Bowie and Ronson: 1973

toomanycats · Thu May 04, 2023 7:46 pm

Mick Ronson's rhythm tone is so fat and velvety here. That clipping during the lead makes me think there's a fuzz in front of the amp.

Tonray's Ghost · Thu May 04, 2023 8:45 pm

toomanycats wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 7:46 pm Mick Ronson's rhythm tone is so fat and velvety here. That clipping during the lead makes me think there's a fuzz in front of the amp.

Mick was brilliant. When I first started to buy LPs in my early teens, I bought a Beatles Anthology collection, The Rolling Stones (their first album, Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, etc etc, and Bowie's "Man Who Sold the World and Ziggy Stardust. Some of the guitar work on Man Who sold the World is literally out of this world, raw, powerful and innovative for the day

Some Mick R: (1st video is a year before he died of liver cancer...doing the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert with Bowie) 2md vid is pre Bowie rocker days

mozz · Fri May 05, 2023 8:33 am

I can see 2 pedals there. Off the top of my head, he used to use a tonebender MK1.5, maybe also a MK1. That was the circuit made for a short time between the more popular MK2 and the original MK1 tonebenders. The famous fuzzface was copied from the MK1.5, with a few slight resistor changes and different transistors, so in theory they should sound almost the same. It's a Les paul so no single coils there, so it will be darker and the input capacitor is also bigger letting more lows through. Didn't watch the rats video so see if there were any pedals.

andrewsrea · Fri May 05, 2023 2:12 pm

toomanycats wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 7:46 pm Mick Ronson's rhythm tone is so fat and velvety here. That clipping during the lead makes me think there's a fuzz in front of the amp.

Tonebender Mk 1.5. Used it up to his death.

Tonray's Ghost · Fri May 05, 2023 10:30 pm

andrewsrea wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 2:12 pm
toomanycats wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 7:46 pm Mick Ronson's rhythm tone is so fat and velvety here. That clipping during the lead makes me think there's a fuzz in front of the amp.
Tonebender Mk 1.5. Used it up to his death.

VEry cool...you definitely can hear it right there too

andrewsrea · Sat May 06, 2023 11:34 am

Tonray's Ghost wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 10:30 pm [
VEry cool...you definitely can hear it right there too

My neighbor is one of the biggest Ronson fan that I've ever met and he had me build a clone Tonebender 1.5 for him. He did all the research for the project and that is what we determined the model to be. Plugging it into a Marshall JCM 800, with a dead-on Aria Pro II clone fo a 1974 LP Custom proved it.