Submitted by Lucas
Just wanted to clarify something. The mic on Jonnys AC30 is not a Heil, at least I have never seen one used. The mic has been used on his amp live since the In Rainbows tour is an Audio Technica AT3060. The Heil PR40 is not a side address mic. Here’s an article where the 3060 is mentioned. http://www.i-pix.uk.com/downloads/RadioheadArticleUSA.pdf
Thanks for the info! I sort of just assumed that was the Heil from how it looked, not even realizing that the positioning was totally wrong.
As ever with Ed, I don’t know the exact pedals because there are too many possibilities with his rig. But in itself shows that the exact pedals that he uses are not as important as the types of pedals, namely distortion and delay.
However, when Ed gets really long drones like that it’s usually thanks to either an EBow or a Fernandez sustainer system. The pedals themselves only add to the timbre of the drone, but they don’t create it. For live performances of Weird Fishes, he uses his Sustainer Strat to create the drones. The strat also has a whammy bar which he uses intermittently to slightly vary the drone.
The DL4 is the Ed delay pedal, so it was a definitely a good choice. If you decide to get another delay, and are particularly interested in Ed-type sounds, I would recommend supplementing it with an EHX Memory Man with Hazarai. It won’t get you to drone territory all on its own, however. But instead of hacking your guitar apart to fit a sustainer, I would recommend getting an EHX Freeze. Put it at the front of your signal path, turn on some distortion and delay as you mentioned, and it should sound pretty good. You could even add a subtly set vibrato pedal right after the freeze and turned on and off intermittently to emulate the whammy bar.
You’re welcome for the info, but don’t stop experimenting. You now know many of Radiohead’s techniques. The thing is, that’s all been done already. You and Whose Army was thirteen years ago. These techniques aren’t new, they’re part of the lexicon. You can use them, but GO FURTHER!
On “You And Whose Army?”, the muzzy vocal—which sounds like Morrissey sliding into a Temazepam coma—was an attempt to recapture the soft, warm, proto-doowop sound of 40s harmony group The Ink Spots. “We hired all these old ribbon microphones, but it didn’t work because you need all the other gear, like the old tape recorders. So what we ended up using is an eggbox. And because it’s on the vocal mic, and the whole band’s playing at the same time, everything on the track goes through this eggbox.”
Radiohead also used a device called the Palm Speaker on “You And Whose Army?”, creating a halo of hazy reverberance around Yorke’s vocal. “The Palm Speaker is something else that Monsieur Martenot invented, to go with the Ondes,” explains Greenwood. “It’s a bit like a harp with a speaker in the middle of it. The strings are tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave, and when you play a note in tune, it resonates that specific string and it creates this weird kind of echo that’s only on those pitches.”
So put an egg carton over your mic, then run it through the Palme Speaker of an Ondes Martenot.
The first part is easy (even if you don’t eat eggs, you can ask your friend for a box), but the second will be next to impossible. You might be able to find an emulator, though, or just use some sort of resonant plate-ish reverb set mostly wet.
It sounds to me like some sort of reversed, slowed down loop. It could be a loop of anything, to be honest, and with enough computer manipulation it won’t matter what you looped. It has a swell sort of like a phaser, but it pretty obviously isn’t one. I attribute that to it being reversed.
Thanks!
Yes, I believe that you could use that Duplex. Thom uses it so I’m sure that it’s good.
You also might not need a direct box at all for the TV or Radio, but in every case it depends on the output of what you’re using. If their output is high enough(like that of a guitar or keyboard), you won’t even need the DI box for them.
Signal chain is just a weird way of saying the connected path of his pedals. The signal is the output of the guitar, and so the chain of things(effects, laptops, whathaveyou) into which that signal runs is the “signal chain.”
In an amplifier, an effects loop is an extra input and output placed between the preamp and poweramp. Not all amps have one, but most can be modded to. Putting a pedal in the effects loop would put it after the preamp, allowing the preamp to be set for distortion without the signal of the pedal itself being distorted(this is very widely used for delays and reverbs, which some prefer to sound undistorted whilst still getting distortion from the amp). Effects loops are not necessary, and many go without them(No-one in Radiohead uses them, contrary to bad journalism. Their AC30’s don’t even have effects loops.).
They are not mutually; technically the effects loop is PART of the bigger signal chain.
You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that. Could you give specific times in each song that it is heard?
The mics used for each amp is listed under the respective amp on each member’s respective page. Generally it’s the very last or close to detail in each entry. I would recommend using your browser’s search function searching for “mic” on each of their pages.
Also:
Jonny’s AC30s were mic’d with a Shure SM57 for quite some time. In 2012, he switched to a Heil Sound PR40. His Eighty-Five is mic’d with a Audix OM5.
Thom’s AC30’s are mic’d with Sennheiser 609’s
Ed’s Mesas were mic’d with Sennheiser 609’s.
All of that was on their pages, but I’ll update all of the other amps presently.
