Question For Guitarists

A

Anonymous

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Alright, I might completely embarass myself with this question, but here goes.

I am currently listening to some tracks from the Madrid '98 bootleg, including "The Evil That Men Do " and "Fear Of The Dark" (no, not all at once). If anyone is familiar with VXI boots, they will know that the guitar sound on the "classic" tracks is pretty close to that on the VXI tracks. I can't really describe it in words, but I'm sure you will know what I mean.
Now, I am a complete novice to anything that has to do with instrumental/musical technology, so I'm asking: Where does this come from? Does it have to do with the guitar tuning, or are the band simply using different guitar types than on the original studio versions of the classic tracks? Or is it something completely else? Or am I just hearing angels singing?
 
[!--quoteo(post=131402:date=Mar 10 2006, 10:06 AM:name=Perun)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Perun @ Mar 10 2006, 10:06 AM) [snapback]131402[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Alright, I might completely embarass myself with this question, but here goes.

I am currently listening to some tracks from the Madrid '98 bootleg, including "The Evil That Men Do " and "Fear Of The Dark" (no, not all at once). If anyone is familiar with VXI boots, they will know that the guitar sound on the "classic" tracks is pretty close to that on the VXI tracks. I can't really describe it in words, but I'm sure you will know what I mean.
Now, I am a complete novice to anything that has to do with instrumental/musical technology, so I'm asking: Where does this come from? Does it have to do with the guitar tuning, or are the band simply using different guitar types than on the original studio versions of the classic tracks? Or is it something completely else? Or am I just hearing angels singing?
[/quote]

I am not a guitarist and I don't know much about the techniques that are involved.

But when it comes to tuning, I don't think any Maiden guitarist ever tuned his guitars in a different way over the years. The only guy who did it, was Adrian Smith, but this can only be heard in Iron Maiden from 1999, when he returned. If I understand you well, you talk about similar (or was it different?) guitar sound from 1980 til 1998?

On a sidenote: I am not sure if this might be related to your question, but I always thought Dave had sometimes a different live-solo-sound (in other words: his sound when he plays a solo) per tour. E.g., during the World Piece Tour (1983) I always thought that Dave had the clearest, most echoing sound from all his tours, while on other tours it was sometimes a bit different. Maybe this had to do with the mix.

There are many aspects on guitar sound.

* guitars
* amps
* other equipment (effects)
* the mix (how is the guitar mixed with the rest of the instruments and vocals).


What I find more interesting is more personal comments such as these:

Adrian Smith on Dave Murray:
"He’s got his own style and sound, and that’s a rare thing. Everyone who plays guitar wants to have that and he always has, even when he’d just started playing. We could plug into the same amp and he’d still sound like him. If you hear Dave playing, you know it’s Iron Maiden straight away."

Bruce Dickinson on Adrian Smith:
"In a world populated by faceless guitarists who all go to school to learn how to do it and end up all sounding virtually indistinguishable, Adrian has evolved a tone and style that is all his own and is unique. Nobody sounds like Adrian, and that is priceless. His guitar playing sounds lazy, like the notes are almost falling over each other but they never do. You actually hang on every note that he plays, because you don’t quite know where it’s going to go next."
 
[!--quoteo(post=131438:date=Mar 10 2006, 10:17 AM:name=Forostar)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Forostar @ Mar 10 2006, 10:17 AM) [snapback]131438[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
There are many aspects on guitar sound.

* guitars
* amps
* other equipment (effects)
* the mix (how is the guitar mixed with the rest of the instruments and vocals).
[/quote]
Forostar is mostly correct. I'd add a couple more factors which can influence guitar sound, as we hear it. First of all, the recording equipment and effects applied during the recording process (as opposed to effects added to the sound at the guitar amp level). Second - and particularly relevant to bootlegs - the acoustics of the venue, and the recorder's location within that venue. However, while both of these factors can make a difference, in most cases their effect is very small compared to the factors listed by Forostar.

Regarding why older songs should have the "VXI sound" from a VXI tour concert: Once you have your equipment set up to give a specific sound, it can be quite a bit of work to replicate other sounds. (Not always true, but sometimes.) I suspect that Murray and Gers simply felt their VXI sound was good for all Maiden songs on that tour, and it's wasn't worth the trouble to duplicate older sounds.

This question would be much easier to answer if we had equipment lists for all Maiden tours. (Maybe someone here does, for all I know.) Without detailed lists to compare, all we can do is speculate. I would be especially interested to know if Murray and Gers had new amplifiers for the VXI tour; this seems (to me) to be the most likely candidate for causing a change in guitar sound.
 
Different guitars yield different tones. The most common example being a Stratocaster which gives a bright, clean sound from its single coil pickups while a Les Paul gives you fat, smooth tone. I'm of the opinion that once you're running your guitar through a power amp, compressor, and whatever other pedals you're using, the equipment is definitely way more important (my ear isn't that great though).

This site explains everything about guitar effects(effects Maiden use like compressors, distortion, wah wah, delay, etc), and what is actually happening to the frequency of the signal.

http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/guitar.htm
 
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