Aces High
The opening salvo of Powerslave, faster and more frantic than Run to the Hills. Dave Murray drove his black 'Kossoff' Stratocaster — loaded with a hot DiMarzio Super Distortion humbucker — into a cranked Marshall, while Adrian Smith doubled the harmonized lines. Smith summed up the whole album's guitar sound himself: 'all I paired them with was a 100-watt Marshall and maybe a Tube Screamer.' Producer Martin Birch tracked it at Compass Point in the Bahamas. Standard tuning; the gallop is in the picking hand.
Powerslave
What we checked
Computed by a program, on this recipe, every time this page is built. How this works
Preset files — 1 of 3 complete
- Helix builds complete — every block in the recipe is in the file
- Quad Cortex 7 blocks replaced with a stand-in model
Which ones
Replaced with a stand-in: Noise Gate, Studio Comp, Tube Screamer, Brit 2203, 4x12 Greenback, Plate, Tilt EQ. These load cleanly but are not the model named above — the file will sound wrong here until we map them. Set these blocks by hand.
- Katana 1 block missing from the file; 4 blocks replaced with a stand-in model
Which ones
Not in the file: Reverb. The recipe calls for this block, but we have no verified model ID for it on this platform, so the preset is written without it. Add it by hand using the settings above.
Replaced with a stand-in: Lead, Noise Gate, Booster, Reverb. These load cleanly but are not the model named above — the file will sound wrong here until we map them. Set these blocks by hand.
What we didn't check
- Nobody played this through a real amp. There is no human listening test behind any number on this page.
- The settings are reasoned from the sources below, not measured off the record.
- No audio has been rendered for this recipe yet, so you cannot hear it before you load it.
- 3 platforms on this page (TONEX, Kemper, Fractal) get a model pointer, not a preset file — nothing was built or checked for them.
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