimes I would use my Les Paul-style, which is a real chunky, fake ’58 [ESP] built for me back in the ’80s. The other side would be something else. Generally, it was the Tele-style, the Tiger, a little bit of the GL-56, and the Les Paul-style—all made by ESP. Do the left side, do the right side, and make it match—that’s pretty much all it was and I just banged through.
Did you record both amps at the same time or separately?
I did one side with one amp first, and then the other side with the other amp using a different guitar.
Did you use your pedalboard?
When I’m in the studio it’s like snakes on the floor [Laughing]. There’s like forty pedals—I have my pedalboard and then I have all my other stuff that won’t fit on the pedalboard [Laughing]. As I’m tracking, doing leads or clean parts or squirrely affected parts, I’ll have an “Oh! I want to put a little thing here!” I’ll plug in my old Electric Mistress, my DigiTech Whammy, my old Echoplex, or whatever I think I need right there—it could be an analog chorus with the rate turned way up. I’m always off the cuff.
What’s on your pedalboard?
An old Clyde-era wah that goes into a script-logo [MXR] Phase 90. I’m always changing my overdrives but I really like the Cusack Screamer, which is like a Tube Screamer. I have a new HomeBrew Electronics Skull Crusher I really like that Gary Hoey gave me. I’ve got thirty overdrives and I’m always swapping them out, but those are the two that I used on the record. From there it goes into two Zvex pedals—a Seek-Wah and a Seek-Trem. After that, it goes into a Boss CE-3 Chorus—which I didn’t use on the record, but do use live—and a ’70s Mu-Tron Octave Divider. Love that thing.
Then I use the Shimmer effect from a Strymon blueSky Reverb, followed by a Strymon El Capistan dTape Echo. Sometimes I’ll use my old EP-3 Echoplex or my EP-2 Tube Echoplex. Then it goes into an old Fulltone Deja’Vibe, which is phenomenal for the Trower/Hendrix thing.
Producer/Engineer Michael Wagener on recording "Under Lock & Key"
"The setup for George's guitar tone on "Under Lock And Key" was as follows:
We had two Marshall heads and two Laney heads, not sure which models, but one of them was a Plexi. We had cabs in three different rooms: two cabs were placed in the big room at Amigo, one connected to a Marshall, the other connected to the Laney. The Marshall was responsible for the high end part of the sound and the Laney was set to take care of the low end. There were 14 (fourteen) mics set up in that room in various psoitions around the cabinet and some further away to get some room tone. The second Laney was sent into a very dead room and had a Boss chorus pedal in front of it, set to very slight chorus. The second Marshall was sent into a small, tiled bathroom, to add a different room tone. Those 16 mics came in on the MCI 500 console mic pres. They were bussed to one bus and that bus had a Urei 530 EQ on it (best guitar EQ ever). George mentioned that he always gets a great tone with his Fostex 4track recorder when it's in total overdrive, so I asked him to bring it in. So after the 530 everything was sent to the Fostex 4track, which lived under a packing blanket under the console, so nobody would see it. The Fostex was on stunn, completely overdriven and was sent on to the 3M 32 track dig machine from there..."
From an old article I read in guitar player, from an interview with Max Norman:
"A lot of people don't realize that George runs chorus all the time. It's never switched off..."
What gear did you use on Kill All Control?
"I used the same gear on the whole record. Because it was done very quickly, we didn’t have time to really dial stuff in. I stacked all my heads up in the control room and my cabinets were off in another room. We used an R-121, a Shure 57, a [Randall] Lynch Box cab, and an old Hiwatt cab.
For the rhythms, one side was a [Randall] Lynch Box and the other side was a Diezel Herbert. I used a variety of guitars for the rhythms, but I always try to find two guitars that have chemistry. We do two rhythm tracks for the main chords. So one side would usually be my old Tiger and the other side my Tele-style, and I’d mix that combination up. Sometimes I would use my Les Paul-style, which is a real chunky, fake ’58 [ESP] built for me back in the ’80s. The other side would be something else. Generally, it was the Tele-style, the Tiger, a little bit of the GL-56, and the Les Paul-style—all made by ESP. Do the left side, do the right side, and make it match—that’s pretty much all it was and I just banged through.
Did you record both amps at the same time or separately?
I did one side with one amp first, and then the other side with the other amp using a different guitar.
Did you use your pedalboard?
When I’m in the studio it’s like snakes on the floor [Laughing]. There’s like forty pedals—I have my pedalboard and then I have all my other stuff that won’t fit on the pedalboard [Laughing]. As I’m tracking, doing leads or clean parts or squirrely affected parts, I’ll have an “Oh! I want to put a little thing here!” I’ll plug in my old Electric Mistress, my DigiTech Whammy, my old Echoplex, or whatever I think I need right there—it could be an analog chorus with the rate turned way up. I’m always off the cuff.
What’s on your pedalboard?
An old Clyde-era wah that goes into a script-logo [MXR] Phase 90. I’m always changing my overdrives but I really like the Cusack Screamer, which is like a Tube Screamer. I have a new HomeBrew Electronics Skull Crusher I really like that Gary Hoey gave me. I’ve got thirty overdrives and I’m always swapping them out, but those are the two that I used on the record. From there it goes into two Zvex pedals—a Seek-Wah and a Seek-Trem. After that, it goes into a Boss CE-3 Chorus—which I didn’t use on the record, but do use live—and a ’70s Mu-Tron Octave Divider. Love that thing.
Then I use the Shimmer effect from a Strymon blueSky Reverb, followed by a Strymon El Capistan dTape Echo. Sometimes I’ll use my old EP-3 Echoplex or my EP-2 Tube Echoplex. Then it goes into an old Fulltone Deja’Vibe, which is phenomenal for the Trower/Hendrix thing.
Producer/Engineer Michael Wagener on recording "Under Lock & Key"
"The setup for George's guitar tone on "Under Lock And Key" was as follows:
We had two Marshall heads and two Laney heads, not sure which models, but one of them was a Plexi. We had cabs in three different rooms: two cabs were placed in the big room at Amigo, one connected to a Marshall, the other connected to the Laney. The Marshall was responsible for the high end part of the sound and the Laney was set to take care of the low end. There were 14 (fourteen) mics set up in that room in various psoitions around the cabinet and some further away to get some room tone. The second Laney was sent into a very dead room and had a Boss chorus pedal in front of it, set to very slight chorus. The second Marshall was sent into a small, tiled bathroom, to add a different room tone. Those 16 mics came in on the MCI 500 console mic pres. They were bussed to one bus and that bus had a Urei 530 EQ on it (best guitar EQ ever). George mentioned that he always gets a great tone with his Fostex 4track recorder when it's in total overdrive, so I asked him to bring it in. So after the 530 everything was sent to the Fostex 4track, which lived under a packing blanket under the console, so nobody would see it. The Fostex was on stunn, completely overdriven and was sent on to the 3M 32 track dig machine from there..."
From an old article I read in guitar player, from an interview with Max Norman:
"A lot of people don't realize that George runs chorus all the time. It's never switched off..."
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