Ultimate Rhoads

I was watching After Hours and noticed Randy is plugged into channel 1 on all the heads. When you are plugged into channel 1 on a 1959RR head, it is non-cascade mode. Cascade mode does not activate until plugged into channel 2. So the 1959RR cannot have identical mods. I think that cascading the 2 channels was the only way that Marshall could squeeze that much gain out of a 1959. I believe Randy's heads did not have a cascade mod and that his pedal configuration was what drove the amps that hard. Would like to hear other opinions and reasoning.

as ive said before. the white one did have a cascade mod. doesnt mean he used it. the rest didnt. which is why ive said so many times the 1959 rr is a rip off and just a thing to have thats like randys and will not give you his tone in total. you may get a high gain marshall sound but not his tone.

the cascade mod may have been in the 1st output of his amp for all i know and maybe they just changed it on the ri. idk but it did have a cascade.

wareagle wrote:as ive said before. the white one did have a cascade mod. doesnt mean he used it.

+1
I think the white marshall is not used in AH. (hence the power led doesn't light there, unless it was broken) I don't think the white marshall was used a lot. Hence he had 4 marshall heads. (already early in the '81 tour) :

Pic from the Palladium '81 show, 4 heads there:

and it looks the white head wasn't used here either....

yeah he probably didnt use it as much as you thought. remember he got it just before he recorded the albums or during it maybe, so he may have changed his mind, realized live its too much gain or too much noise and decided to use it for looks and as a back up...

honestly id say his tone was

fingers, amp (in general, id say as long as you have a vintage marshall your good you dont need the cascade mod honesatly just gives more gain), pedals, then finally guitar. just my opinion.

dont forget string gauge and pick thickness and pickups!

yeah that doesnt make a differnece sorry

haha yeah honestly in the grand scheme of tone, to get his general tone and thats what it is, nothing is very specific but the sound is a general "rolling" tone i call it. and changing pics strings and pickups wont do much... pickups maybe a tiny bit...

anyway he used 10s, mediums, and standard pups

TheMrAxeman wrote:dont forget string gauge and pick thickness and pickups!

Absolutely! And don't forget you'll need the same muscle tension of Randy's hands and fingers too! It goes even further: when different people are just holding a guitar and only let a note ring it already can sound a bit different! That's because the human body the guitar is pushed too does influence the resonance of the guitar and so the strings as well. These are very subtle differences, but they are there. All these variables considered it's easy to understand one can never sound exactly like Randy!

Though it's not that hard to get his tone imo. With a good 'modeller' amp one can come very close in a bedroom maybe. But that's just the tone then. You won't have the feel and dynamics he had with a pedal boosted 4-holer cranked up. So when playing loud with a band the final sound will be very different. I heard lots of 1959RR clips, from Doug Aldrich, Zakk etc. To me those clips doesn't sound like Randy's at all. And they all seem to use the right cascade channel too, from the existing photo's there is no evidence Randy ever really used that cascade channel.

I am in complete agreement. Listening to the studio albums, then Tribute, the tone is very different and I read many places that the guitar sound was retracked many times over, even the Tribute album. But hearing After Hours, the tone is completely different and in its raw form. I cant duplicate any of his studio album guitar tones, but I can duplicate the tone of the After Hours tone with what I have, and thanks to Halorising for showing us the pedal settings and a glance at the manual for the 1959RR, I have the amp settings. I set it at that and while I do not have the studio tone, I have the After Hours tone. And in all honesty, I prefer that tone because it doesnt sound overprocessed and I think thats what metal guitar is all about, raw tone without a bunch of studio equipment to "pretty it up"


I also wish to point out that using the MXR Distortion + and the MXR 10 Band EQ with the settings set to what Randy used, there's no way you are gonna want to use the 1959RR's cascade channel, that would be a feedback disaster and way too muddy sounding, IMO. I get a nice tone just running the pedals through a Marshall 2204.

Well Ive took the plunge and bought a RR Marshall..I know you can buy an old 100 watt JMP and get close to Randy's sound with those too-but it being a Marshall with RR on it Ive just got to try it -plus it does look pretty cool..I love Randy's sound on the Diary album and the live cd so maybe this will get me close to those sounds with my 79 LP custom. Ive had and tried several Marshall amps over the past 30 yrs and only found a few that have sounded really good. One is a 1977 JMP 50 watt that I still own. Im sure I will have to use a attenuator to get it cranked up without blowing speakers or my hearing out. I Will Let you monkeys know how it sounds once I get it..Paid less than 2 grand

For whoever maybe interested I got the RR Marshall amp-plugged it in and set it to Randys settings and holy cow was it LOUD..It does sound good but its crazy loud so I plug the head into a Weber 150 attenuator then run the weber to my speaker cab and that tames alot of the volume. I use a distortion pedal and a 10 band eq and it gets very close to a good Randy tone. Im pretty happy with it but who knows next month it may be for sale or trade..Im always buying and selling or trading guitar gear..

I find difficulty with the statement that a White JMP Plexi RI that was limited to 150 units worldwide a ripoff, especially seeing how the money went to the Rhoads scholarship foundation, but hey, I'm looking forward to seeing how I get ripped off when mine arrives this week.

As for how much he played it... I'd have no idea, but if the Palladium was a "B" show and I am quite certain it was, there would be no need to use all the amps. I imagine that he went full bore on "A" shows, using everything.

this has nothing to do w/ the cascade mods on the 1959RR but something Rudy mentioned in his book was that for the Diary tour Randy couldn't hear himself w/ the amps so far behind him & inside the castle so he had 1 in the pit facing him. i'm betting a lot of the backline was just for looks as a single cranked 1959 is freakin' loud as hell.

nowdays bands do this....

blues_n_cues wrote:this has nothing to do w/ the cascade mods on the 1959RR but something Rudy mentioned in his book was that for the Diary tour Randy couldn't hear himself w/ the amps so far behind him & inside the castle so he had 1 in the pit facing him. i'm betting a lot of the backline was just for looks as a single cranked 1959 is freakin' loud as hell.

nowdays bands do this....

This picture would be even better if it was a pod sitting on the case instead of the 2 Engl heads.

Haha what the hell! lol

blues_n_cues wrote:nowdays bands do this....

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w247 ... alfake.jpg

bands did that back in the day too, so it's possible that this included Randy as well