Immigrant Song 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 on the whole track

   guitar
2. Marshall Super Lead 100

   2

   the amplifier, at full output

   amp
3. Marshall 1960 4x12 with Celestion G12M speakers

   3

   the speaker voice

   cab
4. Beyerdynamic M160 ribbon close on the cabinet

   4

   close capture

   mic

Why we think this is right

The prior chain for this song is sound and is largely confirmed: the 1959 Les Paul, a Super Lead run flat out, greenback 4x12s, no pedals of any kind. What needed fixing was one unusable gear name and the absence of any structure. The microphone block was named 'Beyer M160 / SM57' - two different microphones offered as one answer, which tells a player nothing. Page's documented preference in this period was a Beyerdynamic M160 ribbon close on the cabinet, usually with a distant microphone behind it for depth, and that is what the block now says. Nothing credits a microphone on this specific track, so the confidence stays in the medium band and the evidence says exactly why. The SM57 half of the prior claim is recorded as rejected in favour of the better-documented ribbon rather than left hanging. On structure: the prior listed a 'Guitar solo' section mapped to the same amplifier. That is real, but it is not a solo in the sense of a different sound - there is no channel to switch and no pedal to step on. The difference is that Page moves to the neck pickup, which is why the passage is rounder and sustains more. That is written as a pickup change with the amplifier untouched, because writing it as a louder or dirtier amplifier setting would be a fabrication.

Sources

• Led Zeppelin III (1970) recording history and personnel
• Documentation of Page's 1959 Les Paul Standard and Marshall Super Lead amplification in the 1970 period
• Repeated documentation of the Beyerdynamic M160 as Page's preferred close cabinet microphone, paired with a distant microphone for depth
• The recording itself, for the palm-damped riff, the melodic break and the pickup change between them

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