Closing out this lovely Classic Rock month with one of my favorites from the era. This song definitely helped a lot of our troops through the Vietnam War, and helped even more guitarists find their passion and drive to play. So, in an homage to a great band and a great song, today I am going to disect Keith Richard’s tone in the 1969 hit “Gimme Shelter”
As with just about everybody else I’ve covered this month, Keith doesn’t use a whole lot of effects pedals (just delay and phase). In fact, he doesn’t use any effects in this song — it’s purely amp tone goodness. Keith almost always plays through 2 amps at once. A Fender Bassman and Twin are his main providers of dirt and tone. So, as with the other artists this month, we have to figure out how to simulate the driven tone caused by an amplifier (or 2).
In this case, I’m going a little outside of the box. I’m going to suggest you pick up an Analog Man AstroTone. If dialed in properly for your amp, this pedal can mimic a smooth overdrive that gets real hairy with a louder guitar input. Just fiddle with the Bias and Fuzz knobs until you have your amp sounding driven nicely. If you’re not feeling Analog Man, you can probably get away with using an Ibanez TS9. If you go the TS9 route, I’d suggest dialing down the Drive some and using the Level knob to push your amp.
Well, that’s it for Classic Rock month. If you liked this themed month, and want to see more like it, send us an email (thepedallab@gmail.com) and make a suggestion. Perhaps Metal Month or Jazz Month, or something else completely!
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