Balls To The Wall!

[greg]

hey I LOVE the guitar tone in this metal anthem from Accept. the opening riff has this awesome clear but "grindy" quality to the sustain. it makes me wanna shoot guns in the house

how the hell can I get this type of sound? is this the classic Marshall 2203 JCM800 tone I keep hearing about? anyone know what pickups Wolf Hoffman and Hermann Frank used back then?

cheers!

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

When I had Gibson Explorer with it's stock pups played through a Tusc 6L6 amp and using that yellow DOD 250 OD pedal I could get really close.

I would guess that a JB would get close, the A2P may be better for "Balls to the Wall" tone. We'll see what the experts around here say.

Greg what guitar are you using?

[idsnowdog]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

I know Wolf Hoffman used Bill Lawrence 500xl's on some of his guitars. The Full Shred gets really close. I think that Wolf Hoffman was a genius and he was a major influence on my playing.

Snowdog

[shred-dog]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

wolf was using bill lawrence500xl's and i would think a JB in a mahogany V would get real close. wait i know it will through a marshall cranked up !!!

[JeffB]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

Agreed.Wolf's tone was great, and a monster player. Attack of the Shark or whatever is my fave tune from them. Here's an excerpt from dinosaur rock guitar. I remember seeing him live playing a "v" with nickel covers...prolly just stock Gibson pups...but who knows...

Wolf Hoffmann's tone is probably my favorite pure Metal tone: The low end is beefy, with enormous crunch, and balls. The top end sears and cuts through with lots of bite, but no trebly harshness. He achieves it the old fashioned way: a humbucker in the bridge position and a cranked, EL-34-based Marshall. But unlike many who use this formula, Hoffmann's tone doesn't seem to contain the rock or bluesy elements that most player get through a vintage Marshall. Wolf's tone really is a pure Heavy Metal tone.

Wolf is strongly associated with Gibson Flying V guitars. The reality, however, is that Wolf's stage guitars are most frequently Super Strats (and variants) equipped with black, Floyd Rose trems — he claims the black Floyds introduce less treble harshness. Other than the Gibson Vs, Wolf's stage guitars contain EMG pickups: Model 81 humbuckers in the bridge, and SA single-coils in the middle and neck positions. And instead of using an overdrive pedal while soloing, on his newer guitars, Wolf's likes having the boost at his fingertips via a switch that activates an EMG's on-board preamp.

Wolf Hoffmann's studio choices are somewhat different. He doesn't use the Vs in the studio because he finds them hard to play while sitting. In the studio, Wolf prefers Strats with passive pickups (Duncans) and these guitars are more stock than his stage guitars. Hoffmann has been a devotee of Hamer guitars for years, and would sometimes reach for a carved-topped Hamer to get a Gibsonish sound.

For his early work on Breaker, Restless and Wild, Balls to the Wall, and others, Wolf used a vintage, Superlead 100 Marshall. He toured with this amp all through the early eighties, and later used it just in the studio. But Wolf's sound always had more gain than the typical sound of the late 60s early 70s Marshalls. This was at least partially due to the fact he frequently used an MXR Distortion +. He also uses a good deal of wah, and sometimes you'll hear some phase shifter. Eventually Wolf ran a stereo rig with a subtle effect on it — probably chorus or reverb — to add depth, but the tonal characteristics didn't change much. It was still EL-34-based Marshalls.

One particular Hoffmann trademark sound is that raunchy sound heard on Neon Nights, and Protectors of Terror among others Wolf calls it the "vomiting cow," and says: "It's a Morley Wah, a Mu-tron Octave Divider, a flanger, and maybe an overdrive. Three or four pedals at the same time."

[Fusion1]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

Attack of the Shark or whatever is my fave tune from them.

"Fast As A Shark"

[idsnowdog]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

He also played a tele for a lot of his studio solos. His sound was huge and majestic.

Snowdog

[omni 1]

Re: Balls To The Wall!

LOL , Tris is old thread but Wolf never use BL pups. LOL!