The best of eighties "Bad Quack"

[Bob Womack]

I read a cool article about that snare sound recently.

Oh, here is the video linked in the article for those of ya who don’t want to click a link.

Just a point of clarification for gear nerds: The AMS was NOT the first digital reverb. That honor goes to the Lexicon 224 Digital reverb mentioned before:

image removed
I was using Lexicon 224 serial number 000001 in 1979 in a tiny studio in Knoxville, Tennessee. How did that happen? A very forward-thinking professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, named Ken Jacobs (RIP) got a grant for new gear in 1978 and heard that those crazy guys at Lexicon were in the process of putting out the first digital reverb. He laid out money before the issue of the machine and was rewarded with the first production unit. By the same method he also ended up with Lexicon Prime Time unit #00001. Remember those? It's the grey unit below:

He also ended up with Synclavier II #0002 by the same method.

The two things that shaped '80s music to me the most was the clink, clink of the DX7 and horrible eight-bit drum machines with very little bandwidth. Ugg. My MIDI loving friends were telling me that the guitar and the orchestra were both dead because it could all be done now with MIDI.

Not quite.

But the SSL story was quite true. Padgham called Solid State Logic and got a modification to make his "Listen Mic" accessible via the patch bay after they stumbled onto that huge sound. By the time we ordered ours, that mod was standard.

I miss my knobs. I'm still rocking the same chair, though.

Bob

 

[Blazer]

Bad Quack on one of my all time favorite songs, Steve Rothery's gear very clearly displayed, pairing two Roland Jazz Chorus amps with a Marshall Full stack for the overdriven sound, a slew of Boss pedals and a Roland G-505 Synth guitar.

I love that Aria bass, I used to own two of those but they bent my spine, they were so heavy. Still...I should've kept one of them seeing how nice they played and sounded.

 

[RoyalBaby]

Started reading the OP and thought first Robert Plant solo album and by the end of the OP turns out I was right!

For classic Jazz Chorus sounds I tend to think of the 80s Afro pop bands, embodied for many by Paul Simon's Graceland album.
In the late 80s I went to see the Bhundu Boys who stunned me at the time.They achieved some success in the UK in that period including supporting Madonna on tour and recording a ( possibly slightly ill judged) English language album. Various personal tragedies ended the band but there is a legacy of guitar music that is both sublime and will set your teeth on edge with the brightness of the guitar tone.