When it comes to guitar players and their ideal electric guitar pickup, frankly, some like it hot. Some need the juice, the output to hit the front end of their guitar amp hard, to make it suffer. But how much is too much output? That is something that Uli Jon Roth has found out, to his considerable expense.
Roth likes ‘em hot. The former Scorpions guitarist speaks from experience when he says that the pursuit of super-hot active pickup tones can be powerful creative tool, and a destructive force.
In a recent interview with Guitar World, Roth says that the active quadruple-coil pickups on his iconic and utterly unique Sky Guitar have pretty much blown up all amps they have come into contact with – bar a notable couple.
“With the Sky guitar I can drive the amp. If it’s set to three to five, not 10, I can make the amp sing like there’s no tomorrow, straight from the guitar," he says. "The guitar is like a spaceship; like a Formula 1 car.”
First, a little background. The Sky guitar is a custom electric guitar that Roth has been playing since, well, it seems like forever now, but 1983 was the year.
Made in England by Andreas Demetriou, the O.G. Sky Guitar established a shape and form that has seen a raft of evolutionary new features. Since 2017, Roth has been selling these outré electric guitars, with the current range made in Germany by Boris Dommenget.
There’s nothing quite like them on the market. Setting aside their Mega-Wing active pickup and preamp systems, they have way more frets than your typical electric – there are 30 on Excalibur, a Galaxy Dragon Sky Series model that has an actual Indian moonstone embedded on the top of the body.
But back to Roth’s dream pickup, the Mega-Wing concept. Having presented the concept to the pickup’s designer, John Oram, he spent three years putting the system together.
“I had a dream of an active system which we called ‘Mega-Wing.’ It had four coils, and originally it was able to switch from power humbucking to perfectly clean,” explains Roth.
Here’s the ‘do not try this at home part’: the Mega-Wing was not just a 12dB of boost, some extra oomph for the solo. “It had a gain stage of 80dB,” says Roth. “You could blow up any amp with that – and I did!”
As it turns out, many tube amps were put out of commission upon contact with the Mega-Wing.
“I blew up Vox AC30s, which lasted about half an hour, and Fender Twins lasted an hour,” says Roth. “I jammed with Steve Morse once, and liked his 5150 amp, so they sent me two.”
The EVH-designed high-gain head was encouraging. Maybe those could have worked.
I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to use that gain stage to the maximum!’
“They sounded great for about 10 seconds,” continues Roth, “then they were fried!”
As anyone who has spoken to Roth before can attest to, he’s not one to be easily deterred. He’s all-in when it comes to the guitar. He wouldn’t have put his name to the Sky Guitar in the first place if he was going to let a few blown vacuum tubes put him off.
But even he was beginning to question the wisdom of all this. Did he really need to give these amps the full 80dB?
“I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to use that gain stage to the maximum!’” says Roth. “I learned which amps were indestructible – old Marshalls Super Leads and the Blackstar Artist. When I play AC30s I don’t turn the gain up, and I make sure there’s enough headroom.”
Sensible move. We all know how good an AC30 sounds with some extra decibels hitting it – especially from a Dallas Rangemaster. Brian May’s Rangemaster had a maximum boost of 33dB.
To produce a great guitar tone you need a lot of imagination. You need to hear it inside yourself and want it
But 80dB? That’s excessive, unless like Roth you’ve got a Marshall or Blackstar in your backline. And if you don’t have 80dB to spare and you’re looking for that perfect tone, just remember what Roth told MusicRadar in 2016: Tone is in the mind.
“To produce a great guitar tone you need a lot of imagination. You need to hear it inside yourself and want it,” explained Roth. “The process takes effort: it’s not easy – you need the right guitar and the right amp.
“You need to adapt your playing to create the right sound. I went as far as buying houses according to sound… that’s the true extent of my deranged mind. I’ve become more normal now, in later age, but I’m still searching for the perfect tone. It’s always difficult. I know some players out there have a great tone most of the time and sound like themselves, but always use the same equipment.
“It’s very much a mental thing: imagine your tone. Use the vision of your subconscious. I’ve never sat down and wanted to sound like Uli Jon Roth; I just wanted to make the sounds I could hear in myself.”
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