Billy F. Gibbons: A Tale of Two Tones

[Music] hey guys jack from peach guitars here and welcome to a tale of two tones but before i get into today's video about billy gibbons i just want to please remind you to like this video if you enjoy it comment down below with your thoughts and make sure that you're subscribed to the peach guitars youtube channel [Music] [Applause] [Music] so today i want to visit this new idea that we're going to throw out there called tale of two tones whereby i take a look at some of the most famous rigs of all time and kind of dissect how some really famous players have changed throughout the course of their history the guitar rig setups that they use quite drastically and the great example that came to mind for today's video is mr billy gibbons of zz top so today i'm going to break down a couple of really influential and iconic rigs that billy has used over the years i'm not really going for a specific period of tone here i'm really just trying to delve into what the kind of mindset i guess was that billy had of recreating these kind of rigs i want to look at some of the earliest easy top kind of setup sounds that he would have had as well as some of the more recent uh rig rig tones that he's had as well so as i say i'm going to delve into two different uh billy gibbons inspired rigs today one which is kind of referencing his later period tones actually more into the current era of what he's currently known to use which will involve this fender custom shop double esquire guitar with a magnetone super 59 m80 amplifier and a couple of pedals on the floor i'm going to detail this a little bit later i'm also going to show you some early zzz kind of tones as well with a les paul and a dr z [Music] so all right guys here we go so this is rig a if you like i'm going to focus in this particular segment on really early zz top we're actually not the very very early stuff like the first album kind of era because i believe at that point he was using either pearly gates his famous 59ls pull which i'm kind of trying to replicate here with this 60th anniversary 59 les paul um or a variety of other guitars i know he used esquires and strats in the early days with small fender combos i'm trying to go just a little bit later than that too kind of around the fandango period which was around 74. one of my favorite albums of all time in fact in terms of guitar playing and guitar tone this was kind of when i think billy gibbons and zizi top were coming into their own they were getting a lot of recognition as being this amazing little band from texas that just played these fantastic blues rock shuffles and stuff like that that they're well known for and this rig was kind of the epitome of that it was utilizing the classic gibson les paul into a cranked amp kind of scenario though billy went about it in a slightly different way and i pulled out this dr z z 28 amp to kind of challenge some of those perceptions of the guys who maybe just think that old stuff was les paul into marshall some of it i'm sure was but i think there's a lot of merit to exploring some smaller amp or combo amp tones when it comes to looking at what billy gibbons did back in the day so the z28 for anyone who is unaware is basically kind of quite a unique design but it's fairly uh closely assimilated with some of those small brown face ear of fender amplifiers as well as with a few of dr z's tweaks on it but it really sounds close i think just plugging this les paul straight into the front end and what i want to get across on this is as usual when i'm just playing a guitar straight into an amp the dynamic response that's really paramount that's the most important thing but also the sheer thickness of the tone and obviously a lot of that had to do with his famous pearly gates les paul i think this guitar does an exceptionally good job of getting really close to that response when i'm using the bridge pickup the volume is pretty much wide open and i've actually backed the tone off to about six or seven so you still get that bright stinging sound of the bridge pickup but it's a little bit more rounded off and not quite as shrill now the reason i've done that and eq'd the amp a little bit brighter with a little bit less low end is that some of my favorite billy gibbons tones are when he used the neck pickup on a humbucker loaded guitar like this rolled way down i had the volume about four or five with the tone wide open and it i remember listening to the fandango record and there's a couple of slow blues tracks on there and i i couldn't figure out what guitar that was it sounded like it might be a strat might be a les paul and that really is just the clarity i believe of the pearly gates les paul and this z28 amp really does that justice so you'll hear a real split personality that i'm going to show you in this clip of going between the really full fat blaring bridge pickup tone that he's known for that really snarly mid-range thing i will just point out as well that you know case in point of guitar straight into an amplifier it's really about the way you play and billy gibbons had such a fantastic touch that was really really notable on those earlier kind of era tones that he went for that's all he really needed i'm sure he did use a couple of effects here and there and as he's well known to do he did chop and change with a bunch of different guitars but the pearly gates les paul was always the benchmark [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] hmm [Music] [Music] so [Music] hmm [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] down [Music] [Music] [Applause] okay so now that you've heard my take on the classic zz top tone i want to visit this rig which i think is a little bit more contemporary and a little bit more relevant to what billy gibbons has been known to use in recent years anyone who knows anything about him though will be aware of the fact that he's played hundreds of guitars he owns hundreds of guitars and particularly in zz tops live sets you often find that he actually purposely eq's his guitars to sound very close to or pretty much an exact replication tonally of that 59 pearly gates let's pull which i would have referenced in the last clip so it's kind of hard to nail down exactly what tones he likes to go for nowadays because you've kind of got that very familiar classic zz top tone in mind whenever you think of them it's that les paul and that fender or marshall style amplifier however i wanted to pick this guitar this this double esquire from the custom shop because this kind of puts me in mind of some of the guitars the custom guitars that he has been seen using in recent years they've got tons of iconic instruments between himself and dusty hill the bass player they've always got matching guitars that have been custom made for them with these really fancy artworks and just really novel interesting instruments usually quite lightweight as well so they're usually chambered or semi-hollow guitars and this guitar seemed to fit the bill i think that if billy gibbons came by the store and decided to pick out a fender custom shop guitar for himself he'd probably be walking away with something like this at least so pink paisley finish on this guitar as i say it's a double esquire model with the reverse tele bridge pickup which again is just a little bit of a novelty something that billy would probably like in his tone and it also helps to fatten up those higher strings and really fatness is the key to getting billy gibbons style tones i think whether it's a telecaster guitar or a strat or a les paul whatever he goes for it's all about that real thick mid-range so the guitar is helping with that but also a couple of pedals i've got on the floor are helping that case as well so i'm plugged into for this rig i've got the siete santos billy gibbons dunlop octavio signature pedal really cool octave fuzz so it's got a seven band eq on the top as well to shape the kind of post fuzz eq so if you find that octavia's just a little bit too harsh for you you can actually use this pedal to control those frequencies really well so i'm using that just for a couple of the really disgusting splatty fuzz tones i know that he's been known to use a whole ton of different effects there was one the kind of little hexagon shaped pedal i can't remember the bionic expand or expand or something like that that he's been using more recently in conjunction with the marshall jmp1 preamps and stuff like that however i didn't really want to go down the preamp route today i want to use old-school valve amps and in more recent years he's been known for his affiliation with magnatone which is a brand that we're very lucky to stock here i love playing these amps whenever i get the chance and the super 59 from the m80 series which is their take on like a 59 plexi style amplifier i'm using it for a fair bit of grunt it's got a really sweet rich mid-range tone in this amp and i'm kicking that even further with another pedal on the floor when i go for some of those more mid 80s to 90s higher gains sort of a little bit more of that processed billy gibbons sound where he had a real mid forward uh kind of cocktail almost kind of a tone and that's courtesy of an mxr 10 band eq which is just really pummeling the front end of this magnetone with all the mid-range frequencies um quite an extreme setting but i think it works quite well to get that kind of error of billy's tone and the feel under the fingers is another whole dimension that i've got to try and put across in words it's very difficult but with this kind of tone it's so expressive and the notes really just leap out and that's testament to billy's playing to have this kind of tone and he plays very very softly with his fingers as well as lightly with a pick and of course he's famed for using seven gauge so very very light gauge strings i want to try and approximate some of that tone obviously this guitar i haven't restrung it with sevens but i have tuned it to e flat to get a little bit more of that depth of tone that he has and also to get some of the elasticity in the strings for those really really nice bends so i think this rig kind of hopefully will go for some of the later era billy gibbons tone so it's certainly reminiscent of what he's using [Music] nowadays [Music] [Music] so let's go [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] so there we are for today's tale of two tones i hope you've enjoyed this little overview of what my personal take on billy gibbons famous guitar rigs are this one was actually quite a lot of fun to do because i i'm a huge fan of billy gibbons playing i think he's a really tasteful guitar player i'm sure a lot of people are in agreement with that thank you very much for watching this video as always i really appreciate it if you'd give us a like and comment down below with your thoughts and also let me know whether you prefer rig a the vintage or rig b it's more contemporary take and if you'd like to find out any more information about any of these products in this video head over to peachguitars.com so that's it for today take care of yourselves stay tuned and i look forward to seeing you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Peach Guitars

Views: 166,772

Keywords: guitar, electric, acoustic, shop, boutique, artisan, amplifier, pedal, pedalboard, pedals, strings, pickups, billy gibbons, zz top, fender, custom shop, telecaster, esquire, paisley, gibson, custom, les paul, 1959, pearly gates, dr z, magnatone

Id: NKVDzDi-0wQ

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020