Après le fils, le père : FRANK ZAPPA
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Zappa himself used to have a pedalboard, but it has never been clear to me what pedals he used, I read that he used the Oberheim Controlled Voltage Filter pedal at some point.
I also read that Zappa also had a perametric EQ installed in his (Stratocaster) guitar, which enabled him to boost frequencies to obtain feedback.
Further pedals Frank Zappa used were :
Dan Armstrong Green Ringer
Mu-Tron Phase
MXR Digital Delays
Roland GP-8 Processor
12 Button Stereo Relay Switcher
Mu-Tron III Envelope Filter
MicMix Dynaflangers
Electro- Harmonix Big Muff
Rat Distortion Pedal
Hush II B Noise Reduction Unit
and the Electro Wagnerian Emancipator
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Zappa liked his tone loud, abrasive, and raw. His guitar techs—among them David Robb, Midget Sloatman, and Meri Saunders, Jr.—all attest to Frank's spot-on ears and no-bull approach to attaining the sounds he wanted.
Sloatman developed an onboard preamp/EQ system that was eventually installed in nearly every guitar Frank played. "They were identical parametric filter circuits," explains Sloatman. "One of the filters was set for the bass frequencies from about 5oHz to 2kHz, and the other one was set for the top end, from about 500Hz up to 20kHz." The filters had a variable resonant frequency ("q") independent from the EQ gain. "You could find a tone and get right on top of it, tweak it. and nail it," says Sloatman. The Q ranged from .7 to 10, or a very wide dynamic range to a very narrow one, and was adjustable via a 1/4" screwdriver notch on the face of the guitar. This allowed Frank to control his feedback characteristics in any hall. He could basically tune his guitar to the room, find out how the room responded to the amplifier, and dial it up so he could have maximum control of the feedback. That was the whole point behind the equalizers. But Frank also played a lot with his left hand, and in order to hear the nuances—the string presence—he'd have to bring the treble up, which is another thing he liked about the filters. He could pick high frequencies anywhere from 4k to 8k and bring out the nuances of the strings, so you could hear what his fingers were doing, even if he wasn't picking every note."
The Seymour Duncan humbuckers in Frank's Les Paul could be switched between single-coil, humbucking, or single-coil out-of-phase settings, and a toggle switch controlled whether the pickups were wired in series or parallel. A 9-position wafer switch afforded all the possible combinations. The Les Paul and the Hendrix Strat also housed a Dan Armstrong-designed Green Ringer, which, explains Sloatman, "is a low-pass filter into a DC rectifier circuit. Because it's trying to convert AC to steady DC, it produces an abundance of a second harmonic. It kind of feels like it's feeding back, because you play a note and instantly hear the octave. But any time you play more than one note, it does this horrible modulation stuff, which Frank loved."
Zappa admitted to being "real fussy about equalization." and he used his wah-wah pedal more as an equalizer than a dynamic device. "Very seldom do I just step on it on the heat like on the old Clapton records where he goes wacka-wacka-wacka," he told Rosen. "Usually what I do is shape the notes for phrasing with it, and the motion of the pedal itself is very slight. I try to find one center notch that's going to emphasize certain harmonics, and ride it right in that area. As a matter of fact, I think I was one of the first people to use wah-wah. I'd never even heard of Jimi Hendrix at the time I bought mine. I had used wah-wah on the clavinet, guitar, and saxophone when we were doing We're Only In It For The Money in '67, and that was just before I met Hendrix."
Frank produced gorgeous tones with the Mu-tron Bi-Phase and Octave Divider, as well as a voltage control filter (VCF) circuit from an old Oberheim keyboard, which provides the insanely funky sample-and-hold percolation effect heard on "Ship Ahoy" from Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More. In 77 he touted an "attractive little device" he called the Electro Wagnerian Emancipator, which he claimed combined a "frequency follower with a device that puts out harmony notes to what you're playing. You can have your choice of any 12 chromatic notes in four parts following your runs. You can't play chords with it, but linearly it'll follow you whether you bend or whatever. Its main drawback is that the tone that comes out of it is somewhat like a Farfisa organ." On later tours, Frank's rack boasted a pair of MXR digital delays, a Roland GP-8 processor, an Electro Harmonix Big Muff, two Oberheim VCF cards, and a Mu-tron Bi-Phase. He'd also incorporate the Synclavier into his stage sound, controlling it via a Roland synthesizer pickup. The only devices Zappa kept footside were a Rat distortion box and his CryBaby (which were sent through a Hush IIB noise reduction unit) and a 12-button stereo relay switcher, designed by David Robb, which directed Frank's signal to one of three or four amp setups and brought effects in and out as desired.
On the Mothers' debut album, Freak Out!, Frank used a Fender Deluxe amp. For '70s al bums like Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe, and Zoot Allures, he generally relied on a simple Pig-nose for studio work, switching to Marshall 100-watt heads and Orange amps for tours. On the 1988 tour, according to Meri Saunders, Jr., Frank used a combination of Marshall, Carvin, Seymour Duncan, and Acoustic 100-watt heads in stereo and mono configurations. All the amps had paralleled, hot-rodded inputs doubled into the bass channel, and each setup had a characteristic tone that Frank could blend in or isolate at will using his relay switcher. For a nasty tone, a single Marshall JCM 800 drove two 1x12 cabs with EVs. The wet signal from the VCF, flangers, and Mu-tron Bi-Phase drove a pair of Marshalls into two open-back 4x12 cabs with Celestion speakers. The clean signal from the Roland GP-8 was fed from two Carvins into 4x12 Marshall cabs. Another wet signal from the GP-8 and the MXR DDLs was sent to a pair Acoustic amps into two closed-back 1x12 EV cabs. All the speakers were kept under the band riser pointing towards the rear of the stage, miked with Sennheiser 421s—and it was loud. When Frank tore into one of his solos, Saunders says, it "felt like the stage was taking off." Vai describes Zappa's 1981 sound as "Godzilla meets Mothra. It was devastatingly loud, heavy, and feedbacky." Frank stayed mobile in concert with Nady 700 series wireless systems.
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Q: What kind of effects did you use on the guitar throughout the album?
FZ: I used a MicMix Dynaflanger and Aphex compressors. The signal is compressed after the hanging. And the hanger is set to follow the envelope of the high-frequency decay, rather than the amplitude envelope.
Q: What kind of difference would that make?
FZ: It gives a totally different sound. It makes a more pillowy effect from that particular device.
Q: Why would you compress the signal after the flanger?
FZ: Well, for one thing, you would compress it if you didn't want more hanger cycle. And hangers boost certain frequencies in the midrange that go hog-wild if you don't control them. So we started off just to control those frequencies, and then by cranking that Aphex compressor to some ridiculous extent we got this other kluge sound.
