Hells Bells guitar tone
AC/DC
Back in Black AC/DC: two cranked non-master Marshalls hard-panned and captured almost dry with condensers, a Schaffer-Vega compander in front of Angus, and a light plate added at the mix. Nothing is compressed and nothing is scooped.
The rig AC/DC used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Angus Young's Gibson SG on the bridge humbucker, and Malcolm Young's 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird on its single bridge Filter'Tron.
Amplifier
Two non-master Marshall heads: Angus Young's Marshall 1959 Super Lead 100W on the High Treble channel, and Malcolm Young's Marshall 1992 Super Bass 100W. guitar.com also names a 1966-67 Marshall JTM50 among Angus's Back in Black heads. Neither stored head has a master volume or a clean channel: the quiet arpeggiated intro is the same head with the guitar's volume rolled back, not a second amp.
Microphone
Each head into its own Marshall 4x12. Tony Platt, who engineered the album at Compass Point Studios in Nassau: '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.' For Angus's overdubbed solos Platt ran two stacks, one in the main room and one in a live chamber at the far end of the building. The bell itself was recorded by Platt at the John Taylor & Co. bell foundry in Loughborough using Ronnie Lane's mobile - it is not a guitar part and no guitar block should try to make it.
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 Hells Bells for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
The graded defects were no control values, a thin section list, and a clean/gain gap on one non-switching amp. Controls are now on every block, with per-knob provenance: the amps, the guitars, the Schaffer-Vega and the Neumann U67s are documented or reported, while the knob positions on both Marshalls are inferred and labelled so - no source states Angus Young's knob settings for any song. The clean/gain gap is resolved without inventing an amplifier: a 1959 Super Lead has no clean channel and no master volume, and the arpeggiated intro over the bell is the same head with the guitar's volume rolled back, encoded as a per-section volume delta rather than a fictional second amp. Malcolm's Gretsch and Super Bass are added because the record is two guitars hard-panned and the stored chain could only describe one. The mic block is split so the documented Neumann U67 pair Platt describes stands on its own, with the stored SM57 kept at low confidence and its original block id preserved. A light EMT 140 plate is added at 8 percent wet for the mix-stage ambience Platt describes; the amount is documented in his words, the unit is not, and its confidence says so. The bell is a real 2,000-pound bell recorded at a foundry, not an effect.
Sources
- https://guitar.com/features/artist-rigs/the-gear-used-by-angus-young-malcolm-young-on-ac-dc-back-in-black/
- https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/Tips_From_the_Top_Tony_Platt_on_Back_in_Black
- https://www.vintageguitar.com/37811/the-schaffer-vega-diversity-system/
- https://www.groundguitar.com/angus-young-gear/
- https://www.groundguitar.com/malcolm-young-gear/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hells_Bells_(song)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_in_Black