The History of Mellon Collie’s Guitar Tone and Recording Process

The History of Mellon Collie’s Guitar Tone and Recording Process - Smashing Pumpkins

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@MrHubb1 Жыл бұрын

Thank you. It's so cool to see the equipment used on this album. It's a classic and timeless. It's been a part of my life for many years and I always come back to it.

@abguitar3 Жыл бұрын

Awesome! Glad you enjoyed it - Ya MCIS has had such an impact on so many people over the years :)

@Nickatlrke1014 5 ай бұрын

Unbelievable. Look pics of Billy C at Lollapalooza in ‘94 and then look at his hair in the 666 tapes which is shown here. I’ve never seen a hair line run away that fast

@frequencyreport 8 ай бұрын

Excellent expose of the recording techniques and equipment.

@abguitar3 8 ай бұрын

Thanks :)

@IdlesQueen 6 ай бұрын

Excellently done and insightful

@abguitar3 6 ай бұрын

Thanks :)

@jordanthegill2069 Жыл бұрын

You forgot to mention how they used a sample of the missile launcher from the game Doom.. you hear it in the intro on the song where boys fear to tread

@abguitar3 Жыл бұрын

Ya I forgot to mention that one!

@TheSiameseDreamer Жыл бұрын

Wrong. It's the explosion of barrels they sampled. And it's played many times during WBFTT. That song was also called "The Bomb" before release.

@zzzz-sf5lr Жыл бұрын

It's from doom

@TheSiameseDreamer Жыл бұрын

@zzzz-sf5lr yes, the barrel explosion from Doom

@lomarsweed6604 7 ай бұрын

@@TheSiameseDreamer no the game see

@andreaslandgren1681 Жыл бұрын

Thank you. Fantastic work.

@abguitar3 Жыл бұрын

Thanks Andreas

@wozja Жыл бұрын

Love MCIS love the raw live playing loud feel of it! But it really does sound and feel quiet in a way?? Like you hear any singles on the radio … bullet for example and it’s so quiet. Even when I listen to CD I really have to crank the volume to get it to where it needs to be .. listen to that album loudly ! Anyone else notice this ? Feel like it needs to be remastered (which I think they did with all studio releases )

@abguitar3 Жыл бұрын

That's because they kept the dynamic range high from quiet to loud - and also this was before the "loudness wars" so they probably were not too concerned about maxing out the peak volume.

@drewlittell Жыл бұрын

Sounds warm and analogue with a wide dynamic range. Meant for play on a Hi Fi stereo, not a compressed file. Sounds amazing on a nice rig and yes the 2012 remaster does cut through a little more. Which is what you’re hearing if you’re streaming

@tonesleuth69 Жыл бұрын

Alesis Drum machine for the 1979 intro...

@loissio481 7 ай бұрын

Awesome, thanks a lot. I would love to have some info on the gear for the album Zeitgeist. It´s the first thing I heard from them and it sound impacted me a lot.

@abguitar3 7 ай бұрын

Thanks - Ya Zeitgeist is awesome - I know this was the time when Billy got his signature Stratocaster, and he used it a ton on the album.

@loissio481 7 ай бұрын

@@abguitar3 Yes I love how saturated and dark it sounds. Thanks for the info Andrew!

@Wonderbrains 9 ай бұрын

Well done 👍 thanks

@abguitar3 9 ай бұрын

Thanks :)

@jeffmurdock8321 9 ай бұрын

I've heard Billy was a perfectionist and a bit of a control guy and really didn't let his other band mates play much on the albums. Billy pretty much played all the guitar and bass parts himself (and maybe even Butch earlier on). He may have indeed used all those guitars, but it was probably all him and not James or Darcy much at all.

@abguitar3 9 ай бұрын

That was true on Siamese Dream, but not Mellon Collie.

@barrybrennan2135 9 ай бұрын

@@abguitar3 I don't know. I suspect the truth is something of a mix. I know they live tracked the bones of lots of tracks, but I bet 99% of the overdubs on something like Porcelina or Ruby are Billy.

@BullyMaguire4ever 4 ай бұрын

@@barrybrennan2135it’s true on Ruby in particular. Billy laid down a shitload of overdubs.

@_permanence Жыл бұрын

Wow. Nice job 👍 The era right before pro tools completely took over and Billy’s hair died.

@abguitar3 Жыл бұрын

Thanks :)

@thischannel1071 3 ай бұрын

Cool video! Some of its details are a bit off. Here's some more info: Billy's MCIS rack contained JMP-1, Triaxis, and MP-2 preamps. The MP-1 was used on Gish. The rack you show an image of, with the Mesa Boogie 290 power amps, while talking about Billy's rack is James' MCIS rack. Billy rack had Strategy 500 power amps, like you mention. The Blue / Silver / Red pickup combo is a bit of a dogma. It may have been used somewhere, or at some point, but the blue in the neck and Silver in the middle position sounds like garbage and not much like Billy's SD & MCIS tone. Gold / Gold / Red sounds much closer to his tone. Billy used his #2 Strat, the red one (that was painted black and had stars put on it), for cleans and leads. Billy said that he used the Strategy rack to lay down the basic rhythm tracks and then did overdubs and leads with the JCM 800 head: "On much of the album, I used my old 1984 Marshall JCM 800 100-watt top, which is my favorite amp; it's on every Pumpkins record... I used the JCM 800 for most all of the overdubs on the record. That's the JCM at work it kicks in really heavy [at :23] during "Thru the Eyes of Ruby," That amp has a certain cut to it that sounds great. Because of the total differences between the two setups, I tend to use the JCM 800 more for leads, solos and overdubs than for rhythm. Using two setups together makes the different guitar parts work better together-to "sit" better. On Siamese Dream I did everything with that JCM head, so it was harder to get tonal differences on each guitar part." The G12T-75 speakers in Billy's Mars cab would be one of the 1980s versions, and likely the earliest one (which was used between 1984 - 1985), with the vented speakers. There are a bunch of different G12T-75 speakers, and the sound of the G12T-75 kept shifting brighter over the years. The current, made-in-China since 2002 or 2003, production G12T-75 speaker sounds nothing like the 1980s versions, or the 1990s version(s). I asked Flood in 2011 which mics were used to record MCIS' guitars, and he said "For recording pretty much all the guitars we used an SM57 and a Sennheiser 421 on a Marshall cab. However, to arrive at this decision we spent at least a day testing all the amp/cab/mic possibilities. So much of the heavier songs' sound is based on careful layering and fine-tuning of the bass sound to fit the overall harmonic spectrum". An SM57 and MD421 were also the basis for recording SD's guitars, with various other mics (including the AKG C414) used occasionally on different parts. Butch's AKG C414s that were sometimes used while recording SD are the earlier CK12 version, with the brass capsule, which sound different than other C414 models. A photo posted by Kerry Brown on his blog, where he talked about recording SP, also showed a pair of C414 CK12s micing a 1960A cab. They're, by far, the most expensive C414 version on the vintage market, but Warm Audio has done a reasonably good job of recreating it as the WA-14, which sells for a much more affordable price. For vocals, I think Billy sang into a Shure SM58 on MCIS. For SD, he sang into a Shure SM7 and not an SM7B, which is a newer version of the SM7 and has a different low-end response.

@abguitar3 3 ай бұрын

Awesome! Thanks for the extra info and clarification.

@thischannel1071 3 ай бұрын

@@abguitar3 No prob! Glad to share the info. One more thing about the mics is that Billy said, regarding the recording of Siamese Dream, that the Strat parts were recorded using an SM57, through one speaker on his 1960A cab, and the Les Paul guitars were recorded using the MD421, through a different speaker on the 1960A cab, to simulate the impression of having two different setups. Each speaker in a cab will sound slightly different. Whether that applies the same to MCIS, where they recorded a guitar part using a single mic, and used the SM57 for the Strat parts, and MD421 for the Les Paul parts, or whether they recorded each part in stereo and used both an SM57 and MD421 for both the Strat and Les Paul parts, I'm not sure.

@abguitar3 3 ай бұрын

@@thischannel1071 I think the most important part is the actual speakers they had (t75) -- like you mentioned before that each speaker year could be different sound.... Whatever year t75 they had in that Marshall cab it sounded great!!

@thischannel1071 3 ай бұрын

@@abguitar3Yeah, they do. Regarding the mics, though, in a 2022 Rig Rundown video for Jeff, he says he mics his cabs live with an SM57 and MD4221, with the SM57 set 2db lower and the MD421 at unity, and the SM57 at 8 degrees off axis. So, not only does it seem they made a lot of use those mics, but, at least more recently, they were stereo micing them (as opposed to Billy's comment regarding SD, where he said they used SM57 for Strat parts, and MD421 for LP parts).