Early DOKKEN tone

[CarlosG]

Hi!
I have Kramer 84 with floyd and single humbucker.
I know lynch guitars has maple body and neck with ebony freatboard - sound like very bright configuration.
I wonder if it was this configuration that gave it such tight lows and a lot of screaming harmonics in the sound? Or maybe he used 1meg pot too?
My guitar has alder body with maple neck and has JB. JB are great pickup, has much harmonics and creamy feel, but has a little flobby low end.
in my other guitar I tried a ceramic magnet but it sounded thin. So I put in a double thickness ceramic magnet and sound pretty close Lynch Tone.
[video]https://photos.app.goo.gl/72pG96v6QghNkJwaA[/video]
It doesn"t sound like Distortion, JB with double ceramic sound more organic.
I'm still thinking about using 1 meg to give it more bite and ring.
What else would you recommend to me that would be worth checking out? Maybe cutting polepieces, maybe different pickups?
ps. sorry for my english

 

[Securb]

A big part of George's tone is he uses an old BOSS GE-10 I have even seen it on his board at relatively recent shows.

 

[Aceman]

Just use a Distortion and a 500k pot. A JB with a double thick Ceramic practically (but not actually!!!!) is a Distortion.

If you need more than that, you need to consider it is just the wrong guitar, or perhaps that your hearing is significantly damaged (<= not making a joke), or perhaps you have OCD (<= That's a joke. Sort of...)

And as always - what amp??? Because that is probably more of the tone than anything.

 

[freefrog]

No idea of what Lynch uses/used but the laws of physics haven't changed when it comes to passive pickups:

1-The overall resistive load of potentiometers still sets the amplitude of their resonant frequency, with the related tonal effects. Demo on a Duncan JB (with clean tone making the effects more obvious from no-load due to no volume / no tone to a load of 50k only): https://youtu.be/HJKYIWGl_KI?si=JXBb0Fb2WRh485yR&t=210

2-The overall capacitive load of wiring + cable(s), mostly due to the length of wire involved, still sets the frequency of pickup(s) resonance, with the related tonal changes (still shown in the following vid): https://youtu.be/4BmkaS91NHQ?si=OAj3vO1NdOQbgWn5&t=563

3-These quirks of passive electronics become a lot less important if there's an EQ in the chain / if the signal is heavely boosted/distorted.


Anecdotically, I had a Kramer with Floyd Rose in the 80's and I vaguely remember some ads about a single pickup Kramer model whose volume pot could be bypassed thx to a switch for "true bypass" signal... But mine did a fine job for hair metal with a generic P.A.F. clone through a generic Boss SD1 used as a boost. YMMV.

 

[CarlosG]

Just use a Distortion and a 500k pot. A JB with a double thick Ceramic practically (but not actually!!!!) is a Distortion.

If you need more than that, you need to consider it is just the wrong guitar, or perhaps that your hearing is significantly damaged (<= not making a joke), or perhaps you have OCD (<= That's a joke. Sort of...)

And as always - what amp??? Because that is probably more of the tone than anything.

I had Distortion before. I think JB with ceramic sounds more natural (fatter), it has those harmonics of JB that Distortion doesn't have. But I can't be 100% sure, because I haven't compared them directly. Seymour said they are different winds. From your comment I gather that you think this already sounds really good. And yeah I have ocd a little.
On video I used Valvestate 8080 and TS-9. But I want to buy Helix, so my amp choice will be unlimited.
Thank you for your comment.

 

[soulforger]

Early Dokken George's main axe was his og Tiger, which initially had an ebony but then also a maple board and a maple body, imo maple bodies are not terribly different sounding than a good piece of alder, maple bodies actually have a fair bit of thunky low end as well, it's not all bright and I would say ebony is a brighter fingerboard than maple is, so your Kramer '84 should do just fine. By Tooth and Nail George was playing Kramer Barettas some maple and some rosewood boards, In a recent video documentary on his latest instrumental album, George said the original Tiger guitar currently has a Mighty Mite 9k pickup in it, back then he tried a lot of different things. Woody Tone has a good page on George's Breaking the Chains gear from George himself, he talks about boosting a '71 Marshall with an Echoplex and a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster.

 

[soulforger]

I had forgotten one thing George said about the original Tiger guitar in a recent interview..that although he had believed for years that the body was maple, it was discovered to actually be ash, one piece of hard ash that weighs about 12-13 lbs.!

 

[ErikH]

Well, early Dokken tone, with George Lynch anyway, to me is Breaking The Chains and Tooth and Nail. Back for the Attack is the last album before he left the band to form Lynch Mob.
That said, a Distortion is what he used for a majority of the 80's with the JB probably in a few spots as well. His rig changed every album and tour so my recommendation is a solid superstrat with with a Floyd, a Distortion or JB, throw a Tube Screamer out front of a hot-rodded Marshall thru a 4x12 and go. Your fingers and technique need to do the rest.
Case in point. I was at the Dallas Guitar Show a few months ago. He was in a booth playing a vintage Les Paul Custom thru a little Blackstar battery powered amp. I heard him from 2 booths away. Not because of what he was playing but his technique was there. I knew right away who it was. Even with that little amp and the LP, it still sounded like George.

 

[Aceman]

Or, you could just use a Distortion.

 

[Securb]

Seeing Goerge is using an EQ on his board the EQ of the pickup is being reshaped before it hits the amp. I think in this configuration, the pickup and pot values really don't matter much.

 

[misterwhizzy]

None of this matters. No one but Lynch can do vibrato like Lynch.

 

[devastone]

He also held the pick sideways striking the string with the round side of the pick back in the old days. The flesh of his thumb hit the string a lot causing harmonics, like EVH, Nuno, Gary, and everyone else, a lot of the subtleties of the tone is in the technique.

 

[Securb]

The flesh of his thumb hit the string a lot causing harmonics.

I have been listening to our final studio mix, and I do this more than I realize. I have been trying to pull back from it so as not to sound dated and update my sound, but it seems way too embedded in my playing and DNA. I do not even realize I am doing it sometimes. It is not an accidental bumping of the thumb on the string. I can hear it is definitely deliberate.

 

[jeremy]

george has a very distinctive picking style for sure