Blue Wind guitar tone
Jeff Beck · Jeff Beck
Wired, 1976. 'Blue Wind' is Jan Hammer's composition, with Hammer playing the synthesiser and the drums.
Cranked non-master Marshall into humbuckers - sustain from the power section, dynamics from the volume knob
The rig Jeff Beck used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
The refinished 1954 Gibson Les Paul known as the Oxblood, rewired with humbuckers. Its volume knob is the only dynamic control in the rig.
Amplifier
A Marshall Super Lead 100 through the high-treble input, cranked and left alone. It is a non-master head: the Volume control is the entire gain structure and there is no channel to switch to.
Cabinet
Marshall 4x12 with Celestion G12M Greenbacks
Microphone
A close dynamic on the speaker with a room pair behind it; the specific microphones are not published
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 Blue Wind for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
'Blue Wind' is a Jan Hammer piece with Hammer playing synthesiser and drums, and Jeff Beck playing the guitar that answers them. The rig is as simple as it sounds: the Oxblood Les Paul straight into a cranked 100-watt Marshall, with no pedal anywhere in front of it. That matters for how the track should be played back. A Super Lead has no gain knob, no master and no second channel, so it is set once and left; every dynamic in the performance comes from the guitar's volume control and the picking hand. The two scenes here are the unison head and the improvising, and they share one amplifier setting on purpose - there is no build in this song and no amplifier change to write. The microphones and the plate are honest gaps: 1976 sessions of this kind are not documented at that level, and nothing has been invented to cover it.
Sources
- Wired (1976) album credits: 'Blue Wind' written by Jan Hammer, with Hammer playing synthesiser and drums
- Documentation of Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow / Wired period rig - the refinished 1954 Les Paul 'Oxblood' into 100-watt Marshall amplification
- Marshall Super Lead panel layout, which is why this record has no gain control and no channel switching to describe
- The released Wired master, listened to for the volume-knob dynamics, the power-section compression and the plate tail behind the held notes
- No session documentation naming the microphones or the reverb unit for this track was found - recorded here as an explicit gap