Black Dog guitar tone

The rig Led Zeppelin used

Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.

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.

1. 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard

   1

   the guitar, plugged into a console rather than an amplifier

   guitar
2. Overdriven console microphone preamplifier

   2

   where all the distortion comes from

   preamp
3. Two UREI 1176 limiters in series

   3

   the compression that makes the riff sound enormous

   comp
4. 4x10 tweed speaker voicing, for recreation only

   4

   not on the record - the target voice for playing this live

   cab

Why we think this is right

This is one of the few famous rock guitar sounds with no amplifier in it, and getting that right is the whole job here. Andy Johns has described the method: Page's guitar went straight into a microphone preamplifier on the desk, the preamplifier was driven until it distorted, and the result was put through two 1176 limiters in series. There is no speaker, no cabinet and no microphone in the signal path. That is why the riff sounds the way it does - flat, hard, unnaturally sustained and pushed right to the front - and it is why trying to recreate it with a cranked amplifier never quite works. The prior research had this substantially right and it is confirmed rather than changed. One block is rewritten. It was carried as a cabinet named 'None (recreated 4x10 tweed Bassman)', which reads as though a tweed cabinet were on the record. It is not. The block is kept - the recreation advice is genuinely useful for a player - but it is now named and described as a translation target rather than as history, and its confidence reflects that it is advice, not evidence. The second addition is the shape of the song. 'Black Dog' is call and response: the verses are unaccompanied voice with the entire band silent, and the riff answers them. The prior gave the whole track one scene, which loses the single most characteristic thing about the arrangement. The silence is now written as a scene with no guitar in it.

Sources

• Andy Johns' published accounts of engineering Led Zeppelin IV, describing the direct injection of Page's guitar into a desk microphone preamplifier and the use of two 1176 limiters in series on 'Black Dog'
• Led Zeppelin IV (1971) recording history: Headley Grange with the Rolling Stones Mobile, and Island Studios
• Documentation of Page's 1959 Les Paul Standard as his principal instrument from 1969 onward
• The recording itself, for the call-and-response arrangement in which the band is silent under each vocal line

More example tones

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• Immigrant SongLed Zeppelin
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• BatteryMetallica
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