Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

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charveldan
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Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by charveldan » Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:36 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPI8ydY0ET4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS70QWFns8s[/youtube]


http://vintagemarshallamps.com/81jcm800DL.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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chrisom
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by chrisom » Tue Mar 20, 2012 7:10 pm

Steve Clark and Joe Elliott made Def Leppard. When Steve died all their trademark guitar song-crafting died with him. His perfect blend of AC/DC-style rhythmic figures mixed with a Zeppelin/Page guitar-orchestration sensibility made even Leppard's later overproduced song efforts with him catchy and pleasing to the ears when layered with their brand of vocal harmonies admittedly styled after classic Queen. :listen:

Those pictures are great. Glad to see it's a Super Lead driving Steve's tone, and not those yucky Randall's they endorsed later. Even with the circuitboard sprayed with black spray paint, those of us with "MetroAmp training" can see there's not much new under the sun here.

It looks like they parallelled the NFB resistor (which would have been 100K in 1981), so it's probably halved to George's 47K (50) value as found in earlier Super Leads. It also looks like it has the big .68 uF cap on the Presence circuit (and on V1, but not at V2 on the circuitboard). I always wondered if you could export the bias pot without much problem. Well, even as sloppy as they did this one, I guess the answer is yes. :D

It also looks like they exported the preamp signal at the output of the tone circuit (output of Treble pot) via a blue shielded cabled to the effects send jack on the rear panel and also flew the signal back from the effects return jack via the same blue multi-conductor cable to the front where a purple sheilded cable routes the signal to an extra added pot (Effects Level I assume) and also back to the point of extraction.

The switch and yellow wires by the power tubes facilitate the same "grid-lift" or "triode/pentode" 100w/50w switch setup you find in Marshall's schematics for the 100/50 Jubilee Series amps, and the Marshall 9005 50/50 Power Amp, and hardwired triode in the Marshall 30w "Artist" hybrid amps of this era.

All in all, well thought out. Steve's Leppard tone was great IMO. Anybody see anything I missed, or have anything to add? Peace. :thumbsup:
Last edited by chrisom on Wed Mar 21, 2012 2:59 am, edited 2 times in total.

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slashl33t
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by slashl33t » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:21 am

I heard the def leppard guys used levi modded amps :shock:
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by HTH » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:28 am

amp sounds great, would be interested to find out what the mods are - looks like the preamp is pretty much stock, just a pre-PI master and a passive effects loop ????
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by charveldan » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:44 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgCoH88s074[/youtube]

The Boys from Sheffield....... :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock:
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by guitar007 » Sun Nov 20, 2016 12:40 pm

Old thread, I know. Has anyone had success trying this mod and getting that tone? This amp sounds fantastic!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iPI8ydY0ET4
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by wdelaney72 » Fri Dec 02, 2016 1:35 pm

Interesting....Steve Clark may have toured with a MV amp, but High N Dry studio guitar sounds like a straight 1959 Superlead with very tasteful layering / compression by a younger Mutt Lange.

High N Dry still probably may favorite recorded rhythm guitar tone...ever.
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Re: Steve Clark's High n Dry/Pyromania JCM 800

Post by chrisom » Fri Dec 02, 2016 5:33 pm

Yeah- The earlier, rawer Def Leppard was definitely better to bang heads to. AC/DC rhythm sounds with Queen layered background vocals, and a heavy dose of teenage angst to boot. Much better than the candy-coated pop ballads that they followed up with... :rock: :thumbsup: :hairband:

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