Ultimate Rhoads

I listened to this show last night, and I must say...despite the fact that it's not a soundboard recording and only a decent tape from the audience, I really dig Randy's tone in this show.

It looks like Ozzy was having a rough time out there, and Randy really pulled out all the stops. Believer was good from this show.

About the tone - it sounds almost like a violin. I feel that perhaps the quality of the boot may have something to do with this, but I'll bet even a soundboard recording would have produced a similar result.

There's one part of the show (although I forget which song at the moment) where he is chording way up on the neck, and the tone is almost trumpet-like at that point. It meshes very well with the keyboards.

Anyone ever think something similar about this show?

I find this 'Diary' show the only one worth litening to. I can't say its better or worse than other 1982 RR shows but it really pushes the right buttons for me. THis shows also has one of my favorite RR moments in 'Children of the Grave' as the songs goes into the slower part about a third the way in, in the seconds leading up to it Randy really bends the note down low , it sounds amazing to me. After trawling through all the known shows its the only time I could hear him do it in 'COTHG'.

Good call NQ and one thing we can 100% agree on

From my ear I would say randy used the chorus and echo heavily on the first couple months of the tour you can hear it on believer first it starts with echo and after the echo you can hear so chorus

Listen to the tone on E.T. I did notice in the diary tour his sound changed to more chorus sounding, it's hard to describe. I'd say it's the difference between a bare as bones soundboard and an audience tape. In a good audience you have the ambiance of the sound traveling to the tape recorder which can add or degrade the sound. On a soundboard like Kalamazoo his sound has a lot of chorus but doesn't have distortion "like" the Ed brown sound or a Hendrix tone. It could be the quality of the tapes (high end loss) but I doubt it. Placement of the amps? What was different?

On the soundboards, were they miked through the amp or directly from his effects to the board?

hansolo wrote:On the soundboards, were they miked through the amp or directly from his effects to the board?

Yes the amps were miked

But why do the diary soundboards sound so less edgy, less cranked up Marshall sound?

I think the stage sound was his normal tone be always had, this is proven on a couple diary boots along with the New Mexico footage that was released with the DVD. The only oddities would be thr two on the town footage and ET. He seemingly had that modulation tone on stage in those videos, but most likely both were tied into the soundboard possibly.

No idea, any idea on who the guy was doing all the sound word stuff anyway??? Not sure I have ever seen that discussed?

On the soundboard tapes his tone is that weird modulation tone. It could have been his chorus or it could have been the Eventide Harmonizer that has been mentioned many times. Another wierd thing is his delay effect on the diary tour. When its 100% it sounds really wired, hard to describe what the delayed sound is, it's almost sounds like something dying or a wind up box type of sound. Anyone else know what I'm talking about??

hansolo wrote:But why do the diary soundboards sound so less edgy, less cranked up Marshall sound?

O because i heard in a interview that randy said he had his engineer uses the effects from the effects racks back stage randy said he used those effects racks for a little while and he said he did not like the way they sounded

On Kalamazoo the guitar is in both channels and the delay comes on and one side is dry while the other side is the delayed signal instead of both sides having a delay.

Sort of the way Brian May uses delay's to throw in harmony notes. A lot like sound on sound. Ozzy mentioned how Randy was bouncing chords/notes of each other. I believe it was referring to this separated delay dry/wet mix found on Kalamazoo. That was something new he was starting to use.

They could have used the effects loop on Diary or controlled something from the board.