Per Nilsson Lead tone

Plugins
1

Hello all,

I love the lead tone in the video links below:

I am not the best at setting amplifiers to get this type of smooth, liquid, "Holdsworth"esque tone. Does anyone have any idea how I can achieve this tone? Presets or a starting point would be much appreciated.

2

My apologies for resurrecting an old post (and creating a thread out of it), but here goes.

Per has stated that for these sounds he uses 3 tracks.

  • 1 track: straight Amp in the middle
  • 2 tracks: left and right channels have a phaser before the amp with slightly different settings for the left and right channels. According to Per, this is key for this particular sound

I am assuming that stereo delays/reverb/eq, etc, are then placed for the left and right channels.

Not too much gain but not too little either. Give treble and mids a kick and cut the bass (Allan used to set the bass to 0 on most amps). Season to taste with presence and depth controls. Of course, this also depends on the amplifier. For example, the settings between the Soldano and Granophyre are wildly different, but both can get Holdsworthian tones.

Get some power stage distortion by cranking the channel master volume to about 6 (depending on the amp, on the Nameless it will be dimed).

FWIW Allan loved the Lead1 distortion on the Yamaha DG amps and the Magicstomp, into a JCM 800 power stage, into a Harness (Allan’s custom reactive load), into a TC1140 parametric EQ, then delays and then into a hyper clean power amp (solid state) and then into a speaker. There also was a TC Electronic booster before the amp to cut the bass and boost the signal.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.

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