Getting the Clapton Beano tone - one man's quest

rze99 · October 2023

Getting the Clapton Beano tone.

If you've every worked on getting this, even just for S n G, you'll know it's not as easy as you think when you start out.

I've had a couple of good long sessions with my R9 and 70s Marshall JMP and felt I've got pretty close to the Beano tone in the room. It's not what I want normally for what I do, but it's a hell of a lot of fun going for a full on high volume blues session.

Here's one man's efforts admittedly with a reissue of the right amp. Later on in the session he gets close enough for him.

I know most of you say attenuators kill tone. Well, face it. You are just wrong, plain wrong, I tell you! I've used attenuators for years to get a seriously loud and old amps cooking and obviously it's not the same physically as being made deaf by Concorde lift off levels but, by using them right, it's what you need to crank safely. And this vid shows that.

Zoonyboy · October 2023

You are on the right track with making some noise. A great studio engineer told me that in order to sound good on record (not disappear in the track with a flat sound) is to "move air". He had recorded Freddie King, I believe. Make the speakers move, that's a large part of the sound you want. Those older Plexi-era Marshalls certainly did that, and had a natural compression when pushed. Of course a HB equipped guitar is also required. Pickups like those in the Beano guitar were not over-powerful, so could project dynamics and headroom through the amp, while still sounding "big". Your R9 is suitably equipped I would say, and the amp seems like a good choice. Having to project over a drummer and bassist can bring out the tone, as you make your fingers work the dynamics. Goo luck with it, it's a great thing to aim for.

fretfinder · October 2023

The elder brother of a good friend of mine was an engineer at Decca during those sessions and remembers Eric refusing to turn his amp down and saying it had to be that loud to get the sound he wanted, never mind if the meters were all in the red.

Attenuators? Pah! I’ve played a lot of amps with attenuators and none of them sounded as good to me attenuated as they did when wide open. I also believe that getting a great sound is partly at least about moving lots of air. YMMV of course.

scrumhalf · October 2023

In John Pidgeon's biography from the late 70s/early 80s he writes something along the lines of the engineers tearing their hair out at the volume Clapton wanted to record at, telling him to turn it down, and him saying that he had to play like he played onstage.

57Deluxe · October 2023

I don't mean to keep adding Harley Benton to all the threads currently - but seriously the SC Gold Top P90 I got earlier this year actually sounds closer to the Beano tone than my Gibson LP. I don't even need a Marshall, running either through a Bandit Transtube or my Session Rockette 30 with a TS or Golden Horse and it is a dead ringer for the tone coming off a Decca vinyl mono recording

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/de/9f/f6/de9ff6b9bf5ff36dfb498895080ad767.jpg

tone1 · October 2023

I need a Les Paul…..

Jez6345789 · October 2023

When I hear that track I always think it's that Tele on Steroids and pretty bright sounding especially once it hits the shuffle bit.
I also imagine if Eric was being the enfant terrible he says he was back then all volume, moody and arrogant the Les Paul and the Bluesbreaker were only half the signal chain and I imagine those Decca engineers shoving limiters and twidling eq knobs like crazy so I always wonder what was happening on the other half of the signal change. Either way its solkd a lot of Les Pauls, Marshalls and blues breaker pedals :-)

dcg · October 2023

If it's real blues tone you're pursuing, then I'm inclined to believe you need volume, and lots of it. I remember seeing Muddy Waters in 1971-ish (with Otis Spann, Walter Horton, Freddie Below, and Willie Dixon; that's a real band) - and when they opened their set (with Hoochie Coochie Man, of course), the first few rows were mown to the ground. Ditto Freddie King, who I saw a couple of times - he dialled in his tone by turning a Fender Quad Reverb up as far as it would go. And the same applied to Roy Buchanan with what I remember was a Pro Reverb turned to stun and, I seem to remember, facing away from the audience...
But notwithstanding the (probable) need for volume, I totally get why the Beano tone is so hard to nail, although given the techie environment of '60s recording studios, I dothink there's much in the argument stated above that the engineering the Bluesbreakers' extraordinary record contributed significantly to that sound. And did EC ever really sound like that again, on record? Not in my humble estimation, even when he was playing humbuckers...millions may disagree.

MikeP · October 2023

I prefer this guys stab at beano tone myself...

Winny_Pooh · October 2023

I wasn't quite convinced by that tone... needed a treble booster....

soma1975 · October 2023

My old attempt at it from ages ago.

'Les Paul 2014 with OX4 low wind Alnico 4 pickups - middle position for whole song with vols on 9, neck tone on 4.

Played through an Analogman Beano boost and Greer Lightspeed into a Marshall Astoria Dual at far too low a volume level.

Ancient SM57 about 3" to the right of the centre of the speaker. Bit of reverb and eq added in post.'

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Getting the Clapton Beano tone - one man's quest

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