Blitzkrieg Bop Isolated Guitar (mostly)

[Greg_L]

Don't Blackbacks have a different weight magnet than typical Greenbacks? Heavier? Or maybe it's a different bass resonance? Something is different. It's not just a plastic cover color if I recall correctly. Blackbacks, unless I'm mistaken, eventually morphed into G12-80s, which then evolved into modern K/H-100s. "Greenbacks" stayed pretty much as a medium weight Greenbacks, with the G12-65 being their closest tonal kin as Celestion's lineup moved further into the 70s and 80s.

Whatever the case, yeah Blackbacks do sound awesome.


Sweet cab though. I don't 900 dollars love it, but I do like it a lot.

[zarfnober]

Bass speakers are easy to identify, they have 55hz on the sticker, guitar speakers have 75hz. "Greenback" speakers all say G12M, whether they have green, black or cream colored dustcaps. I have a pair of 55hz blackbacks that sound incredible, they'll give you better bass response with a guitar. If I'm wrong on anything here, feel free to correct me, I don't claim to be an expert.

You could also listen to Lemmy, he cranks his bass through a 4x12 with Greenbacks. If you watch his documentary, you can hear him play during a soundcheck by himself, demonstrating why he sounds different than most bass players. Saw his rockabilly band open for Dick Dale once, sounded killer. The sound is greenbacks.

Rocco

[Greg_L]

Bass speakers are easy to identify, they have 55hz on the sticker, guitar speakers have 75hz. "Greenback" speakers all say G12M, whether they have green, black or cream colored dustcaps. I have a pair of 55hz blackbacks that sound incredible, they'll give you better bass response with a guitar. If I'm wrong on anything here, feel free to correct me, I don't claim to be an expert.

Ha, me neither. Not by any stretch. That's why I'm asking. I don't know all the technical details of those old original Green/Black/Creamback speakers. I just "know" stuff from pics and online discussions. I do think it's safe to say though that whether they're Greenbacks, Blackbacks, or whatever, if they're G12M 75hz speakers, they're gonna sound good. I run a Greenback/G12-65 x-pattern mix in one of my Marshall 4x12 cabs and it sounds absolutely incredible to me. That is my main go-to cab.

You could also listen to Lemmy, he cranks his bass through a 4x12 with Greenbacks. If you watch his documentary, you can hear him play during a soundcheck by himself, demonstrating why he sounds different than most bass players. Saw his rockabilly band open for Dick Dale once, sounded killer. The sound is greenbacks.

Rocco

I've seen Motorhead a few times through the years, and Lemmy's rig is interesting to me. For one, a lot of people say Lemmy plays through a Marshall "Plexi" guitar head. He doesn't. It's a JMP SuperBass "1992" model. 100 watt bass head. Same look as a Super Lead, but made for bass. But they are ridiculously similar. The Super Bass behaves just like the Super Lead, but it's a little darker, less bright overall. The circuits are different by a few caps and resistors and nothing else really as far as I know. It's relatively low power output for a bass head means it eats up headroom and will get crunchy as heck pretty fast - for bass. Run a guitar through it and it will have a lot of clean headroom. I know he uses a 4x15 and a 4x12 cabs because I've seen, and heard, them in person. I don't know what the speakers are though. I've read that he uses bass cone "guitar" speakers, but bass frequencies as loud as his would melt typical guitar speakers in short time, especially something wimpy like standard Greenbacks. But on the other hand, his bass sound isn't exactly "bass sound", so maybe they can survive. He's probably not getting too much excursion from his speakers because he's not hitting them with clean dynamic sound and heavy sub frequencies. His sound is a very compressed overdriven midrangey sound, so maybe his guitar speakers can survive where a typical bass sound would shred them.

[motiersbad]

Lemmy use to play chords on his cranked super bass through the guitar speakers - thats the reason his sound is so much differnt then other bass players mmmh but i think, playing like lemmy with the same rig is an expensive hobby dont know how much he let change the speakers of the 4x12 cab ..... the 15 cab is a bass cab

[Greg_L]

Hey HardlyRamone, I was goofing around today with my Super Lead and got really close to Johnny's first album sound. It's not exact, but it's close. I'll try to put up a clip tomorrow.

Also, keep in mind if you're tone chasing that the tone your chasing is a recorded tone. What you hear out in a room is different than what a mic hears jammed up on a speaker. What you hear on a recording has gone through a lot of processes before it actually hits your ear. Mics, preamps, EQ, and compression all color the sound. It's also been rumored that Johnny's tone is layered on that first album. It goes against the legend of that Ramones recording, and I don't know if that's true, but it's a possibility. All of these things make tone chasing, in my opinion, a foolish endeavor. It is fun though.

[HardlyRamone]

Hey HardlyRamone, I was goofing around today with my Super Lead and got really close to Johnny's first album sound. It's not exact, but it's close. I'll try to put up a clip tomorrow.

Also, keep in mind if you're tone chasing that the tone your chasing is a recorded tone. What you hear out in a room is different than what a mic hears jammed up on a speaker. What you hear on a recording has gone through a lot of processes before it actually hits your ear. Mics, preamps, EQ, and compression all color the sound. It's also been rumored that Johnny's tone is layered on that first album. It goes against the legend of that Ramones recording, and I don't know if that's true, but it's a possibility. All of these things make tone chasing, in my opinion, a foolish endeavor. It is fun though.

Wow, I'm actually excited to hear that.. thanks for taking the time to test!

And I've actually learned from experimentation that a well recorded and mixed guitar doesn't really match the sound you hear standing in the room next to the amp. I've done a lot of amateur home recording and jamming with some friends over the past three years, so I have at least some experience with recording guitar, bass, drums and vocals with entry level microphones, equipment and software. I make no claims of being an expert on anything though, we just record things for the fun of it, learning as we go. I've actually been playing drums for several years now, and I mainly picked up the guitar a bit later so that I could learn to understand it and subsequently communicate better with the guitarists I know.

Though I will admit, I've become much more interested in guitar than I had originally thought I would. It really is a lot of fun, and practicing has become one of my favorite things. I've been playing along with my favorite Ramones songs every other day for about two years now, but I still can't play very far through "It's Alive" before my wrist just starts to lock up. I have no clue how Johnny played his guitar slung down to his knees like that for an hour while jumping around the stage.

As for having a layered guitar track on that album, I suppose it's possible.. but I imagine it might have been a pain to get Johnny to record more than one take for each song I have noticed that the first album does have two different vocal takes for each channel, though. I'm not sure if anyone else has really noticed the slight differences between the tracks in each channel, but you can pick them out them here and there.

And as far as chasing tone goes, I'm actually more interested in just having a quality instrument to play than getting Johnny's "exact tone" from any particular album (but I agree that it seems like a really fun thing to pursue). Currently I just plug my guitar into my cheap little amp, switch the guitar to the bridge pickup and fiddle with the amp settings a little to get a bright sound with a healthy amount of distortion, and I'm content with that. The bigger issue for me is that my guitar neck starts getting really fat around the 8th or 9th fret, and the barre chords get extremely difficult around there. I also have to keep the action unusually high due to a tone-killing amount of fret buzz when you lower it. This guitar does not really stay in tune very long either, and for some reason the G sand B strings always sound a little sour on barre chords unless you detune them a little.. but that makes the open chords sound wonky. The intonation, truss rod and all that are all fine (I've had a long discussion with a local guitar tech about this), and I'm not fretting the chords too hard or plucking the strings so badly that they go excessively sharp (I used to, but I've gotten better). It's just a cheap instrument, and that's one of the biggest reasons why something like a Hallmark sounds so nice as a future purchase.

[Greg_L]

Having met Johnny in person and shaking his hand, I can tell you that he has a guitar player's physique. Long arms, big slender hands, and lanky fingers. Combine that with the small thin neck of a Mosrite, and you've got the ability to sling it low and his fretting hand engulfs the neck like it's a popsicle stick. If he actually had cared, he probably could have been a "shredder". His fingers were more than capable of reaching all over the place. Thank God for us he didn't go that route. As far as layering and double-tracks, Johnny did a lot of that stuff later on, and even as early as "Leave Home". It might not have been his favorite thing to do, but he did it all the same. Listen to Sedated closely. There's at least 3, maybe 4 rhythm tracks going on that song. The Tommy Ramone/Daniel Rey/Ed Stasium produced albums have a lot of guitar stuff happening that's subtle, but it's there. Those albums also have the best guitar sounds and production in my opinion.

My history is the flip-side of yours. I started out on guitar at 14-15 by playing along to Ramones records, then a little later switched to drums because my sister had a kit and everyone needed a drummer. At that time switching to drums, the "Brain Drain" album was brand new and that's what I learned to play drums with. I'm still primarily a drummer. Guitar was always my first instrument though, even though I never actually got very good with it, even to this day. I too held "It's Alive" as sort of a benchmark and when I could make it through that whole album non-stop, playing it correctly, I felt some satisfaction. This was way before "Loco Live" or any other high quality modern live recordings, so "It's Alive" was it. I had several mid-80s live bootlegs though, and keeping up with the Richie era live stuff was really crazy. That was probably Ramones at their fastest. They actually slowed down a hair when Marky came back on drums.

Anyway, yeah get you a guitar that's playable. It makes a huge difference. It will make you better. Then get a few Marshall stacks.

[HardlyRamone]

Oh I'm sure Johnny could have easily learned to play guitar any way he wanted to over the course of 20 years. But he was obviously content with his style and he stuck with it, which I respect. And I have definitely noticed the layering on many albums. It's easier to spot when two different guitar tracks are coming through each channel. When I record random songs with my buddies, I often have the rhythm guitarist record two full takes of the song, and I put one take in left channel and the other take in the right. I'm pretty sure Leave Home does this. Rocket To Russia has a ton of extra things dropped in all over the songs, and I swear I can hear an acoustic on "Locket Love". It's really hard to identify any layering on that first album, because the guitar is in the right channel and therefore completely mono. "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" does have extra chords dropped in though, you can hear them in the left channel with the bass. Road To Ruin has always seemed amazing to me, it really sounds like just one guitar track on songs like "I Wanted Everything" and "Bad Brain", but it's very strong and present in the mix. Not sure what's going on there, but it sounds great. Though a lot of the songs do have extra stuff dropped in, like Ed Stasium's guitar fills, and the intricate rhythm layering you mentioned on "I Wanna Be Sedated".

And that's a really cool story. You learned drums with Brain Drain? Sheesh! The hi hat eighth notes on songs like "Zero Zero UFO" are just insane. However some of the more medium tempo songs would be really great to learn on, I imagine.
I can get through It's Alive on drums, but not guitar. As for the Richie era, that stuff is nuts. Pretty sure he played quarter notes on a handful of songs though, like "Chasing The Night", but it's still fast enough to wear you out. His style, to me, sounds more like a modern punk drumming than anything Tommy or Marky did. I think people like Richie and CJ don't get enough credit for bringing a lot of energy and enthusiasm back to the band when they came in.

[Greg_L]

Richie used a lot of ghost notes and shuffle-ish kick patterns in the early days. It's interesting to me because you can really hear that stuff on Too Tough To Die, but he doesn't do any of it on Animal Boy or Halfway to Sanity. He played those albums much more "Marky style". I always assumed one of the Ramones, probably Johnny, told him to cut that poop out. Lol. While that is technically good, dynamic drumming, it doesn't really fit in a Ramones song.

Richie's live stuff was blazing fast though. Those mid-late 80s live bootlegs are insane. On one of those Animal Boy tour bootlegs I have Richie totally butchers the intro to California Sun and they actually just stopped playing. Now I've been playing live for about 25 years and I know rule #1 is don't ever stop. But they did. Actually, it might not have even been Richie's fault. It doesn't really sound like he's doing anything totally wrong, but something is very off. It's so messy that I have to assume it might have been a monitoring problem or something. They weren't on the same page as if they couldn't hear each other. Whatever it was they just stopped though, and a few quiet seconds go by, and Dee Dee shouts 1-2-3-4 again and off they go, this time together. It's funny. I'm pretty sure Richie, and even Marky, "cheated" the 8th notes on the hats a little. They don't play cut time quarter notes, but they sometimes skip the fourth 8th note on the hats when they hit the snare. That's how they do it so fast. It's right hand 1-2-3-left hand snare, 1-2-3-snare, over and over, very quickly. They let up on the hats on that 4th snare beat. They just do it so well you don't hear the gap in the snare hits. And if you leave the hats open ever so slightly the sizzle hides it. You can hear it though on the floor tom. That little Charlie Watts technique makes playing those mega fast 8th notes a little easier, but it takes practice to get it sounding clean and consistent so you don't hear the gap.

Do you listen to any of CJ's recent stuff? Bad Chopper was pretty good, and his new Reconquista album has a lot of heartfelt tribute stuff to Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee. I opened up for him in 2011 when he was doing a Ramones set tour with Daniel Rey on guitar. While it was cool talking to CJ about stuff, I was most excited about getting to talk to Daniel Rey about their studio tricks and techniques. He was super cool. What a nice guy. It was funny, I asked their manager if I could talk to Daniel Rey, and he looked at me like "why do you want to talk to Daniel Rey"? So Mr Rey comes out and he looks at me like "why would you want to talk to me?". Perhaps most fans don't know who he is? I don't know. I first learned about him from reading the album credits way back when it was common to just sit and stare at the album cover while you listened to the record. I remember seeing production and writing credits for "Daniel Rey" and wondering who this mystery guy was. Anyway, he was very kind and very patient and seemed a little relieved that I had actual production stuff to talk about instead of just mindless Ramones questions.

[HardlyRamone]

Yeah, I think Richie was definitely more technical. Though I think his style on Too Tough To Die fits well in certain songs, like "No Go". I really like the drums on that one, but it's definitely a stretch from Tommy's original style. And I've heard very little of the Ramones live stuff in 80's, just a few clips on YouTube. Those bootlegs sound really interesting! I think Joey's vocals may have peaked around that time in the band.

As for the eighth note trick on the drums, I actually do the same thing if the songs are fast enough I can't get through something like "Have A Nice Day" if I'm trying to hit every note on the hats. I noticed that by the time you get to shows like Loco Live, Marky isn't closing the hats nearly as often as he did when the band played slower in the earlier years. I find it more difficult to play really fast on closed hats, so I'm guessing that's part of the reason why. The super fast stuff is a lot of fun (I think the band did it because of the energy), but I think I actually prefer the tempos they played at from around '77 to '79. The songs just sound really good to me at those speeds.

And I haven't actually heard anything recent from CJ, but if it's really good I might actually check it out. People always seem to give CJ grief for just being a "Dee Dee replacement", but I think he really put a lot back in the band. By the end of the 80's you can tell Dee Dee was playing pretty sloppily, and he just kind of stood around. I think CJ gave the band a good push to keep going and helped them end their career with an explosive performance. And that's pretty sweet that you actually got to talk production with Daniel Rey. That last album he produced has a lot of stuff going on, I have a hard time figuring it out. It sounds really great though.