No. 0571971·hard-rock·4 blocks
Black Dog
Black Dog's snarling, compressed riff was recorded with no guitar amp at all. At Island/Basing Street Studios in London (December 1970), Jimmy Page ran his 1959 Les Paul through a direct box into a mic channel of the Helios console and overdrove the console's mic preamp to make the distortion — then fed it through two UREI 1176 compressors in series, the first cranked as a saturation stage and the second doing the compression. Engineer Andy Johns triple-tracked it (left, right, centre). The tone that sounds like a synthesizer is a preamp pushed past its limit, not a speaker.
Led Zeppelin IVSignal path · input → output · 5 blocksLive values · Fractal Axe-Fx
Guitar
Gibson Les Paul Standard 'Number One' (1959)
Pickups
HH
Tuning
bridge (inferred from the aggressive midrange — Page did not document the selector for this track)
Strings
standard
Studio Comp
Studio Comp
Plexi 100W High
4x12 Greenback
Studio Comp
← UREI 1176 #1 (saturation stage)
Threshold
-22dB
Ratio
8:1
Attack
0.0s
Release
0.1s
Mix
1
Level
3dB
Studio Comp
← UREI 1176 #2 (the compressor)
Threshold
-18dB
Ratio
12:1
Attack
0.0s
Release
0.1s
Mix
1
Level
0dB
Plexi 100W High
← Overdriven Helios console mic preamp (no amp used)
Drive
5.5
Bass
4.5
Mid
7
Treble
6
Presence
6
MV
6
Cut
3
4x12 Greenback
← FRFR usability (no cab on the record)
LowCut110Hz
HighCut7500Hz
Level
0dB
Engineer's note
File 057
Black Dog's snarling, compressed riff was recorded with no guitar amp at all. At Island/Basing Street Studios in London (December 1970), Jimmy Page ran his 1959 Les Paul through a direct box into a mic channel of the Helios console and overdrove the console's mic preamp to make the distortion — then fed it through two UREI 1176 compressors in series, the first cranked as a saturation stage and the second doing the compression. Engineer Andy Johns triple-tracked it (left, right, centre). The tone that sounds like a synthesizer is a preamp pushed past its limit, not a speaker.
— Jimmy Page
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