What amp and guitar are you using? Regarding Page’s live tone, there is no mystery here. He used his modified Marshall Superbass, with an EP-3 Echoplex in the signal chain, along with his wah. I guarantee you that it was plenty loud onstage, which allowed the amp to go into natural overdrive. So searching for the right amount of “gain” misses the point, especially since your average overdrive pedal uses clipping and op-amps which don’t behave/react the same way. Much more significant is the amount of rolling of the guitar’s volume and tone controls, his picking technique, and the fact that the loud amp allowed him to get various shades of tone depending on how hard or soft he picked.

Those are actually from the first set photos of him with the guitar. He kept it at relatively “normal” height through 1972. It really wasn’t until he got that skinny strap in mid-72 that the guitar dropped lower.

Yep. The amp pictured here, on the ground to the right of Page, to be exact. A Supro 1690T Coronado with the 2x10 speakers replaced with a single 12 inch speaker: Here's what the amp looks like in stock form: https://reverb.com/item/4664267-jimmy-page-1961-supro-coronado-tube-amp-2-6l6-2-x10-jensons-valco-made-tube-rectified-combo-amp#full

Yes, Page used the 12 string for Gallow’s Pole. Listen to Ipswich 1971 for another example.

Which was invented by one of the players who Page lifted from the most: Davy Graham. Besides the Stairway to Heaven intro being lifted from Graham’s rendition of “Cry Me a River”, Page took Graham’s playing and turned it into White Summer, Four Sticks, Over the Hills and Far Away, Kashmir...

Keep in mind that the longer shows don't automatically = better shows. For some of the ones listed, like Seattle 7/17/77, Earls Court 5/23-25/75, and LA 3/27/75, 6/25/77, and 6/27/77...none of those would be considered their "Best" show of those tours. Oftentimes, what pushed the length of the show was something like Bonham going 10 minutes longer on his drum solo, or a few additional minutes from an extra bit of banter or a guitar solo that went a few bars longer. Or they played a single standard encore vs not playing any. It's not like Osaka 9/29/71 or Seattle 6/19/72, where the band played EVERY song longer, and did extra encores. In the case of 7/17/77, that's not a good show by any stretch. Both 3/27/75 and 6/27/77 are so long because Page drew everything out, for the final nights at the venue those years, but to little actual effect. Stand-outs for the "long shows" are: LA 6/22/77, 6/23/77 Long Beach 3/12/75 Seattle 3/21/75 Memphis 4/17/70 Osaka 9/28-29/71 Seattle 6/19/72

And even those are still off. Seattle 3/21/75 is closer to 3:39 and is still missing crowd noise between encores, which was probably another 4-5 minutes. LA 3/27/75 is closer to 3:42, but is also likely missing 4-5 minutes of crowd noise between encores. Add in varying tape speeds across recordings, and the list would likely change some more.

www.ledzeppelin-reference.com/geekbaseweb/recordedlistpage.aspx?sort=1

Eddie Kramer doing Page's bidding at Electric Lady, chopping up the three MSG Performances.

I think most of the discussion here has been around recording origins, not playback systems. For the Destroyer soundboard, there is A) the version that first came out on vinyl, B ) lowgens of that source that have been traded for years, and C) a fresh transfer of the master cassette made a few years ago. Sure, each one of those versions of the same root recording will sound different, depending on your system, but the origins of those specific versions plays the bigger part here.

FWIW, I also tend to gravitate to an older compilation (Tomislaw).

7/27/73. A CRIME that we still haven’t got the unedited soundboard for the entire show. There is zero value in holding it back, and it’s been that way for 40 years. There are no more dollars to squeeze out of yet another soundtrack reissue. Just leak the complete gig out already. Amazing that we somehow managed to get complete digi videos for both 5/24/75 and 5/25/75 and even Southampton 73 (!) out of those HTWWW and DVD sessions, yet the show that had already been commercially available for 30 years still couldn’t find its way out.

Weedwacker’s version was a transfer from the low gen (or master?). That got used by most of the recent bootlegs.

The photos were from the Japan tour in 1971, shot in a Geisha house. In the LZ by LZ photobook, all 4 band member photos are lined up, showing them each in kimonos with makeup and hair done.

Nope. The only one is the MSG Fragment from 7/27/73. The 7/28 and 7/29 shows, his voice is good, but it’s not as good as the first night. A shame that we don’t get to hear that soundboard in its entirety without edits, as it exists in both soundboard and multi-track. It would be nice to hear the rest of Essen 3/22, Paris 4/1, Baltimore 7/23, and Pittsburgh 7/24 in soundboard too.

https://www.guitars101.com/forums/f145/cream-last-goodbye%3B-mid-valley-records-4-cd-set-689467.html

There are multiple sources for 6/22/77 that exist as fragments. Weedwacker circulated all of these in a single set labeled "4 individual aud sources". If you go over to RO, you can see the set there and ask someone for a seed.

Hey thanks! I'd add that the opinion on editing live performances has changed as well. People just want the raw and real thing. They already have the albums, they already know how good the band "could" sound. We are more interested in hearing the authentic and REAL presentation of the performance that night. Not some mix of greatest hits or heavily edited/re-tuned performances. Take the recent Hendrix Box Set "Songs For Groovy Children". This was supposed to, at last, be the definitive release of Hendrix's Band of Gypsy shows, featuring all 4 performances uncut for the first time. The sticker on the box even advertised the collection as such. Instead, the release is edited all over the place, and people noticed. Cue denials from the Producers (Including Eddie Kramer) insisting that they didn't do anything wrong. Yet people now know that they deliberately left off tracks and that there was editing done to songs to correct for what they felt were "performance errors". What's sad is that this kind of thing has been the norm from the Hendrix estate from the very beginning. Each time they go back to the well to keep milking the cow, they purposefully release a new show with the tracks out of order, with songs missing, and with edits. What's worse is that each time they do this, they will then add one of those missing songs onto a future live release as a bonus track. Total manipulation of their buying public.

There is a very easy way to invalidate the theory that bootlegs ruin the prospect of selling an official release. Just look at the recent Cream boxset covering the 1968 Farewell tour. Empress Valley had released the exact same shows, in a near identical boxset a few years ago, and it was torrented widely. Empress Valley still makes the box with different cover art versions too. Yet the official release comes out and it sells out literally everywhere. Rave reviews on Hoffman Forum and in official publications online. People are literally just now discovering how amazing Cream were live, even though they’ve had live albums out for 50 years. The best part is that it turns out that the Empress Valley box used the same recordings as the official release: transfers of the cassette mix downs, because the masters were lost in the big fire. Comparing the two releases, I actually PREFER the Empress Valley box, because they left the recordings pretty much alone, whereas the official release had to do some EQ to make them ready for official release. This ultra high-fidelity and polished live album is a thing of the past. With how much content is streamed from every live festival these days, people are well aware of the trade offs in sound to get to hear a REAL live show, warts and all. Look at the 70s Van Halen soundboards that they’ve been putting out on vinyl. Or the raw soundboards that the White Stripes have been putting on nugs.net Bob Dylan, The Stones, Black Sabbath...big name bands have released shows sourced from lowly soundboard tapes. No multi-tracks required.

No. This is a myth that came up because people watched TSRTS and there is a section where Page does the soloing in Dazed and has the wah on. That section was actually caused by the cameraman stepping on Page’s wah during a closeup, and you can see Page move closer to the cameraman to turn the wah back off. Pretty cool moment actually. See this clip, at 17:30 Page is soloing and the cameraman moves closer. At around 17:40 the cameraman accidentally steps on Page’s wah while getting the close up. You can hear the wah sound and see Page look over and move towards the cameraman to turn the wah off around 17:48, but instead leaves it on to do his downward solo run:

Eddie Kramer wasn’t the engineer on Zeppelin IV, so he wouldn’t know what Page used for Stairway. It is widely known that Page used small combos in the studio, though.

There are something like 40ish drum solos available on soundboard. Pat's Delight from Fillmore 4/27/69 through to 7/17/77 Seattle. Figure that you could fit 2-4 solos onto a CD, and you easily get 15 CDs worth of unforgivingly brutal and relentless pounding.

I predict a collection of every Pat’s Delight/Moby Dick/Over the Top drum solo that they have available from soundboard. One after another. They’d sell a whopping 5 of those.

Oh, it’s not that. I buy mine from a diff online store. Was asking if Blind Faith have an online store. Thought it was just walk-in only.

Do they have an online store?