by Bryan Hillebrandt
Last week we started taking a closer look at what makes Neil Young’s sound so distinctive by looking at his main electric guitar, Old Black. This week we’ll travel along the signal path to see how he gets that monster tone.
The heart of Young’s electric setup is a vintage tweed Fender Deluxe amplifier that he bought for $50 in 1967. The Fender Deluxe is a relatively small amp, about 19 watts, but it is the centerpiece of Young’s rig. This amplifier has one tone control and two volume controls. It is more often than not turned up all the way. For this reason, Young’s guitar tech, Larry Cragg, has two high-powered fans blowing on the back of this amp during live shows to prevent it from getting too hot.
Young also has a custom-built contraption called “The Whizzer” sitting atop this amp. The Whizzer connects to the actual knobs on the amp and is controlled by a foot pedal by Young on stage. The Whizzer is dialed in to three different settings on the amp. So if he wants to turn everything up, he hits one of three buttons, and the Whizzer turns the knobs to his predetermined settings. This allows him to use the natural distortion that comes from the amp and forego any kind of gain booster or distortion pedal.
The Fender Deluxe is one of the things that makes Neil Young’s sound so different from that of other guitar players. That he found this specific amp is truly a happy accident. It’s reported that he owns over four hundred of these amps but that only his original amp will produce the sound he is known for.
Of course, that sound, the one capable of rattling your rib cage even though you’re on the opposite side of the arena is not solely due to a 19 watt amp. Young runs the signal from the Deluxe into another bank of amps that are hidden behind the huge Fender amp stage props that you can see in Rust Never Sleeps. There are several amps responsible for this. One is a Magnatone 280 and the other is a solid-state amp called the Baldwin Exterminator—this beast has two 8-inch speakers, two 15-inch speakers, and two 12-inch speakers. These are then fed into a monstrous 2000 watt PA amplifier.
All of this adds up to a tone and a volume level that has the strength of a force of nature. I was lucky enough to catch Neil Young and Crazy Horse on the Ragged Glory tour and I was thoroughly unprepared for the onslaught.
In Young’s biography, Shakey by Jimmy McDonough, Young is quoted as saying that the albums that came out of that tour, Weld and the feedback album Arc were a reflection of the brutality of the Gulf War that was raging at the time. One listen, especially to Arc which is an assemblage of feedback from the tour, and you can certainly feel that intensity.
Unfortunately, if you didn’t get a chance to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse live, you probably will never be able to. The ravages of the Ragged Glory tour have reportedly taken a toll on Young’s hearing (nope, no earplugs) and it’s doubted that he will ever do another tour like it. Luckily there are a few amazing documents of Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
If you have never seen Rust Never Sleeps or perhaps it’s been a while, it is certainly worth watching. And then there are the live albums as well: Live Rust and the aforementioned Weld and Arc. Each of these give glimpses of the intensity and true originality of Neil Young’s sound. They also don’t destroy your hearing like a two hour arena show will.
