"That Roadhouse Sound" Recipe?

[MrShake]

I've been recording some stuff lately, and have a sound in my head that I just can't seem to nail, but want to use for some tracks.

Think Mark Ribot's stuff with Waits and the overall vibe of Morphine. I've been re-watching the latest Twin Peaks season with some friends and saw Trouble doing "Snake Eyes" at the Bang Bang Bar and it hit that same spot.

Sort of a post-modern roadhouse blues vibe without sounding like "dad rock". It sounds a little more off the wall and experimental to me compared to something like more straightforward stuff by The Black Keys. My usual tone anyway is an RV-2 into a Rat, so I'm all about "tweaked retro" sounds, but that surfy punkgazer stuff seems similar-but-different to this blastoid blues sound. I know all the examples below aren't identical to each other, but I think y'all will get what I mean.

The problem is that while I have plenty of hardware options for dirt, reverb, and tremolo, I can't seem to put them together in a recipe for that sound to come out quite right. It doesn't have to be exact, but can anyone offer any setting suggestions? It sounds to me like drive into a short echo, feedback set low, then into some reverb... but I could have the order wrong and maybe that's throwing me?

Here's some examples of the general sound. I also realize that the rest of the arrangement is key for making "bluesy guitar" not exactly sound like "bluesy guitar", but wouldn't mind being able to dial in that tone to start from when the situation calls for it. Any general suggestions?

Angelo Badalamenti - "The Pink Room"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxlGtcW1Qg8

Trouble - "Snake Eyes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E2hkZBVya4

"Guitar Lesson", Ribot-style
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvDVpqNuUGY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Angelo Badalamenti - "Blue Frank"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUcuccdGmeg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mijmog]

Potential for a great thread this.

Its all in the way you attack the guitar. Think narrow, spikey and importantly no sustain. You want to feel like your starving the guitar of the notes it can create. You could try simple stuff like raising the action of your guitar (making it harder to play, changing the way your fingers hit the strings) messing with pickup heights etc but I think its all about how your picking hand approaches the strings, you want to imagine you're choking every note.

I don't want to get into saying you have to buy more equipment to get this sound, its a supposed cheap sound anyway, I think you can get there with a change in attitude to the instrument, so any guitar, a fuzz or drive with a filter/EQ control like your Rat and a small amp that you can drive well can work.

Try things like turning the amp up high, the reverb and trem up nice and full, putting it on the bridge pickup and lowering the volume on the guitar, try with full tone as well as the tone rolled back and imagine your guitar is incapable of sustaining any note and you'll be half way there.

You're right with the slapback echo into reverb, but you need to think dirty, try boosting your amp with an old tape echo or external reverb, even old hi-fi equipment, to get the gain structure all messed up. Each item will add more gain, you want the reverb to drive a little.

Lots of people will chime in with specifics but when I think of this sound my mind turns to things like:
low output pickups
small valve amps
archtops
old Harmony guitars
small speakers being pushed
lots of overly harsh spikey treble and flubby bass
fuzzes starved of voltage
too much trashy spring reverb (in a good way).

Closest sound I got to this was a Epiphone SG with the pickups way back from the strings, a wah left on full treble and an old Harmony H303A 5 watt amp with a ratty speaker. Recorded in a bathroom, it was all there and great fun to play.

Buddy Miller has this sound in spades:

[MrShake]

Oooh, this is all good info, thanks for writing that out. And I'm digging the Buddy Miller I'm finding. Top notch stuff! Thanks!

I'm definitely in agreement on the old "it's in his hands" explanation as far as Ribot is concerned. I love the way his stuff *stings*, low on the sustain. I'm playing on a JM or (even better) a Jag, .13s, and the action cranked up nice and high for my usual punky bashing. Lucky for me, that setup seems to suit this kind of stuff, too. I caught the Flat Duo Jets last week, and Dex Romweber was playing a once-cheap Dano "amp-in-case" model out of what I believe was an early '80s Randall combo and it sounded phenomenal, pure raw growl, you'd never have guessed that was all he was playing.

I was weaned on big-ass echo and tremolo. Shoegaze-Level. The Cure's "Disintegration". WASHES of echo. So, running from the oversaturated "blooze" sounds I was surrounded with in childhood. But I've always loved it, hence my being in a garage-punk two piece with a few bluesy flourishes. I just tend to default toward "surfy drip" over "slapback thwack". So short delays are a whole new thing for me.

I guess where I'm probably getting most up is on the delay/tremolo combo. I'm thinking (especially knowing what we do about the development of pedal technology), that most of these more "modernist" practitioners are using a delay for slapback into a gorgeous old amp, into which is usually built trem, then reverb. I don't know if I've tried putting my trem AFTER my delay had occurred to me (again, that's me leaning on the shoegazer-friendly setup). I'll tweak with slapback and try it into a nice swampy triangle trem to see how close I can get.

[fuzzjunkie]

I did soundtrack music for a short film several years ago and the producer asked for "Twin Peaks meets Cocteau Twins."

So for the more background ambient bits I did some modulation with ample delay and reverb, but for the parts that were more forward, during scene transitions or repeating the motif, I dropped out the rest and went with either tremolo and reverb or slapback and reverb and left plenty of space for "atmosphere."

For the type of sound you're looking for the chain was a '61 Telecaster, a Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe and a Roland Space Echo into a cranked Fender tweed amp. I did quite a bit of cutting the notes short as mijmog recommends. The Voodoo Vibe does a nice swampy trem, that and the reverb from the Space Echo was most of it. When I added echo, then the trem went off. The rest was just technique. The Rat after the RV-2 should be okay for that if you set the Rat at crunchy overdrive levels, unless you want to sound like the Raveonettes.

For the more ambient sounds I'd switch the Voodoo Vibe to a phasey/vibrato setting and add an A/DA flanger, then dial up the delay time and feedback on the Space Echo.

[Ursa Minor]

I'll add to the technique a bit and say that dynamics are your best friend. You may want to try tuning low and going with lower action. Let those strings buzz a bit. It will be a breeze to play and will force you to play soft. You'll get used to it quickly. Basically trying to say take yourself out of the comfort zone. Try to do with just a few things at first and add and you may need them. Could even try a different tuning like some kind of open minor chord. I put my Jaguar in D6 (DADF#BE) a year or so ago just for fun one day and it's been tuned that way ever since. Who knew? Maybe not the best tuning for what you're trying to go for but it's a fun one.

Ribot and Morphine are atop my all time favorites so this really got my attention. I'm currently learning Ribot's Los Cubanos stuff for fun. I can nail that sound with my JM and Princeton Reverb and a klon. FWIW, thats basically my sound the last few years. I refuse to use pedals for reverb and trem. With a PR nothing else comes even remotely close to sounding or feeling like the real deal.

You may also want to try running an OD into your delays. I have been running either an AD-900 or DMM into the klon and it can get dirty in such wonderful ways. (Same idea as running a delay straight into an overdriving amp.) This technique is usually too much if you're running delay into fuzz or straight up distortion. Cool, but not something I'd want to use all the time. But subtly applied and it's oh so nice!

I also have a brown era Princeton that sounds phenomenal when cranked, although its a rarity for me given my living space. But even clean it's perfect. Ribot was why I started looking for these amps. I saw one on stage with Waits and fell head over heels with the sound. Turns out that was Smokey Hormel (someone else to check out). Check out his Secret Family album. Early West African pop but touches on the same kind of sound.

Bottom line, you can get what you're looking for with a lot of different combinations. Fun part is figuring it all out and experimenting.

Great thread. Got me rambling!

[preservation]

i got a killer sound on my baritone JM (with Antiquity II's) through my Tech 21 trademark 10 on the British setting.
sounded really raspy/ropey/trebley. having stumbled upon that yesterday it's probably my new favourite guitar tone.

[MechaBulletBill]

Not enough people do delay/reverb into dirt (an OD/distortion pedal or overdriven amp), I think because pervading pedal wisdom says verb/delay normally goes last into a clean pedal platform amp. Dirty up your verb and the sound you're after might find you.