James is a VP at Voodoo labs, an amazing player and the guy that plays "cliffs of Dover" on Guitar hero. I think it's a lot like a tube screamer without the midrange hump and much more harmonics. this tends to give a pretty flat sound with a nice midrange clarity. The first was the EJ set up with both controls off (yes off). Tone controls: I played with two basic setups. any higher and the feel would get too compressed. Gain: I found the geain set to about 4 was best. I found it easiest to get my basic tone and then dial in the tube to find the bast dynamics paying attention to gain, compression, the clear low e string sound and a round top end. I found a no label tube with blackburn codes on the bottom that sounded best.
![cliffs of dover guitar flash cliffs of dover guitar flash](https://media.s-bol.com/DpmYBD68YYy/550x332.jpg)
The tube really has an affect on the tone of this pedal. This time I was determined to figure it out. So, I've onwed these before and have never really enjoyed them. Most of the paying I do for this tone is on the rear pickup. I basically roll of the tone until I hear the plinky sound on the high E go away. I have the rear tone control wired to the rear pickup.
![cliffs of dover guitar flash cliffs of dover guitar flash](https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/8/87790/3297727-flyer_gha.png)
I'm using a fender 57' relic with a Suhr neck pickup and Fralin vintage hots in the middle and bridge. You have to use the pick on it's edge to reduce the click. All things being equal, the attack of this pick adds a certain amount of warmth. I find this pick really hard to use but it does round out the attack. I'm using cliffs of dover as my reference tone.Įric uses a Dunlop Jazz III. For me, it's a little bit fan boy and a little curiosity as a tone hound. I did some checking on the EJ website forum and apparently Hal Leonard recently did some better, more accurate transcriptions that are avaiable on and - I haven't gotten a chance to check them myself (mine go back to the early - mid 90's) so perhaps that might be a better route to check.I've been playing around with getting Eric Johnson's lead tone For a while. Very few transcriptions I've seen capture this - they usually write it out as a strummed, basic power chord.
![cliffs of dover guitar flash cliffs of dover guitar flash](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqmXpPTT5RI/maxresdefault.jpg)
They are almost more like "fake books" than actual transcriptions - nothing wrong with that if you just want the general jist of the song, but if you want to get in deeper of what really going on and learn all the finer nuances - most don't deliver.įor instance, alot of his distorted chord technique involves playing power chords that use a bass note on a low wound string, several strings muted in between and the rest of the chord on the higher plain strings - you get this very wide open sound, and he usually plucks the bass notes with the pick and the higher notes he fingerpicks, attacking all the strings at once the same way a pianist would play a chord. I agree to a point - I usually use books like that for getting new ideas I can incorporate into my own playing more than to actually to learn a song - but, again, most are completely off the mark compared to what he's actually doing. If he wants a certain note to sound thicker he'll play it on a lower wound string, even though the identical note may be much closer and easier to access on a thinner plain string.įor instance, the opening riff is much easier to play using open notes like that transcription showed, but it doesn't quite sound right - the way to actually play it involves barring the D and G notes on the B and E strings with your first finger, with the lower G note on the 5th fret of the D string, and the moving notes happening on the B string - causing quite a stretch and requiring some careful finger placement, but the notes ring out properly when played that way, and it sound thicker using the wound D in the riff. Then Guitar For The Practicing Musician magazine actually sat down with Eric and transcribed the way he plays it and all the "single" notes were chords - making the song infinite harder, but when you play it that way it finally sounded right.Īlso, EJ is a tough one because he bases the fingering on the neck based on the tonality that he's going for, not merely on where it's easiest to play. First time I saw the song "Trademark" transcribed it was all nice, easy single note lines. I have two different tab books of EJ - one sort of "best of" and another for Venus Isle, and they are REALLY bad.Īgain, one of the biggest issues is they will write out melodies that he plays using chords using single notes.