Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: Feb. 14 2005, 12:36 |
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He had a preamp before the Boogie, giving a further level boost, thereby pushing the Boogie further into overdrive. He never mentioned using anything else, but he may well have changed his setup over the years (the Boogie/preamp combination was for the '79 tour).
A lot of the middly sound comes from Mike's guitars and his particular way of playing (hear, for example, in the interview he does on The Essential Mike Oldfield - his playing on his unplugged L6-S already has something of his characteristic sound to it). The fingernails give a thinner sound than a (thick) pick when used aggressively. You have to pick harder than on say, a classical guitar, to get that sound. Needs to be relatively near the bridge too.
I managed a reasonably Mike-esque sound while playing around with Amplitube's digital model of a Marshall JCM800 the other day, just using that and the Amplitube distortion effect (it was a freebie version that just included those two things - I'm generally not a massive fan of modelled amps). It was just a case of turning up both the gain controls, bringing down the treble to tame the high end (all that distortion can lead quickly to fizz) then turning up the mids. Picking the guitar in the right way completes the illusion. You can do that with a lot of amps, as long as they're not the kind which are aimed at really fizzy-sounding heavy metal overdrive sounds.
Half-open wahs tend to give a more honky kind of sound. An EQ pedal can be good, if the amp's EQ won't get you to where you want to on its own (it should come after any distortion pedals though). Mike did have a treble booster as part of his 70s studio setup, but it was never mentioned by him as being part of his live setup - only the preamp (which he said nothing more about, other than that it was a preamp...could have been something with an EQ on board as well).
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Its the delay pedal im really after though.