Hi guys,

Anyone has any clue in order to get the lead tone like this?



It starts at 1.20. The lead-tone sounds like an 'Oboe' (pretty close in terms of tone/frequency)

I'm aware that the Allan's gear was complex (in terms or racks) but I'm pretty sure that we can get a decent tone like this in s-Gear

Thanks in advance

I think it will be difficult to get that tone without some sort of distortion pedal before the amp. If you don't have some stomp boxes, download a demo of Audiority's Big Goat fuzz plugin and stick that in front (perhaps) the Wayfarer.

Was listening to Holdsworth a lot last week myself. I think he was still just using his SS Hartley Thompson amps on Road Games. I read in Guitar Player mag back then that HT designed the "Sustortion" circuit with Alan in mind. There's a free AirWindows plugin called "Density" that actually sounds similar to it here: www.airwindows.com/density-vst/

Running into the Wayfarer is a good choice. The speaker choice has a lot to do with the tone too. He ran two 100W HT amps into different speakers from the Green and Red channels. Not sure what he used on the Red channel, but I'd try the 1x12" Cali Combo S12L for that deep bass charater. Maybe try one with the Rib 121 or 160 mic mixed with a Dyn 57 on another S12L or on an 2x12" Special Ported S12-65. He might have used an EVM12L cab for that, and maybe a JBL D120 cab on the Green channel.

There are some free Neve console type plugins you can run after S-Gear to give it that warm meaty polish. I know Alan liked that old Neve sound. You could try "Coils": www.airwindows.com/coils/

Thank you all guys! Really appreciated
I'll try both suggestions

I'll try to keep it simple, but I can only guess as to how the HT Sustortion circuit worked. I just read a thread posted by an HT amp owner who seemed to know a lot about them. He confirmed that the Sustortion circuit generated only even harmonics, so the AirWindows Density plugin may not be a good choice because it generates mostly odd harmonics. Not sure what to recommend for that, but I know the odd harmonics can be somewhat reduced by turning the Bias knob down on the free Nick Crow Lab "Tube Driver" plugin, which also softens the feel. It has great pre and post filtering options as well. Setting the Oversampling to 8x rounds the top off nicely, but it is a CPU hog.

You might find it useful to run the "PurestDrive" plugin b4 the Tube Driver. Its one slider adds an ultra-smooth subtle saturation/sustain that allows focusing the dynamic emphasis b4 running into the Tube Driver: www.airwindows.com/purestdrive-vst/

You could even add Coils after that for some Neve-like meatiness if you want.

Keep in mind that Alan's guitar pickup was a very high inductance PAF type made by Seymour Duncan, so it likely rolled off below 2kHz depending on his cable capacitance -- my guess is at ~1.6kHz. It's an important element of the sound, along with his picking technique and how the guitar damped the string sound. It may have been his Red Basswood body Charvel, but he had a Spruce body one at one point as well. Probably not a significant tonal difference through the pickup though.

I'm currently using EMG 81TW, 89, 60 and 81 too: likely is not the best choice to mimic that tone but I don't want to be 100% precise, just roughly close