Deep Purple and Rainbow are the pinnacle of 70s rock. Ritchie Blackmore had a not so secret tone trick which I've never tried, despite having all the equipment to pull it off... More about the Akai Tape Recorder - th-cam.com/video/xukL-ysWf3A/w-d-xo.html More details on how CSGuitars implements product promotion - www.csguitars.co.uk/disclosure #rainbow #deeppurple #ritchieblackmore Time codes - 00:00 - Listening to Stargazer 00:41 - Equipment Required 02:41 - Deep Purple and Rainbow Riffs 06:41 - Did I Nail The Tone? More from CSGuitars: Support on Patreon: www.patreon.com/csguitars Join CSGuitars Discord - discord.gg/csguitars Buy CSGuitars Merchandise - www.csguitars.co.uk/store Website - www.csguitars.co.uk Contact - colin@csguitars.co.uk ____________________________________________________________________ *Description contains affiliate links. Purchasing using one of these links will generate a small commission for CSGuitars at no additional cost to you.*
@@michaelfinnegan3805 analogue delay chips didn't really exist until the early 80s, so any delay had to be coming from a tape echo machine - or several.
Thank you for showing this. I think nobody else on youtube has done this. It sounds great I think. About you're playing I think you do fine and the only thing you could practise is to not do the chug chug metal style palm muting. If you listen closely, Blackmore never does that. He mutes the strings when needed but seem to have a light touch to it so it doesn't become the typical chugy palm muting that generations of stereotypical metal guitarists seem to do.
@@ScienceofLoud what's the flight times through old solid state stuff? I was gonna say it probably had delay from the circuit itself, but not having any idea of old gear guts I held it - but now it presents itself. *goes to look up what's inside the tape machine* I would never have thought to use whatever was laying around but I have used whatever's laying around when it does something I like. The problem is getting it to do it again when the first thing invariably, eventually breaks. I had a tape deck once that would let you overdub because of a head misalignment, turn it over and you're dubbing the other side. Sometimes old electronics would run backwards on startup, had an old turntable that would do that. I literally had a recording (there was a tape deck on it) of the "satanic backmasking" Led Zepplin drama at the time it happened because I could hold it and manually start it going in reverse - made many copies of that tape lol people were freaking out.
This kinda blew my little braincells away… 54 yr old, been playing Blackmore’s songs since I was about 8. I had seen pics of the reel-to-reel and had ALWAYS assumed it was being used as a tape-echo…. Damn, never to old to learn new things. I’ve got an old AKAI R2R out in my storage truck. Time to go grab it. :) \m/, ,\m/ ❤ from 🇨🇦
Since what Ritchie was doing was before the age of tube screamers and such, this is quite an ingenious method for the time. It thickens things up and gives more punch from the single coils. Nice demo!
Blackmore has used a second reverse wound coil, either stacked, or as a dummy coil in the middle position, to basically have a humbucker in his strats, to help reduce noise. The resistance was almost like an actual humbucker, so that is more likely the source of the "thicker" signal, and the tape machine preamp was jut helping get a bit more gain from those amps.
Indeed, though there were 'Overdrives' even back then - Rangemaster Treble booster for example - which although not 100% - would have got us closer to RB's sound than the later TS would
@@ErikVOfficial Blackmore had several kinds of pickups in his strats. The dummy coil appeared in 1978. The tape machine was used first in 1973, way before he changed his pickups and the dummy coil, helped by John "Dawk" Stillwell, his tech which scalopped and modified his guitars and amps
One of the pedals I've been wanting for a long time is a Catalinbread Dreamcoat. It's the preamp circuit from an Aiwa TP-1011 tape machine (the very one Ritchie used with Rainbow) in a $189 compact pedal box.
If you watch Ritchie closely, you'll see him flipping back and forth between the bridge and neck pickups. I think that also has a lot to do with his lead tone.
Ahh, a fellow Stargazer enjoyer. I love Rainbow but that riff and song just go so hard. And this was a lovely video. I had no idea Blackmore used a tape machine that way nor that one COULD be used that way.
Rainbow is one of my favorite bands ever! from their invention of prog metal and power metal in the 70s with Dio to the top tier commercial rock hits in the early 80s with Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner, every single recording of theirs is absolutely legendary! I'll definitely be happy to see a tape saturation pedal :)
I think the Catalinbread Dreamcoat might be what you're looking for. It not only has near identical circuitry that he's describing, but also a frequency boost (That Blackmore also supposedly used). For like $179.
I am still in awe of Blackmore’s tone on the live albums Made in Europe (Deep Purple Mk III) and On Stage (Rainbow). This setup gets about halfway there.
Isn't that what the MXR Echoplex preamp and Xotic EP Booster are supposed to be? I'd be interested in hearing a real tape machine vs those types of pedals that seek to recreate it.
Reel to Reels are awsome, I recommend You seek for an Akai GX machine. They (and only they) have a glass layer on the heads wich makes them absolute wear resistant. Best machines ever. I have an Akai GX630- loving it.
The Echoplex was a tape echo, while the Akai is a recorder, but maybe they have similar preamps. I have an Xotic EP Booster, not sure how close it is to real thing but I like it.
Blackmore utilized a dummy pickup in place of his middle pickup too, which if you notice was always screwed down lower than the bridge and neck pickups. He had a lot up his sleeve.
Hi, well in fact Blackmore didn't use the dummy coil until the 1978. He only played with bridge and Neck pickups, but not middle, so he lowered it. The last pickups he used were the Lace Sensor (his were prototypes from Don Lace)
Back in 1982, I had read that Blackmore used a tape recorder. Being that I was only 16 and didn't know anything, I didn't realize he was putting it in front of an amp. My dad got me a broken tube reel-to-reel with a built-in power amp. That tape rotors didn't work but the preamp and power amp did. I was able to get a pretty good distortion sound with it, so I used that with an old hi-fi speaker box from the 1950s as an amp until 1984 when my dad got me a Peavey Bandit 65 as an early birthday present for New Year's Day. This video sure brought back memories.
There's a german maker of booster pedals. one of them is BSM 71-73 CM. they have a few models , dedicated to Blackmore. One of them recreates this circuit from the tape recorder. I owned a couple of these pedals. Recommended.
I love Blackmore so much. Lazy, Light in the Black, Gates of Babylon, countless more. You ever listen to the Burn solo slowed down? Every single note is perfectly on time, you'd think it's quantized or something. Biggest thing that helped me nail his style was switching from pick to fingers for certain sections of the songs like the arpeggitated parts and double stops.
I took an discarded high end cassette recorder that had a microphone pre amp input that I would plug my guitar in and then I would plug a cord to my amp from the output jack on the tape player and I would get this incredible distortion and sustain!
@@svenjansen2134I did the same but just wired it in place of the playback head. Actually used it as a mini amp. Couldn't place the volume past 2 without getting screaming feedback. Good times!
Ritchie Blackmore did have one of the most amazing guitar sounds of the 70's. I read that he would use a mixing board into his amp to push the gain. I've tried it, and it sounds crazy. I don't doubt that may have been his secret for such high gain and deep tone. But he did always have that tape machine running, for echo/delay. I've never tried that so I can't say for sure. All I know is that inspired the SHIT out of me. One of my top favorites of all time.
Close, but the album was Under Lock and Key, and the unit was a Fostex four-track tape recorder. This was confirmed by Michael Wagener in 2006. Or did he pull something similar for the next album as well?
@@kospandx You're right, I was mixing up which album it's on/the tape recorder. I heard it from a Michael Wagner interview also I think George also talked about it when he did Dave Friedman's Tone Talk podcast episode with Jeff Pilson, who revealed he still had the original Fostex in his studio. "Is there cocaine in it?" - George Lynch
I had no idea! Thanks Colin. Incidentally, 16 year old me did pretty much the same thing out of desperation as I got an electric for my birthday without an amp 😢. My chain was Sharp reel to reel into the mic input of a Hitachi g-blaster and then into the Sharp hi-fi which had 16 inch speakers and (thankfully) detachable tweeters. Accidentally managed to get a pretty okay sound 😂. Also, nice choice of whisky!
There's a certain pleasure in using era-appropriate, expensive and inconvenient analaogue gear...... One of the best summaries of guitarists and our vintage obsession!😂 Also : your shirt is fabulous Colin!😊😊😊
Right on the money! Great job! I think I heard on a video about Blackmore that he was training to be a radio technician and fix radios when he was younger and in school, that would make sense and give him a good understanding of signal paths and signal manipulation. Richie Blackmore is criminally underrated, he is one of my favorite guitarists right behind Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, SRV, John Frusciante, Ron Asheton, Johnny Ramone.
Wow, that really opened up the sound. Instead of a harsh overdrive it created a thick and warm sound that allows enough spank to still sound like a Strat. I hope a pedal maker sees this and makes a preamp for this. I'm hoping signal boosters like the SD Pickup Booster or MXR Micro Amp can do the same thing, but let's see once the tape recorder's guts get investigated more lol
There is a story that someone in the crowd at a gig shouted out that Blackmore was miming his guitar solo's against a tape recording (his AKAI). Ritchie wandered over, switched the tape off and kept playing! Blackmore by the way was an apprentice electrician in his youth at Heathrow Airport when he left school. This kind of solution to boost an amp would have been no real challenge for him.
I used my Strat thru Early to mid 70s using a WEM echo unit and my 100 watt Marshall with a single 4x12 cab lovely sound never needed any other effects - no pedal ever gave me that kind of sound 👍🌝 I had no idea Blackmore was using the same concept , I always loved his sound - now I know why ! Thanks for the usefull demo , you sounded exactly right 😁
It's interesting how much jangle and spank still remains audible in the end product, almost as if it's a pedal with a blend control where you still have a good amount of the dry signal in it. Great video!
I think Richie used a Yamaha MV802 stereo mixer to get back to high Z before the amp. At least there are pictures of one in his rack with the Akai tape machine on top. I actually use one to push my Peavey Classic 50/50 stereo tube amp from my pedal board as the amp was likely designed for keyboards and pretty clean with a ton of headroom. I bought one used for that purpose and found out later Richie used it too. I won't change it for a new one! - It's magic sauce!
Most guys use the EP 1 Echoplex, to get those sounds too . Like Jimmy Page , Eddie Van Halen and of course Jimi Hendrix . I'm 71 and still use mine . There's plenty of others too ,that have a 12xa7 in the preamp. I've done the way you tried it to . I had a Akai tape deck and see screamed to .Lol.👍
@kennyblackbird5674 I call bullshit on that,their first gig in LA ,Ca at the Rose Palace in Pasadena. FRONT ROW ,I WATCHED HIS EVERY MOVE. Cause I was a guitar player too .Checked over what he was using with eagle eyes. Even his violin bow, waa waa pedal .etc. Now he might of been other things too .Those EPs are kind of touchy.So bringing it every gig is not likely. Sometimes I will use pedals too. But the EPs have a special sound,as do the Roland space echo,Binsons too. I've been down that rabbit hole .Check your sources. Not bullshit to you but the story.👍 Lol.
I saw Rainbow on the first tour with Joe Lynn Turner and later on the full Deep Purple lineup with Ian Paice & Gillan, Jon Lord, Ritchie and Roger Glover on the House of Blue Light tour and always saw the tape machine. I'd only read in guitar mags what it was for, but never understood how it worked as a preamp at the time. As it was always rolling throughout the shows, I thought it was some tape echo type thing, as well. Great sound! I have the OR15 and it absolutely kills.
I have the same guitar but I put Fishmans in it. Oh, and I saw every Rainbow tour that blew thru Chicago, starting with the very first tour. Yep, that tape machine was always by his side
When I was a kid I used my Dads tape deck in a similar way. Go in the mic input, press record and have pause on, and turn up the recording level so the needles went into the red. I never knew Blackmore did a similar thing. Great vid. 👍🏻
Great demo/playing. Have a feeling that people are going to start realising that Ritchie was head and shoulders above most hard rock players/writers of that era. Incredibly .. he’s underrated. 😀
Blackmore's tone is loud but surprisingly clean. This is because he created a great deal of clear headroom by using 200w Marshall Major amps that were attenuated to 300w. A very different beast to the Orange amp you used. There are already a few Blackmore inspired pedals on the market, including the GuitarSlinger RB1011 Booster. Great channel, by the way. 7
Makes me think about all the old analogue audio bits and pieces I have and how they might sound as overdriven preamps. Just as you said, probably nothing you couldn't get very simply with a pedal, but just for fun. Thanks for the video. 👍
I have a 60s era Akai Reel to Reel inherited from my Dad. I'll need to try this out. Also, I have a tube Telefunken radio from him. It's magical how great FM music sounds coming out of that thing. The mixture of the tube warmth and the speakers(I asume alnoco magnets?), is amazing. Always wondered if it could be made into a guitar preamp of some sort? Probably fine for bedroom volume too?
I did exactly this in the mid 70’s with a Philips reel to reel tape recorder into a little Zenta practice amp. Figured it out out of necessity and lack of an unaffordable tone bender booster. Using a wah Got some great Brian May tones too. ❤
Yeah! Nice job! Rainbow Rising is one of my all time favourite albums! I have a few vinyl copies as, they have been played so much, most are worn out! I recon you got as close as anyone could wish for to that sound! Sweet!
If I remember correctly Ritchie ran his guitar through the tape machine to boost the high frequencies. It would be near impossible to accurately recreate the tones he was getting, for the simple fact there's way way too many variables involved. The tape machine just adds another layer to the mystique of it all.
@@Tunkkis ooh yeah, buddy! Supposedly at the time, only Pete Townsend, Ritchie, and a select few others, even had those bad boys! THEE loudest amps available, period.
Love it, Love it , Love it - I just found the same Reel to Reel here in the USA fo $350.- Condition good to excellent - it s a good day to buy gear, Thanks -
Nice demo Sir. Your sound is lovely, so bang on the money. Got me thinking now about preamp circuits at the top of the chain. You've given me a new project. Once I get the others finished of course.
Not bad! Closer than many folks have come. I think if you back off the gain a little,you’ll come closer. Remember, Ritchie’s sound at that time - while hyper-aggressive - was also clean.
I used to do this back in the late ‘70s with my old Uher tape recorder. Worked fine. Then I discovered the Boss OD and CS pedals and started using those. This was the start to a never ending tone quest that lead to my actual holy grail in terms of OD-Boost: the CMatMods Super Signa. To me, unequaled even by pedals that cost 3 times as much…
I did a similar thing in the 1970s when I couldn't afford an amplifier. I put a cassette tape in the slot without any tape in it, plugged my guitar into the input and connected the output to a speaker. Pressed 'record' Worked a treat over-driving the small amp too.
Thanks an interesting video. Recreating the mic preamp of an old Akai reel to reel isn't difficult. Bear in mind it is made up of solid state discreet components of which the equivalents are easily available today. It's not like you'll need to go searching for some old obsolete chip from yesteryear. So to someone with basic electronic construction knowledge this would be a simple task. I say this because I used to be someone who repaired those things along with every type of TV, HI-FI, VCR and my favourite guitar amplifiers. I liked the sound you achieved and yes it sounds just like Richie Blackmore.
There is a pedal avalibl at Thomann with exaktly the right circut that replecate Blamckmores tape recorder boost..RB 1011..Just use that one into a Marshall 50 or 100 with 4x12 Greenbacks and you will be as close you can..the rest is in the fingers. Good luck !
A lot of people commenting about the Aiwa tape machine - he used it as a preamp AND a delay. He wanted to use the delay live but found he couldn't use his normal boosters in front the tape machine. The gain from the tape machine proved to be enough and had his Marshalls matched to the output of the tape. He would activate the tape machine when he wanted a delay to his sound, the heads were set up differently which caused this. This was the start of Mk3 Burn era. Ritchie was constantly changing which is why its so hard to pin down his tone - it actually changed with every album!
definitely so much more ballsy, more sustain and fatter but still keeps characteristics of the single coils. also not overly saturated so still so clear note definition.
0:11 clearly should've been the thumbnail here Epic video by the way. Rainbow is like a restaurant most people don't know about or care to visit but secretly serves Michelin quality food.
I was gonna ask how it compares to an overdrive pedal, but you addressed that it's probably not very different. It would still be cool to hear the direct signal coming out of the tape machine compared to an overdrive pedal or two and trying to see just how close you can get.
The mirror pick guard is dope! I heard pick guards can affect guitar tone too. Apparently aluminum guards give a thicker sound than plastic. I wonder about brass, bronze, copper, steel, iron, acrylic, glass, ceramic. Etc. 🤔
it's true. put a gold anodized on my blonde 50's and it got louder, fatter, and with more attack. a real different thing than the single ply plastic that it had before. not sure if I prefer it, but it jangles more now
The thickness really gets in there, feels somewhat like octaver. Such a clever way to thicken up a strat tone for a dirty sound. Those transistor must be adding those even order harmonics for that thick sound.
I have an MIJ blackmore strat clone (ST72). One thing you might want to consider is that he had scalloped frets, but they're not super deep, especially on the low end of the E and A strings. It will definitely impact your tone.
Another aspect of his tone and playing are his early electric guitar string gauges. There are two interviews online where he mentions them, in one said "10, 12, 13 or 14" for the treble strings. He didn't say what gauges for the bass string there, but did mention how he tried banjo strings as other rock guitarists were doing at the time. In another earlier interview he said "10, 11, 14, 26, 36, 42". What's interesting is Steve Morse in an interview said he uses "10, 13, 16, 26, 32, 42" which is obviously gauges mixed from standard 9s and 10s sets. But the overall a 10 high E and lighter 42 low E idea I think comes from vintage Fender 150 Rock-N-Roll string gauges "10, 13, 15, 26, 32, 38" that Hendrix used. But back then the cores were round and not hex, and with pure nickel wrap which also makes them stiffer because nickel is dense, so when string companies switched to hex cores and plated steel wrap a 38 is looser so I can see why they chose a 42 for the low E, even though round core nickel wraps are now available again. I experimented using 10, 12, 14, 24, 32, 40 with Boomers from GHS, which feel nice, and I'm not going for a Ritchie sound but more of a feel thing because I'm not into commercial sets and gauges, and may try round core pure nickel wrap in various gauges with those trebles. What I realized is that 10, 12, 14 treble strings feel more like the strings on a classical guitar with standard nylon gauges and tensions which I prefer because I play nylon string guitars from a young age. Ritchie did mention his early classical guitar lessons and wonder if that type of feel affected him also? Or if banjo gauges came like that back then? His electric set now is "10, 11, 14, 26, 38, 48" which may have evolved from his more steel string acoustic playing with Blackmore's Knight.
Wow cool video, I’ve seen the pictures with the tape machine but never put 2 and 2 together. I use a Klon clone into a Marshall with a strat to kinda do the same thing and it seems to work.
The sound certainly thickened up with the tape preamp. How close could you have got with a graphic EQ pedal? Not as visual, but I bet the sound would be similar. One of my favourite pedals is the EHX Glove, set to a fairly clean sound, with unity gain, but with the "tone shift" switched on. That thickens up single coils without losing their character.
I used to have a 1970s Sony RTR and plugging into the preamp got the same tone. If you daisy chained that preamp into the second preamp you got the “Revolution” by the Beatles. Makes sense since that guitar tone was achieved in much the same way, only using the inputs on the mixing board.
The tape/mic pre is available in booster pedals now, rendering this technique obsolete. My favorite clean boost delivers up to 30db of gain to the amp. I usually only keep it just above unity gain to push the amp into slightly distorted.
Keith Richards used the preamp on his Phillips cassette deck to overdrive his acoustic guitar signal. The most famous example of this is Street Fighting Man. Apparently he also routed the resulting signal through some sort of powered extension speaker, miked that and sent that signal into the board. So his signal chain had 2 microphones and 3 gain stages, but no pickups, no pedals, and no guitar amps!
My very first overdrive, well over 50 years ago, involved plugging my Kent Videocaster into the mic preamp of a tube-based Roberts reel-to-reel I had. The guitar's output was well above the signal amplitude expected from a voice mic. The preamp's line output, in turn, was well above what the guitar amp was expecting. Though I haven't heard it in 50 years, my recollection is that the result was "sustain for days". My bandmates called it "the monster", though I suppose that was because the tape deck was as big as the amplifier. I eventually learned that Blackmore was doing something similar, but subsequently learned that he was relying on a solid-state tape machine.
Hmmmm. Joe Perkins has a TH-cam from 2 years ago in which he demos the use of an Akai 4000DB mic preamp as *his* overdrive going into an amp. Doesn't sound identical to your demo, Colin, but then he's using a 335-stye guitar (dual HBs) into a Hughes & Kettner amp. Still, makes a great overdrive. Turns out, I have an Akai 4000DB in the basement. I'm going to have to try that. It's also made me curious about trying the DBX100 Boombox subharmonic synthesize with my guitar. At its heart, it's just another CD4013-based flip-flop octave divider, albeit with *far* more filtering than an MXR Blue Box ever had.
Well, I finally tried it out. Although I don't have a reamp box. Sounded terrible, going into a solid-state amp. Sounded much better, going into my old tweed Fender Princeton, although I didn't really crank it up. I'd probably have to listen to a lot more Blackmore, and spend a little time with the Akai 40000 and 4000DB service manuals to see how similar the mic preamps are, before passing final judgment.
Hi Colin, you have nothing to be shy about your Blackmore riffs, they are just mighty fine. A little missteps here and there like in Black Night but that's no problem. I think the idea to harness the preamp of that Akai (or any reel to reel tape recorder for that matter) in to a pedal is a good idea. Although there were already attempts to do a pedal like that (albeit a different unit), I know of 2 pedals that harnessed the preamp of an Echoplex into a pedal and one a Leslie Speaker. Also on The Beatles' Revolution, John Lennon's guitar was plugged direct to the board and the gain of that channel was maxed out. I think a pedal was made inspired by a maxed out gain of a channel off a mixing console. But an AKAI/Tape Recorder boost/overdrive would also be a welcome treat!
I remember reading once that Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac loved this trick so much that he had the electronics from a reel to reel rehoused in a standard pedal enclosure.
![Blackmore Guitar Collection [HQ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/M-jP38If6CA/mqdefault.jpg)
Deep Purple and Rainbow are the pinnacle of 70s rock. Ritchie Blackmore had a not so secret tone trick which I've never tried, despite having all the equipment to pull it off...
More about the Akai Tape Recorder - th-cam.com/video/xukL-ysWf3A/w-d-xo.html
More details on how CSGuitars implements product promotion - www.csguitars.co.uk/disclosure
#rainbow #deeppurple #ritchieblackmore
Time codes -
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00:41 - Equipment Required
02:41 - Deep Purple and Rainbow Riffs
06:41 - Did I Nail The Tone?
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I was under the impression he used the tape machine as a delay also. Around 300 Ms with deep purple and 600 Ms with Rainbow.
@@michaelfinnegan3805 analogue delay chips didn't really exist until the early 80s, so any delay had to be coming from a tape echo machine - or several.
Thank you for showing this. I think nobody else on youtube has done this. It sounds great I think. About you're playing I think you do fine and the only thing you could practise is to not do the chug chug metal style palm muting. If you listen closely, Blackmore never does that. He mutes the strings when needed but seem to have a light touch to it so it doesn't become the typical chugy palm muting that generations of stereotypical metal guitarists seem to do.
@@michaelkarlsson5966 Maybe you should lighten up!! Go sniff a cork!!
@@ScienceofLoud what's the flight times through old solid state stuff? I was gonna say it probably had delay from the circuit itself, but not having any idea of old gear guts I held it - but now it presents itself. *goes to look up what's inside the tape machine*
I would never have thought to use whatever was laying around but I have used whatever's laying around when it does something I like. The problem is getting it to do it again when the first thing invariably, eventually breaks.
I had a tape deck once that would let you overdub because of a head misalignment, turn it over and you're dubbing the other side. Sometimes old electronics would run backwards on startup, had an old turntable that would do that. I literally had a recording (there was a tape deck on it) of the "satanic backmasking" Led Zepplin drama at the time it happened because I could hold it and manually start it going in reverse - made many copies of that tape lol people were freaking out.
Rainbow is a lost gem of the 70's. It amazes me how many people don't know about them. My favorite is Gates of Babylon!
What are you talking about?! Who doesn't know Rainbow? Lost gem?! Maybe all the people you know are morons
Believe me, all the crowd around the reaction channels knows at least Stargazer, probably Gates of Babylon, too. Dio is the master.
@@luisnunes3863Those 3 Rainbow albums with Dio are solid gold, as are the 2 Black Sabbath albums he sang on after moving on
@@jasondorsey7110 yeh Dio was pretty special... You can see why people like Sabbath and Blackmore saught him out
The live album is incredible.
This kinda blew my little braincells away… 54 yr old, been playing Blackmore’s songs since I was about 8. I had seen pics of the reel-to-reel and had ALWAYS assumed it was being used as a tape-echo…. Damn, never to old to learn new things. I’ve got an old AKAI R2R out in my storage truck. Time to go grab it. :)
\m/, ,\m/ ❤ from 🇨🇦
@lam_Dunn : he most definitely used the reel-to-reel for echo as well, eg on Mistreated.
Since what Ritchie was doing was before the age of tube screamers and such, this is quite an ingenious method for the time. It thickens things up and gives more punch from the single coils.
Nice demo!
Blackmore has used a second reverse wound coil, either stacked, or as a dummy coil in the middle position, to basically have a humbucker in his strats, to help reduce noise. The resistance was almost like an actual humbucker, so that is more likely the source of the "thicker" signal, and the tape machine preamp was jut helping get a bit more gain from those amps.
Indeed, though there were 'Overdrives' even back then - Rangemaster Treble booster for example - which although not 100% - would have got us closer to RB's sound than the later TS would
@@SD_UK Good thing several clones of the Rangemaster are available today for usually around the $200 mark.
@@ErikVOfficial Blackmore had several kinds of pickups in his strats. The dummy coil appeared in 1978. The tape machine was used first in 1973, way before he changed his pickups and the dummy coil, helped by John "Dawk" Stillwell, his tech which scalopped and modified his guitars and amps
Richie Blackmore is one of my top 5 guitarists of all time, I had no idea about this. Very nice bit of info
One of the pedals I've been wanting for a long time is a Catalinbread Dreamcoat. It's the preamp circuit from an Aiwa TP-1011 tape machine (the very one Ritchie used with Rainbow) in a $189 compact pedal box.
Apparently, the pedal also has a frequency booster. So... that's pretty rad.
That does sound interesting. Catalinbread do some interesting stuff.
If you watch Ritchie closely, you'll see him flipping back and forth between the bridge and neck pickups. I think that also has a lot to do with his lead tone.
He actually has a dummy middle pickup because he never uses it! He also pioneered scalloped boards on his guitars.
he also never chugs (metal style palm muting) when playing. Certainly affecting the sound alot :)
He NEVER used the middle pickup.
@@michaelkarlsson5966 he never "chugs" as in playing riffs entirely with palm muting, but he sure does use palm muting
If you watch Rainbow live in Germany, you can clearly see the tape deck with the reels spinning off to the side of the stage.
Ahh, a fellow Stargazer enjoyer. I love Rainbow but that riff and song just go so hard. And this was a lovely video. I had no idea Blackmore used a tape machine that way nor that one COULD be used that way.
Rainbow is one of my favorite bands ever! from their invention of prog metal and power metal in the 70s with Dio to the top tier commercial rock hits in the early 80s with Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner, every single recording of theirs is absolutely legendary!
I'll definitely be happy to see a tape saturation pedal :)
I think the Catalinbread Dreamcoat might be what you're looking for. It not only has near identical circuitry that he's describing, but also a frequency boost (That Blackmore also supposedly used). For like $179.
I thought you were crazy using a tape machine to get his tone, but once you started playing, I saw the light. You nailed it!
I am still in awe of Blackmore’s tone on the live albums Made in Europe (Deep Purple Mk III) and On Stage (Rainbow). This setup gets about halfway there.
I think Ritchie use fuze face pedal that Hendrix also use it..
What a great tone. My favourite Blackmore tone is on Perfect Strangers. He sounded glorious live.
Isn't that what the MXR Echoplex preamp and Xotic EP Booster are supposed to be? I'd be interested in hearing a real tape machine vs those types of pedals that seek to recreate it.
Reel to Reels are awsome, I recommend You seek for an Akai GX machine. They (and only they) have a glass layer on the heads wich makes them absolute wear resistant. Best machines ever. I have an Akai GX630- loving it.
The Echoplex was a tape echo, while the Akai is a recorder, but maybe they have similar preamps. I have an Xotic EP Booster, not sure how close it is to real thing but I like it.
BSM make a replica Aiwa preamp in a pedal
@@gingataffso does Guitarslinger
I'm stupid but for some reason I thought he used a range-master in the day.
Blackmore utilized a dummy pickup in place of his middle pickup too, which if you notice was always screwed down lower than the bridge and neck pickups. He had a lot up his sleeve.
Hi, well in fact Blackmore didn't use the dummy coil until the 1978. He only played with bridge and Neck pickups, but not middle, so he lowered it. The last pickups he used were the Lace Sensor (his were prototypes from Don Lace)
Literally just pulled a couple of Rainbow and Deep Purple records out of storage today, what a lovely little bit of serendipitous convergence.
Back in 1982, I had read that Blackmore used a tape recorder. Being that I was only 16 and didn't know anything, I didn't realize he was putting it in front of an amp. My dad got me a broken tube reel-to-reel with a built-in power amp. That tape rotors didn't work but the preamp and power amp did. I was able to get a pretty good distortion sound with it, so I used that with an old hi-fi speaker box from the 1950s as an amp until 1984 when my dad got me a Peavey Bandit 65 as an early birthday present for New Year's Day.
This video sure brought back memories.
There's a german maker of booster pedals. one of them is BSM 71-73 CM. they have a few models , dedicated to Blackmore. One of them recreates this circuit from the tape recorder. I owned a couple of these pedals. Recommended.
Thick tone, but the distinctive treble character of the single coil is also there, good work!
I love Blackmore so much. Lazy, Light in the Black, Gates of Babylon, countless more. You ever listen to the Burn solo slowed down? Every single note is perfectly on time, you'd think it's quantized or something. Biggest thing that helped me nail his style was switching from pick to fingers for certain sections of the songs like the arpeggitated parts and double stops.
Gates of Babylon solo.
@@michaelfinnegan3805 one of my favorites is black sheep of the family, I like the whole first album.
I got it 1 week of release.
I took an discarded high end cassette recorder that had a microphone pre amp input that I would plug my guitar in and then I would plug a cord to my amp from the output jack on the tape player and I would get this incredible distortion and sustain!
My first overdrive was an old cassette player and it did something similar
Same. Put it on record and distort the signal. DIY PUNK
@@svenjansen2134I did the same but just wired it in place of the playback head. Actually used it as a mini amp.
Couldn't place the volume past 2 without getting screaming feedback.
Good times!
Ritchie Blackmore did have one of the most amazing guitar sounds of the 70's. I read that he would use a mixing board into his amp to push the gain. I've tried it, and it sounds crazy. I don't doubt that may have been his secret for such high gain and deep tone. But he did always have that tape machine running, for echo/delay. I've never tried that so I can't say for sure. All I know is that inspired the SHIT out of me. One of my top favorites of all time.
George Lynch of Dokken did a similar trick on the Back For The Attack album but instead of an Akai Tape machine, he used a Tascam Portastudio
Close, but the album was Under Lock and Key, and the unit was a Fostex four-track tape recorder. This was confirmed by Michael Wagener in 2006. Or did he pull something similar for the next album as well?
@@kospandx You're right, I was mixing up which album it's on/the tape recorder. I heard it from a Michael Wagner interview also I think George also talked about it when he did Dave Friedman's Tone Talk podcast episode with Jeff Pilson, who revealed he still had the original Fostex in his studio. "Is there cocaine in it?" - George Lynch
@@kospandxl have a Fostex recorder that can record up to four inputs at once. I should try this out.
Ritchie didn't use an Akai either, it was an Aiwa TP-1011.
Comments section… where experts gather 😂
Dude I have the same piece of equipment and haven't ever figured out anything useful to do with it! BOOM! you are the man bro!! Thanks.
Epic tone and stellar shirt, dude!
I had no idea! Thanks Colin. Incidentally, 16 year old me did pretty much the same thing out of desperation as I got an electric for my birthday without an amp 😢. My chain was Sharp reel to reel into the mic input of a Hitachi g-blaster and then into the Sharp hi-fi which had 16 inch speakers and (thankfully) detachable tweeters. Accidentally managed to get a pretty okay sound 😂. Also, nice choice of whisky!
BSM have been making what's supposed to be a close copy of a Ritchie's AIWA preamp for a long time. There's also Catalinbread Dreamcoat.
You just got A LOT cooler, knowing that you dig Dio era Rainbow!
Edit: That tone is spot on mate!
There's a certain pleasure in using era-appropriate, expensive and inconvenient analaogue gear......
One of the best summaries of guitarists and our vintage obsession!😂
Also : your shirt is fabulous Colin!😊😊😊
Right on the money! Great job! I think I heard on a video about Blackmore that he was training to be a radio technician and fix radios when he was younger and in school, that would make sense and give him a good understanding of signal paths and signal manipulation. Richie Blackmore is criminally underrated, he is one of my favorite guitarists right behind Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, SRV, John Frusciante, Ron Asheton, Johnny Ramone.
I read that Ritchies's middle pickup was just a dummy pickup - it was not connected. So he only had neck and bridge pups with a three-way switch.
And on this album, he was still playing a Gibson 335 guitar with a vibrato bar.
Wow, that really opened up the sound. Instead of a harsh overdrive it created a thick and warm sound that allows enough spank to still sound like a Strat. I hope a pedal maker sees this and makes a preamp for this.
I'm hoping signal boosters like the SD Pickup Booster or MXR Micro Amp can do the same thing, but let's see once the tape recorder's guts get investigated more lol
There is a story that someone in the crowd at a gig shouted out that Blackmore was miming his guitar solo's against a tape recording (his AKAI). Ritchie wandered over, switched the tape off and kept playing! Blackmore by the way was an apprentice electrician in his youth at Heathrow Airport when he left school. This kind of solution to boost an amp would have been no real challenge for him.
You should totally make a pedal based on that tape recorder. That's pretty cool!
Bsm make one it's very articulate and thick
I used my Strat thru Early to mid 70s using a WEM echo unit and my 100 watt Marshall with a single 4x12 cab lovely sound never needed any other effects - no pedal ever gave me that kind of sound 👍🌝 I had no idea Blackmore was using the same concept , I always loved his sound - now I know why ! Thanks for the usefull demo , you sounded exactly right 😁
It's interesting how much jangle and spank still remains audible in the end product, almost as if it's a pedal with a blend control where you still have a good amount of the dry signal in it. Great video!
I think Richie used a Yamaha MV802 stereo mixer to get back to high Z before the amp. At least there are pictures of one in his rack with the Akai tape machine on top. I actually use one to push my Peavey Classic 50/50 stereo tube amp from my pedal board as the amp was likely designed for keyboards and pretty clean with a ton of headroom. I bought one used for that purpose and found out later Richie used it too. I won't change it for a new one! - It's magic sauce!
Very nice sound. I think it is time to take out my 70’s gear and start plugging into them.
Insert milf joke here.
@@robertinogochev3682 lol 😂
Blackmores Aiwa Deck gives that unique hollow Twang. He also uses it in place of a Echo unit. Good Job Mate !
For years I suspected this was the missing ingredient and you nailed it.......
Most guys use the EP 1 Echoplex, to get those sounds too . Like Jimmy Page , Eddie Van Halen and of course Jimi Hendrix . I'm 71 and still use mine . There's plenty of others too ,that have a 12xa7 in the preamp. I've done the way you tried it to . I had a Akai tape deck and see screamed to .Lol.👍
Jimi didn't use the Echo- Plex live and he rarely used it in the studio. Tommy Bolin definitely used one though!
@kennyblackbird5674 I call bullshit on that,their first gig in LA ,Ca at the Rose Palace in Pasadena. FRONT ROW ,I WATCHED HIS EVERY MOVE. Cause I was a guitar player too .Checked over what he was using with eagle eyes. Even his violin bow, waa waa pedal .etc. Now he might of been other things too .Those EPs are kind of touchy.So bringing it every gig is not likely. Sometimes I will use pedals too. But the EPs have a special sound,as do the Roland space echo,Binsons too. I've been down that rabbit hole .Check your sources. Not bullshit to you but the story.👍 Lol.
I saw Rainbow on the first tour with Joe Lynn Turner and later on the full Deep Purple lineup with Ian Paice & Gillan, Jon Lord, Ritchie and Roger Glover on the House of Blue Light tour and always saw the tape machine. I'd only read in guitar mags what it was for, but never understood how it worked as a preamp at the time. As it was always rolling throughout the shows, I thought it was some tape echo type thing, as well. Great sound! I have the OR15 and it absolutely kills.
I aplaude your song choice, gear choice and whisky choice! Slainte!!
I have the same guitar but I put Fishmans in it. Oh, and I saw every Rainbow tour that blew thru Chicago, starting with the very first tour. Yep, that tape machine was always by his side
When I was a kid I used my Dads tape deck in a similar way. Go in the mic input, press record and have pause on, and turn up the recording level so the needles went into the red. I never knew Blackmore did a similar thing. Great vid. 👍🏻
Great demo/playing. Have a feeling that people are going to start realising that Ritchie was head and shoulders above most hard rock players/writers of that era. Incredibly .. he’s underrated. 😀
Way to give Ritchie Blackmore his props.
nice lil invention from Ritchie, high gain is the mother of all necessity 🤘 .-great vid man, love me a good tone chaser story
If I'd ever been able to get a Strat to sound like that I probably wouldn't have sold every one I've ever owned! Good job.
Blackmore's tone is loud but surprisingly clean. This is because he created a great deal of clear headroom by using 200w Marshall Major amps that were attenuated to 300w. A very different beast to the Orange amp you used. There are already a few Blackmore inspired pedals on the market, including the GuitarSlinger RB1011 Booster.
Great channel, by the way.
7
It is because he didn't use too many gain on distortion or drive whatever he used. His gear was almost on a clean sound. The rest is in his fingers.
Makes me think about all the old analogue audio bits and pieces I have and how they might sound as overdriven preamps. Just as you said, probably nothing you couldn't get very simply with a pedal, but just for fun. Thanks for the video. 👍
I have an old Lafayette spring reverb unit that I sometimes use just for its mic preamp, the gain boost is righteous
I have a 60s era Akai Reel to Reel inherited from my Dad. I'll need to try this out.
Also, I have a tube Telefunken radio from him. It's magical how great FM music sounds coming out of that thing. The mixture of the tube warmth and the speakers(I asume alnoco magnets?), is amazing. Always wondered if it could be made into a guitar preamp of some sort? Probably fine for bedroom volume too?
That sound is insane! Thanks for making this video.
BLACMORE -More more more more!
I did exactly this in the mid 70’s with a Philips reel to reel tape recorder into a little Zenta practice amp. Figured it out out of necessity and lack of an unaffordable tone bender booster. Using a wah Got some great Brian May tones too. ❤
Yeah! Nice job! Rainbow Rising is one of my all time favourite albums! I have a few vinyl copies as, they have been played so much, most are worn out! I recon you got as close as anyone could wish for to that sound! Sweet!
If I remember correctly Ritchie ran his guitar through the tape machine to boost the high frequencies. It would be near impossible to accurately recreate the tones he was getting, for the simple fact there's way way too many variables involved. The tape machine just adds another layer to the mystique of it all.
He also used Marshall Major amps that were pretty extensively modified.
@@Tunkkis ooh yeah, buddy! Supposedly at the time, only Pete Townsend, Ritchie, and a select few others, even had those bad boys! THEE loudest amps available, period.
Great demo of the difference between tape machine / no tape machine. Blackmore did definitely get a beefed up Strat tone with that set up.
Love it, Love it , Love it - I just found the same Reel to Reel here in the USA fo $350.- Condition good to excellent - it s a good day to buy gear, Thanks -
One missing piece of the puzzle is the rbtc box installed in the strat it was made by his guitar tech dawk Stilwell.
Nice demo Sir. Your sound is lovely, so bang on the money. Got me thinking now about preamp circuits at the top of the chain. You've given me a new project. Once I get the others finished of course.
Not bad! Closer than many folks have come. I think if you back off the gain a little,you’ll come closer. Remember, Ritchie’s sound at that time - while hyper-aggressive - was also clean.
tape preamps of any kind, whether they be Maestro, Roland or Akai, just sound beastly. There really is magic there.
Nice job on the playing and riffs. Love old gear and research on old tones. 🤘🏻🤘🏻
It almost has a Van Halen variac quality to it. Absolutely love it
I used to do this back in the late ‘70s with my old Uher tape recorder. Worked fine. Then I discovered the Boss OD and CS pedals and started using those. This was the start to a never ending tone quest that lead to my actual holy grail in terms of OD-Boost: the CMatMods Super Signa. To me, unequaled even by pedals that cost 3 times as much…
Wooowzers that's the Sound!!!! I've always wondered. Thanks Youngster!!!
BRAVO. Never would've thought. Thank You
I did a similar thing in the 1970s when I couldn't afford an amplifier. I put a cassette tape in the slot without any tape in it, plugged my guitar into the input and connected the output to a speaker. Pressed 'record' Worked a treat over-driving the small amp too.
Pretty sure Page did the same thing with an Echoplex. I even have a preamp pedal based on the Echoplex preamp and it’s just fantastic.
Thanks an interesting video. Recreating the mic preamp of an old Akai reel to reel isn't difficult. Bear in mind it is made up of solid state discreet components of which the equivalents are easily available today. It's not like you'll need to go searching for some old obsolete chip from yesteryear. So to someone with basic electronic construction knowledge this would be a simple task. I say this because I used to be someone who repaired those things along with every type of TV, HI-FI, VCR and my favourite guitar amplifiers.
I liked the sound you achieved and yes it sounds just like Richie Blackmore.
Ritchie is my favorite guitarist by far, and his rig has nigh endless detail for a tech geek to study.
I’ve always wondered how Blackmore’s Strat sounds so thick!
There is a pedal avalibl at Thomann with exaktly the right circut that replecate Blamckmores tape recorder boost..RB 1011..Just use that one into a Marshall 50 or 100 with 4x12 Greenbacks and you will be as close you can..the rest is in the fingers. Good luck !
A lot of people commenting about the Aiwa tape machine - he used it as a preamp AND a delay. He wanted to use the delay live but found he couldn't use his normal boosters in front the tape machine. The gain from the tape machine proved to be enough and had his Marshalls matched to the output of the tape. He would activate the tape machine when he wanted a delay to his sound, the heads were set up differently which caused this. This was the start of Mk3 Burn era. Ritchie was constantly changing which is why its so hard to pin down his tone - it actually changed with every album!
definitely so much more ballsy, more sustain and fatter but still keeps characteristics of the single coils. also not overly saturated so still so clear note definition.
You can boost em with just about anything I reckon. My absolute favorite version of his tone was Perfect Strangers..nobodys home solo especially.
...this just gave me a WHOLE BUNCH of ideas. to try all kinds of different things in the same sort of way as the tape recorder thing.
i like it! i have a akai and it really makes thicker the tone! thanks for share it!
Very cool.I have always wondered how Ritchie got that strat to sound like that!
0:11 clearly should've been the thumbnail here
Epic video by the way. Rainbow is like a restaurant most people don't know about or care to visit but secretly serves Michelin quality food.
Well played my man! Thank you for the video.
I was gonna ask how it compares to an overdrive pedal, but you addressed that it's probably not very different. It would still be cool to hear the direct signal coming out of the tape machine compared to an overdrive pedal or two and trying to see just how close you can get.
The mirror pick guard is dope! I heard pick guards can affect guitar tone too. Apparently aluminum guards give a thicker sound than plastic. I wonder about brass, bronze, copper, steel, iron, acrylic, glass, ceramic. Etc. 🤔
it's true. put a gold anodized on my blonde 50's and it got louder, fatter, and with more attack. a real different thing than the single ply plastic that it had before. not sure if I prefer it, but it jangles more now
The thickness really gets in there, feels somewhat like octaver. Such a clever way to thicken up a strat tone for a dirty sound. Those transistor must be adding those even order harmonics for that thick sound.
Thank you for making me aware of this killer album. Been listening to it today and it rules.
I have an MIJ blackmore strat clone (ST72). One thing you might want to consider is that he had scalloped frets, but they're not super deep, especially on the low end of the E and A strings. It will definitely impact your tone.
Another aspect of his tone and playing are his early electric guitar string gauges. There are two interviews online where he mentions them, in one said "10, 12, 13 or 14" for the treble strings. He didn't say what gauges for the bass string there, but did mention how he tried banjo strings as other rock guitarists were doing at the time. In another earlier interview he said "10, 11, 14, 26, 36, 42". What's interesting is Steve Morse in an interview said he uses "10, 13, 16, 26, 32, 42" which is obviously gauges mixed from standard 9s and 10s sets. But the overall a 10 high E and lighter 42 low E idea I think comes from vintage Fender 150 Rock-N-Roll string gauges "10, 13, 15, 26, 32, 38" that Hendrix used. But back then the cores were round and not hex, and with pure nickel wrap which also makes them stiffer because nickel is dense, so when string companies switched to hex cores and plated steel wrap a 38 is looser so I can see why they chose a 42 for the low E, even though round core nickel wraps are now available again. I experimented using 10, 12, 14, 24, 32, 40 with Boomers from GHS, which feel nice, and I'm not going for a Ritchie sound but more of a feel thing because I'm not into commercial sets and gauges, and may try round core pure nickel wrap in various gauges with those trebles. What I realized is that 10, 12, 14 treble strings feel more like the strings on a classical guitar with standard nylon gauges and tensions which I prefer because I play nylon string guitars from a young age. Ritchie did mention his early classical guitar lessons and wonder if that type of feel affected him also? Or if banjo gauges came like that back then? His electric set now is "10, 11, 14, 26, 38, 48" which may have evolved from his more steel string acoustic playing with Blackmore's Knight.
Wow cool video, I’ve seen the pictures with the tape machine but never put 2 and 2 together. I use a Klon clone into a Marshall with a strat to kinda do the same thing and it seems to work.
The sound certainly thickened up with the tape preamp. How close could you have got with a graphic EQ pedal? Not as visual, but I bet the sound would be similar. One of my favourite pedals is the EHX Glove, set to a fairly clean sound, with unity gain, but with the "tone shift" switched on. That thickens up single coils without losing their character.
Glove is an OCD Klone
Thanks for this. Sounds crazy today, but makes total sense!
I used to have a 1970s Sony RTR and plugging into the preamp got the same tone. If you daisy chained that preamp into the second preamp you got the “Revolution” by the Beatles. Makes sense since that guitar tone was achieved in much the same way, only using the inputs on the mixing board.
The tape/mic pre is available in booster pedals now, rendering this technique obsolete. My favorite clean boost delivers up to 30db of gain to the amp. I usually only keep it just above unity gain to push the amp into slightly distorted.
Keith Richards used the preamp on his Phillips cassette deck to overdrive his acoustic guitar signal. The most famous example of this is Street Fighting Man. Apparently he also routed the resulting signal through some sort of powered extension speaker, miked that and sent that signal into the board. So his signal chain had 2 microphones and 3 gain stages, but no pickups, no pedals, and no guitar amps!
My very first overdrive, well over 50 years ago, involved plugging my Kent Videocaster into the mic preamp of a tube-based Roberts reel-to-reel I had. The guitar's output was well above the signal amplitude expected from a voice mic. The preamp's line output, in turn, was well above what the guitar amp was expecting. Though I haven't heard it in 50 years, my recollection is that the result was "sustain for days". My bandmates called it "the monster", though I suppose that was because the tape deck was as big as the amplifier. I eventually learned that Blackmore was doing something similar, but subsequently learned that he was relying on a solid-state tape machine.
Hmmmm. Joe Perkins has a TH-cam from 2 years ago in which he demos the use of an Akai 4000DB mic preamp as *his* overdrive going into an amp. Doesn't sound identical to your demo, Colin, but then he's using a 335-stye guitar (dual HBs) into a Hughes & Kettner amp. Still, makes a great overdrive. Turns out, I have an Akai 4000DB in the basement. I'm going to have to try that. It's also made me curious about trying the DBX100 Boombox subharmonic synthesize with my guitar. At its heart, it's just another CD4013-based flip-flop octave divider, albeit with *far* more filtering than an MXR Blue Box ever had.
Well, I finally tried it out. Although I don't have a reamp box. Sounded terrible, going into a solid-state amp. Sounded much better, going into my old tweed Fender Princeton, although I didn't really crank it up. I'd probably have to listen to a lot more Blackmore, and spend a little time with the Akai 40000 and 4000DB service manuals to see how similar the mic preamps are, before passing final judgment.
Hi Colin, you have nothing to be shy about your Blackmore riffs, they are just mighty fine. A little missteps here and there like in Black Night but that's no problem. I think the idea to harness the preamp of that Akai (or any reel to reel tape recorder for that matter) in to a pedal is a good idea. Although there were already attempts to do a pedal like that (albeit a different unit), I know of 2 pedals that harnessed the preamp of an Echoplex into a pedal and one a Leslie Speaker. Also on The Beatles' Revolution, John Lennon's guitar was plugged direct to the board and the gain of that channel was maxed out. I think a pedal was made inspired by a maxed out gain of a channel off a mixing console.
But an AKAI/Tape Recorder boost/overdrive would also be a welcome treat!
I remember reading once that Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac loved this trick so much that he had the electronics from a reel to reel rehoused in a standard pedal enclosure.
I consumed this video willingly and found it enjoyable.
There, hopefully that will appease the algorithm.
Thanks for showing the tape machine in action, I only played the Catalinbread Dreamcoat but it adds a special something ✌️
LEGEND! Blackmore rules forever!
God I love having a reel to reel in my studio. There's so many cool things you can do with it.
The effect is as if you're playing two guitars at once. Huge cavernous sound! Bravo!