Glenn Tipton

Oct 16, 2008

What gear did you use for the regular guitar sounds? Tipton: I used my Hamer GT Phantom— my favorite guitar—for a lot of the rhythm and lead tracks. It has EMG 81 pickups, wired at 18 volts, and an SG-type neck that’s slightly slimmer and not as round as a Stratocaster’s. I’ve got another GT Phantom with Seymour Duncan Livewire Metal LW-HMET pickups, too. I also used a guitar with a modified Hamer shape that was built by a guy named John Diggins. It has a more bassy sound. I like simple guitars, and I don’t like tone controls. The GT Phantom only has a 2-way switch, and I can get all the tones I want from that or the EQ on my rack. I also used a ’61 Fender Stratocaster on a couple of things for a cleaner sound. We plugged into a DigiTech GNX3 and a DigiTech GSP1101 preamp, but we also used other old preamps such as the Piranha, a ’76 Marshall JMP 50-watt head through a ’76 Marshall 4x12 loaded with Celestion greenbacks, a Marshall MG15DFX combo, and even little practice amps. There’s still nothing like the crisp edge of a miked-up sound. We used Shure SM57s and some ribbon mics and experimented with positioning two orthree mics at a time.