Guitar tone "Houses of the Holy "

[Jeff Reichenbach]

Hello, I am new to the forum. I posted this question on the newbie forum because I am a newbie, and then I found musicians forum.

My question,

How is the guitar effected on the intro to the song ,Houses of the Holy, from the Physical Graffiti? 

Is it some kind of phase, flange? 

I appreciate any feedback or suggestions, because I have tried everything in my arsenal,to no avail.

Thank you Zeppelin people.

[Stairway is NOT stolen]

2 hours ago, Jeff Reichenbach said:

Hello, I am new to the forum. I posted this question on the newbie forum because I am a newbie, and then I found musicians forum.

My question,

How is the guitar effected on the intro to the song ,Houses of the Holy, from the Physical Graffiti? 

Is it some kind of phase, flange? 

I appreciate any feedback or suggestions, because I have tried everything in my arsenal,to no avail.

Thank you Zeppelin people.

Knowing Page, and hearing what my ears pick up, I imagine it's probably a Guitar Overdub.

[Jeff Reichenbach]

33 minutes ago, Stairway is NOT stolen said:

Knowing Page, and hearing what my ears pick up, I imagine it's probably a Guitar Overdub.

I never thought of it like that. Very interesting, but I think there's more to it than an overdub.

[sixpense]

I had read that he used a delay effect (pedal or board) with some kind of modification of the input connection that made it feedback to itself. The guitar sound is quite drastic from the companion disc to the finalized version. (Leads me to believe the effect was dome through the mixing board)

[woz70]

9 minutes ago, sixpense said:

I had read that he used a delay effect (pedal or board) with some kind of modification of the input connection that made it feedback to itself. The guitar sound is quite drastic from the companion disc to the finalized version. (Leads me to believe the effect was dome through the mixing board)

^ this...

There's a thing called a phase reverse button on most mixing desk channels. If you play back a sound, and also play a phase reversed version of the sound back at the same time, the two versions of the sound cancel one another out so you end up hearing nothing at all... 

If you do the same thing but also delay one sound very slightly from the other you can get some quite odd metallic sounding effects (for the nerds out there it creates a form of comb-filtering), as only bits of the sound cancel.  Not really practical as a effect pedal or a live effect because it severely cuts the volume of the guitar, but it can be a cool sounding studio tweak.

[The Only Way To Fly]

How ever it was done it's freaking genius! My buddies and I pulled out PG on vinyl and someone said what's your fav song on PG & I said - Side three : ) 

[MCAN]

I recently got close (to my ears) by using an overdrive pedal into my wah-wah pedal leaning toward the treble side. I kind of had to play around with it and not move my foot at all.

Page probably had a better way to do it.

Edited April 15, 2016 by MCAN

[JohnnieBG]

Did anyone get anywhere with this? - I'm also trying to get that guitar tone. I realise it was probably done at the studio mixing desk rather than with guitar effects and amp but still any further information would be helpful.

 

 

[DogsoverLava]

try the delay pedal with a super short delay time (and feedback). You'll hear it simulated. Jimmy I think used an out of phase pickup selection on his tele - I have a fender guitar that is wired for an out of phase tone and you can hear it immediately.

[Brody Dolyniuk]

After looking around online, I decided to take a crack at this myself. I'm using a Les Paul on the bridge pickup into Logic Pro X, and found a preset that splits the guitar signal into two cabinets, which are panned hard L and R. The basic amp I'm using is a Vox AC30. On each cabinet, I have a Flanger before the cab. Zero rate or depth, I just played with the Feedback and Manual settings to give it that metallic sound. Then on the guitar's stereo output bus I used a plugin called Sample Delay and offset (delayed) the R channel by a few ms. Lastly, I'm using a plugin called Match EQ which listens to a reference audio clip and then yours, and applies the differential eq to shape the sound.

Here's an audio sample. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0n46kz4imtm3xkj/Houses-GtrSample.mp3?dl=0.

Here's a screenshot of my amp and distortion settings,  one of the Match eq (note the huge scoop in the middle and boost on top), and one of my Flanger settings for the L and R channels. The slightest adjustments on either gives pretty big tonal changes. Hope this helps!

 

 

[Mithril46]

All that's possible, but especially with a Les Paul going straight into a mixing board with a tiny delay. Remember that boards back then were almost ? all tube, and obviously you have huge EQ shape possibility. Also perhaps not exactly

the beginning, but I do hear some compression, as some of Page's licks, which would sound far more "peaking" if

there weren't any compression. Any comments ?? As mentioned by some, there are so many things you can do in

the studio which would almost be impossible live. Like even here and other songs, Page did use some odd EQ curves

and notes and chords that would quickly bloom from softer to trebly very fast. I will just say that playing straight into

a mixing board, there is no pedal for this, it's a very distinct sound.

[ThreeIsMyFav]

The one thing i do "know" is (because i saw it on a what guitars on what zepp songs write up many years ago) he did NOT use his paul or tele on that track, it was his Danelectro!! 

I havnt been able to nail the tone on this track completely yet, but, i owned a DAN about 30 years back, long before i saw that write up and as soon as i saw that i flashed right back to my Dan and there it was, the missing piece!! I borrowed one from my wifes nephew one day, plugged it into a line 6 pod that had a vox ac30 program in it and right off, that was the ticket. There was some tiny bit still missing but if i played that tune in a band today, i would get one of the old red kidney bean gen2 pod's, grab a danelectro guitar and be 98.5 dead on the money with that HOTH tone.

Then, not long ago i was in a gc store and a college kid was trying to sell his DAN to the store. I saw the sales guy take him over to the amp section and the gc guy plugged it into a used 50wt plexi reissue and started playing and i butted in and asked him if he knew any zep tunes. He said not anything he would try to play so i asked the college boy and he said its his fav band and knew a bunch of their stuff and its why he had the DAN. So i asked if he knew HOTH and he launched into it and even with a 50wt marshall 90% of the tone was spot on. The DAN is the biggest part of that songs magic.

So......, my conclusion........,

Danelectro guitar.

Vox AC30. (or clone)

Run it through the phase reverse trick mentioned by an earlier poster on a analog recording desk or plug-in that has the phase button/switch on it.

Small bit of delay.

Very light footprint of reverb and i believe that is that. Hoses Of The Holy in the bag!!