Joe Bonamassa has never hidden the fact he’s lifted tips and tricks from blues legends like Eric Clapton and B.B. King throughout his career. Taking tone hacks from an Ozzy Osbourne guitarist, however, has proven more surprising.
Bonamassa is actually immortalized in the Prince of Darkness’s vast guitar canon (even if he couldn’t believe he was being asked to feature on a track back in 2005), but taking amp setup cues from Zakk Wylde? That wasn't on our bingo card.
In a conversation with Guitar World around his new signature combo amp with Fuchs alongside company founder Andy Fuchs, Bonamassa confessed to taking one particular idea from Ozzy’s former guitarist, even if doing so is “heresy.”
“I've had great luck doing the exact opposite of what the internet tells me,” he says. “The internet says, when you see a Marshall, you put a Celestion [speaker] in it. I put in Electro-Voice, or EV, speakers in the cab. And when you see a Fender, Fuchs, or Dumble amp on my stage, chances are it has Celestions [in it].”
“This is heresy,” returns GW's Paul Riario.
“It's about the sound you have in your head, and how it feels under the strings,” Bonamassa details. “Everybody's tweaked their way out of a good sound, so if I find a guitar that I like, I won't change it. I won't even solder it.”
But when it comes to amps, he’s far less precious.
“I nicked that from Zakk Wylde,” he says of his speaker/cab philosophy. “I believe he used to split the cabs [to mix and match speaker cones]. What I like about Electro-Voice [speakers] with Marshall amps in particular is that it takes the fizz away, and the bottom end is very true and bell-like.
“I chose Celestions for this amp [the Fuchs] because they were giving the harmonics and mid-range a human voice. These speakers have their roles in certain things; you'd see Stevie Ray Vaughan putting EVs in his [Fender] Vibroverb amp because he wanted a big bottom end. Eddie Van Halen split his cabs with JBLs and Celestions.
“If you have a dynamic range, you don't have to hit the guitar that hard to get it to bloom,” Bonamassa continues. “Those kinds of things make a big difference. If you're splitting the load so one thing is not doing everything, it helps. It's not gonna collapse as fast.”
It’s for this reason that impulse responses have become such a powerful tool in the digital amp modeling world. It's the same idea, just with less drilling. Sometimes, gear is perfect as is. Sometimes, one key tweak can make all the difference.
In related news, Bonamassa recently offered cost-saving advice for buying amps and explained why he is yet to become an amp modeler convert.
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