Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed guitar tone
Thin Lizzy · Brian Robertson
Johnny the Fox (1976), Thin Lizzy's funk-inflected mid-70s studio album
Funky edge-of-breakup: a jumpered non-master Marshall head driven flat out, coloured by a Colorsound wah on the rhythm figure and both solos
The rig Thin Lizzy used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
1973 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe
Amplifier
Marshall 1959 Super Lead 100W, both channels jumpered - one amp for the whole song; the rhythm-to-solo lift is the guitar's own volume and the wah, not a second amplifier
Cabinet
Marshall 1960B 4x12 Cabinet
Microphone
Shure SM57
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 Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
The graded fault was tone_gap only. A 1959 Super Lead has no master volume and no second channel, so the sections here do not switch amps -- they are the same jumpered Marshall for the whole song, and that is now stated explicitly in this amp block's own notes as well as in this summary, with a full ramp of absolute channel-volume positions written across all three sections rather than left flat. The section bindings for the wah and the WEM Copicat carried over unchanged from the stored record, because they were already correctly bound (wah bypassed on the Intro/Main Riff and Verse, engaged on the solo) and did not need repair. Overall confidence is left at the stored value of 75, which is well supported by the extensive documentation of Robertson's Colorsound wah, WEM Copicat and jumpered Marshall rig for this era.
Sources
- Thin Lizzy, Johnny the Fox (Vertigo, 1976) -- album credits
- guitargangsters.net -- Brian Robertson rig features
- seymourduncan.com -- Brian Robertson gear retrospective
- Premier Guitar -- Brian Robertson rig analyses
- Vintage Pedal & WEM Copicat Community Consensus
- Prior stored research record for this song