Back In Black guitar tone
AC/DC · Angus Young (lead and answering rhythm, right of the stereo image) and Malcolm Young (rhythm bed, left of the stereo image)
Back in Black (Atlantic, July 1980). Recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau, in April-May 1980, produced by Robert John 'Mutt' Lange and engineered by Tony Platt; mixed at Electric Lady Studios, New York.
The reference cranked-Plexi rhythm sound: two guitars, two non-master Marshalls flat out, no pedals in front except a wireless transmitter used as a boost, and almost no processing after the microphone. All of the dynamics on this record are hands and volume knobs.
The rig AC/DC used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Angus: a Gibson SG Standard of the late-1960s/1970 period, bridge humbucker, tone and volume wide open, routed in the back for the Schaffer-Vega transmitter. Malcolm: his 1963 Gretsch G6131 Jet Firebird 'The Beast', stripped to a single bridge Filter'Tron feeding one volume pot -- no tone control, no neck pickup, no switch.
Amplifier
Two non-master-volume Marshall heads, one per player, and neither has a clean channel or a master volume. Angus: a 1970s four-input 100W Marshall 1959 Super Lead. Malcolm: a 1971 Marshall 1992 Super Bass 100W, voiced with more low-mid and less top. Both are run on the High Treble channel, Input 1, with Volume I doing all the gain. There is no third amp, no channel switching and no drive pedal anywhere on this record.
Cabinet
Marshall 1960B 4x12 loaded with Celestion G12-65s -- one cabinet per head, captured separately and panned hard apart
Microphone
Two Neumann U67s on each cabinet, panned against each other, per engineer Tony Platt's own account. A Shure SM57 close on the cone is carried as a lower-confidence secondary capture; Platt names only the U67s.
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
Get this tone on your rig
Pick your amp or modeller and we’ll build Back In Black for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
WHAT CHANGED IN THIS PASS. Structurally the record was already strong and it has not been cut down: all nine blocks and all five sections survive. Three classes of defect were fixed. (1) CATEGORY VOCABULARY. The cabinet block was filed under the non-canonical category `cabinet` and both microphone blocks under `microphone`; they are now `cab` and `mic`, which are the canonical values. This is a correctness fix, not a rename: a block filed under an unknown category is not recognised as a stage by anything downstream. (2) BLOCK IDS. Four blocks carried ids that named a category rather than their own gear -- `cab`, `sm57`, `u67`, `plate` -- and `svds`, `super_lead` and `super_bass` were bare. Every id now names its own device, and every section reference has been repointed in step so nothing is orphaned. (3) PER-SECTION STATE. All five sections previously listed `engaged` and declared no bypass at all, which renders as 'everything on, always' with no statement of intent. Every section now declares the state of every non-structural block explicitly, and both of them are declared always on, which is the honest answer here rather than a fabricated switch. WHY NOTHING IS EVER BYPASSED, STATED RATHER THAN LEFT SILENT. There are exactly two non-structural blocks in this chain: the Schaffer-Vega Diversity System and the mix-stage plate. The SVDS is a wireless link Angus played through for the whole session -- it is the cable, and there is no footswitch on it. The plate is a mix decision made at Electric Lady after the fact and applies to the whole track. Neither can be switched mid-song, so neither is bypassed in any section, and both are declared always on in their own notes. The dynamic range of this record is entirely the guitar volume knob and the right hand, which is why the section deltas move Angus's volume and never the amps. THE SVDS, AND A DISPUTE I AM RESOLVING IN FAVOUR OF KEEPING IT. It has been suggested elsewhere that Angus was cabled rather than wireless in the studio for these sessions. That claim is not adopted, for two reasons: the source offered for it is no longer retrievable, and it is contradicted by two first-person accounts. Tony Platt, who engineered the album: 'We used Angus's radios to transmit to these amps. The radios actually proved to be quite an important part of the sound, as they added some mid bite.' Angus himself: 'George suggested I use the SVDS in the studio in 1978, then when Mutt Lange came in, he asked me to use the same stuff I was using for my stage sound.' The dispute is recorded here rather than buried; if it is ever substantiated, the fix is to drop the boost block and add roughly 3 dB back to the Super Lead's Volume I, because the SVDS is worth about that much drive and a lift around 250-500 Hz. OTHER RECORDED REJECTIONS. (1) The Neumann U87 that an earlier version of this record carried is rejected outright and is not a matter of preference: Platt names the microphone himself and it is not a U87 -- 'I used two Neumann U67s on each cabinet, so I could pan the result where I wanted. And absolutely no compression was used at all.' The same quote is why there is no compressor block on this record. (2) Greenback-loaded cabinets are rejected for THIS album on an era check: Greenbacks are documented for the 1977-78 records, while guitar.com's rig feature reports Celestion G12-65s in Angus's cabinets across the Highway to Hell / Back in Black period, and the G12-65 entered production in 1978, two years before these sessions. (3) Bridged/jumpered inputs on the Super Lead are rejected: it is a common way to play a four-input Marshall, but no source documents Angus doing it on this record, so Volume II is written at zero and the Normal channel is left unused rather than asserted. (4) No wah, no octave, no pitch device, no delay and no echo unit are in this chain; every squeal and every held feedback note is gain and cabinet proximity. WEAKEST LINKS, HONESTLY. No source assigns either documented head to a specific song, so the Super Lead/Super Bass split between the two players is the catalogue-wide pattern applied to this track rather than a session fact. Every EQ position on both heads is inference. The reverb unit is not named by anyone -- only its amount is documented, as 'subtle' and 'light' -- so the EMT 140 is a most-probable identification at confidence 40. The SM57 is retained at 40 because Platt never mentions a dynamic.
Sources
- guitar.com, 'The gear used by Angus Young and Malcolm Young on AC/DC's Back in Black'. https://guitar.com/features/artist-rigs/the-gear-used-by-angus-young-malcolm-young-on-ac-dc-back-in-black/ -- the SG identifications, the SVDS transmitter routed into the guitar's back, the 1959 Super Lead and 1966-67 JTM50 heads, and the Celestion G12-65 loading.
- GroundGuitar, Angus Young gear history. https://www.groundguitar.com/angus-young-gear/
- Tony Platt (engineer, Back in Black), interview: 'I used two Neumann U67s on each cabinet, so I could pan the result where I wanted. And absolutely no compression was used at all.'
- Tony Platt on the Electric Lady mix: 'the recording isn't heavily processed, aside from some subtle addition of ... light reverb just for extra ambience.'
- Tony Platt on the wireless: 'We used Angus's radios to transmit to these amps. The radios actually proved to be quite an important part of the sound, as they added some mid bite.'
- Angus Young on studio use of the Schaffer-Vega: 'George suggested I use the SVDS in the studio in 1978, then when Mutt Lange came in, he asked me to use the same stuff I was using for my stage sound.' And on the transmitter boost, 1980: 'in the transmitter you've got the same sort of thing. You can really give a guitar hell with 'em.'
- Malcolm Young to Guitar World on the 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird: 'it's the Gretsch on everything.'
- Schaffer-Vega Diversity System production history: first units shipped 1977, Angus from August 1977, production ended 1981-82 (used for the era check at both ends).
- NO SOURCE assigns either documented Marshall head to a specific song, names the reverb unit, or places a dynamic microphone on these sessions. Those three points are inference and their confidences say so.