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Last week, you learned how to recreate Zakk Wylde’s guitar tone on Ozzy Osbourne’s 1988 album No Rest for the Wicked from the comfort of your own home computer. In this second installment of Zakk Wylde Tech Talk, we’re moving down the pike three years.
In 1991, Osbourne released No More Tears, one of his best known albums, behind only 1980’s Blizzard of Ozz, which was recorded with the late Randy Rhoads. By the time No More Tears dropped, 24-year-old Wylde had been Osbourne’s guitarist for only four years, but today the album’s classic title track and other hits like “Mama I’m Coming Home” are still live favorites.
Some say that Zakk Wylde’s No More Tears guitar tone is the best of his career. While statements like that always bring with it arguments that could last for years, Zakk certainly nailed that rich, fat tone that so many guitarists have come to love.
To get Zakk’s tone on this album, we are going to move from the Ubersonic amp we used in Guitar Rig for No Rest for the Wicked to a Lead 800. You can certainly tell from the image that Lead 800 is Native Instruments representation of the JCM 800.
Some of the biggest changes we will make with this preset are in the cabinet settings, but we’ll get to that in a minute. For now, let’s focus on the amp and the settings we have there.
The first thing you will want to do is click on the Boost button so it’s red. That will give you a little more gain in the amp and is important to the overall sound we are going for in this Zakk preset.
Now use the knobs on the amp to these settings: Master 9, Pre-Amp 10, Bass 9, Mid 5, Treble 5, and Presence 4.5. If you have your guitar plugged in, give a strum and you should hear a nice high-gain sound. But we’re not done yet.
Now let’s look at the cabinet. Guitar Rig has what is called a Matched Cabinet. This means that anytime you choose an amp, it automatically choose a cabinet for you that matches the amp. You don’t have to use it, but in some cases it makes the most sense―this is one of those cases.
We have a Lead 800 4x12 with the volume at about 6. The change that is going to make the most difference here is the Dry to Air setting. Move that slider to about 55-60 percent Air. Now strum your guitar. If you want to test out your setting, strum a chord and move that slider around. If gives you a subtle stereo effect. This will become accented even more as we begin to add effects. You should also play with the A/B mic setting―I have mine set to about 35 percent.
Now for the rest of the effects. Starting at the top, we have a chorus pedal with Speed 1, Intensity 3, and Width 3. The Tube Compressor Input 5, Threshhold 6, Ratio 7, Attack Just off Zero, Release 1, and Gain 6.
The Screamer is Volume 3.5, Tone 7, and Drive 10. I put in a Quad Delay as well, but the settings are very low. This is meant to accentuate the Dry, Air cab setting that we used earlier, so it’s really not using a long delay as much as giving a little extra punch to what we’ve already done. I’d recommend playing with the delay settings until you’re happy with the sound.
That’s it for Zakk’s No More Tears guitar tone. Below, you'll find a downloadable preset for Guitar Rig users.
Click here to download the Guitar Rig preset.
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here for free Zakk Wylde tablature from:
