Help me rediscover my Johnny Marr mojo..

blobb

If I ever had any that is!

Johnny was my first guitar hero, I was obsessed with the Smiths when I was 15 and I wanted to play guitar and sound like Johnny. A friend of mine who could play tabbed out Heaven Knows for me and I'd never seen tab before - wow - there it was, exactly as played by JM. I couldn't get enough. I sat and listened again and again to all of the songs, working them out as best I could. I got pretty good at at in the end. There were no youtube tutorials back then so it was listen, repeat, listen, repeat. I couldn't work some out until, I realised the guitar must be tuned differently, so I fiddled around and discovered alternate tunings by ear. I had no idea you could do that before JM. 

I saved up and bought myself a chorus pedal, then a copy rickenbacker (Tanglewood TW60) and eventually a Fender Performer amp. Pound shop Johnny but I didn't care. Then I met my future bandmate / guitar / writing partner who introduced me to something complettely different - Riffs! He had a dirty Marshal sound and one line riffs that made me think different. So I spent years trying to copy how he got such impact from so little intricacy. I was all figerpicked chord shapes and loads of reverb, he was straight up dirty one liners.

Then I got into Canterbury stuff, complex time signature changes and whimsical melody. Then folk and folk rock came along with songs in DADGAD and stabbing off beat chords.

I'm bored of all that now so I've been revisiting my original muse. So much on line content now compared to back then. You can watch JM himself teaching you how to play his riffs, read about his gear and all that. So I want to cut back a bit on all my pedals and boxes of tricks and synths and what not and go back to the picked out chord thing again. And here's where I want some help...

I've got a few options:

1. I've got a MESA Express amp, which has a decent clean sound but the reverb is a bit weak. I could run a reverb in the loop to get that Fender sound. But which reverb? I've got a Hardwire pedal which I can try out but is there a pedal that does Fender reverb that's worth trying?

2. A DR simulator pedal in front of the express. With / without the reverb pedal in the loop.

3. A JC22, I've still got the chorus pedal. Itr's a CE5 and can do stereo out. So express with a reverb pedal and stereo out of the CE5 into a JC22 to get the JM stereo thing. (it's not, it's a CH-1, it's been a long time in it's box!)

4 Buy a DR RI.

5. Buy a TM DR RI

Buy a twin and be done.

I know a lot of JM sound is in the way he plays it, I'm pretty happy with that side of things. But I crave that sound, the earlier Smiths sound which I know needs the stereo JC for the top end. But JM admits he didn't really like that. 

Searching around on here, there are a few people saying an FRV-1 reverb might be worth investigating, or an FDR-1 (despite ICBM not liking the live use limitations!). Some think TM amps get you 90% of the way there and that could open up a twin option without breaking my back (not that I will be carrying it anywhere).  

Thoughts?

 

RocknRollDave

Get a cleanish sound without much bass, fair bit of delay and chorus and go.

Supportact

I love Johnny Marr's playing as well and it's a big influence.  I'm not really into playing covers but I've had a go at some of his riffs/songs. I think the main thing is to try to nail the phrasing and getting the voicings he uses to ring out properly.  Also there's loads of layered parts on a lot of his recordings so you can only really get an approximation sometimes of the tone on the record.  
Sounds like you've already got what you need gear wise to get close enough.  

blobb

Sound advice.

I need to try and nail that reverb sound, I think that's what i might be missing. The express does a good 'clean with a bit of dirt' sound but I've always put reverb in front of the amp for trippy atmospheres type stuff. I also use a trio pedal a lot so I like to have a certain chain upfront of that rather than using the loop.

I like the idea of splitting the stereo into the small JC with a more Fender sounding reverb pedal.

The thing with JM stuff is you can play it all on an acoustic, you don't need any other gear at all. But that's not the fb way really is it.

  

Wazmeister

1. Id get a TMDR, Boss GT1000 Core, and then just play and have fun.

2. Dont try to create his sound… create YOURS !

Jackobean

I wouldn’t get too hung up with gear when approaching Marr. After all he used every variety of vintage fender (black, brown, silver and tweed). That’s not to forget several Mesa mark series amps and a quad preamp. 

5-6 single boss pedals in front of any vaguely decent clean amp will get you there. That’s not to say you shouldn’t buy a DRRI if want, this forum is all about enabling after all.

inewham

blobb said:

I like the idea of splitting the stereo into the small JC with a more Fender sounding reverb pedal.

   

The JC22 is voiced a little warmer / more bass presumably to make up for the small speakers.

To get a more Fendery clean out of it don't just use the bright switch on its own its too shrill, try bright switch on and turn the treble down to 3. Seems counter intuitive but it works

blobb

I'm not sure I'm all that hung up on replicating a specific facsimilie. More that after years of playing around developing my own stuff I feel a bit like recreating that old spark and excitment I had when I was 15. Wondering where I might have taken it if I'd stuck to my own path without being influenced the way I was. That was great at the time, I'm trying to find something new now.

Think my first approach will be to dig out the chorus pedal and play around with some reverb settings with a clean amp and see where that takes me. 

 What made you fall in love with guitar?

thermionic

I’m also a big Johnny Marr fan and own a Johnny Marr Jaguar - which lends itself very well to Johnny’s recent style of playing, arguably even encouraging it! My perfect amp to go with this would be a 65 RI Princeton, but I don’t think a Deluxe is necessary unless you need the stage volume. However, most often I play through a tiny Vox Mini 3, through the Blackface 2x12 model (extremely clean sound) with chorus and an unobtrusive delay. 

blobb

Right. I might be getting somewhere.

Part 1: Started with a nice clean sound from the amp and added some amp reverb. Not great.

Put the Hardwire on spring in the loop. Better but still a bit of a sterile sound.

Chorus up front of the amp added a bit more shimmer as you would expect. Then I watched a bit of the JM pedal show interview. At the end he mentions delay and how he has quite a lot of it but because of how fast he picks out notes, it sort of dissapears into the background. So delay added before chorus. Much better. Now there is a hardness and body to the tone, but without delay it still falls flat.

Fine tuned the amp eq a bit more, there are plenty of mids in there, not as much treble as I would have expected and more bass as well. Then I fiddled the Mesa graphic thing - this amp has an approximation of the MESA five band, which as most people set as v shape gives you that pre-set tone to bring in if you want. I've seen Johnny's MESA settings and he has it as a rising profile low to high. Presumably as he was using the MESA's to add high end on top of his Twin.  So a bit of compensation to remove the low's and that got me a step closer.

Then I gave up for the night and had a rethink.

Part 2: So, I decided he had his chorus in the loop effectively with the JC setup So I moved it from in front and fed it into the Hardwire. Ah ha! Now the sparkle is there and not as washed out as before. It's a CH-1 so it has it's own EQ knob to set it more to CE-2 style over 90's goth, that tuned the sparkle in quite well.

But the core amp tone was still a bit flat. I tried the clean /2 setting on the express, which adds a bit more breakup, to see if I could get it to fatten up a bit. No. Not the right thing I needed.

So, and this was the magic bit, I added my Broadcast pre-amp up front, running on 18v. Yes! Now we're talking.

Broadcast with very little gain but plenty of volume gets that thump in the mid rage. The chorus in the loop adds the shimmer to the treble notes and the delay up front gets the spacey deep reverb.

Still some more fine tuning to go but It's pretty close to what I was looking for and definetly playable, both as a clean amp sound and with the added subtle background shimmers and depth that bring the, and I know he hates this phrase, 'Jangle' out. 

If I get round to it I'll see if I can get a short video of it.

digitalkettle

blobb said:

Right. I might be getting somewhere.

...

Nowhere fast?

blobb

^ That joke isn't funny anymore.

Danny1969

Moat essential bit of hear I purchased to sound like Marr was a capo ... he loves a capo 

Deadman

Danny1969 said:

Moat essential bit of hear I purchased to sound like Marr was a capo ... he loves a capo 

This is true. And most often positioned on the second fret.

robinbowes

blobb said:

Right. I might be getting somewhere..

Can I stop you? I think I’ve heard this one before.

blobb

Danny1969 said:

Moat essential bit of hear I purchased to sound like Marr was a capo ... he loves a capo 

Yes, I forgot to add. Capo on F# helped a lot. Morrisey wasn't a particularly good singer by all accounts. Who knew?

Project Marr shall continue tonite. I got waylaid, not in an alley by a railway station but by playing a folk session last night and now I'm all jigged out. It all helps though, JM was / is a big folk fan. There are an awful lot of folk tune styles hidden away in his stuff.

tdan71

Saw him in Brighton a few weeks ago and had an excellent night, I really like the Dome as a venue

Heartfeltdawn

For how he's playing now, that delay before the chorus is really important. My rough approximation at the minute: 

-Pedals out front going into a Diamond compressor set a little bit bright
-HX Stomp using the Deluxe preamp
-Stereo delay and stereo chorus
-Dual cabs Left and Right
-Dynamic Ambience at the end

swiller

Headless guitar player on youtube. All the signal chain is usually in vid bio. Uses amplitube 5 a lot and a roland JC and a ricky.
Hours of fun tbh. Adam does a decent job.

blobb

Yeah, I've been watching his videos a lot, they are really excellent representations.

I got hold of a bootleg tape of the Oxford Apollo gig years ago and listened to it to death. When I worked in Oxford for a while I even stood outside and got someone to take my picture, how sad is that! So I love that he is trying to re-create the guitar sounds from that night:

https://headlessguitarist.com/other-stuff/marr-live-1985/

One thing I haven't tried is a compressor up front. I don't have one to hand, only in a rack unit which I might hook up when I've got the basics right.

Heartfeltdawn

I like having a compressor in front of whatever I'm using for an amp, be it an actual amplifier, digital pedal, plugin etc. The Diamond worked for me years ago and the Comp Jr I have now works really well. The TPS interview Marr did where his old board got shown, it's interesting that he's got delay up front and compressor last. 



I've been trying something similar with the Stomp XL:

compressor pedal going into Stomp and then a left path with a small splash of reverb and a right path with a small splash of delay. These combine into stereo chorus and suitable dual cabs and dynamic ambience. 

Some really cool sounds come out. Keep the delay and reverb in the L/R paths about 20%, delay around 350ms, you get these little almost background sounds that weave around the notes. You can also get a lot of very Cocteaus-type sounds doing this.