Ritchie Blackmore The Blackmore sound Richard Blackmore, Englishman, born in 1945, is one of the most controversial and at the same time most dazzling rock guitarists of all time. Until the mid-60s he played mainly hard rock 'n' roll live, usually in front of a few people who liked him but couldn't do anything for him. Then came Deep Purple and the rest is well known. Not so the details mentioned here about Blackmore's guitars, amplifiers, effects and sounds. ES-335 & AC-30 He brought his musical idea of rock to the ears with a red Gibson ES-335 (with retrofitted Bigsby) and a Vox AC-30, a common combination at the time. This already showed his idiosyncrasy. He had screwed the pickups of his semi-resonance so far down that the upper edges of the caps were flush with the mounting frames. The pole screws were then screwed out quite far to compensate. This gave the magnetic field a different, more asymmetrical shape, with the result that the pickup lost compression and output, but gained freshness and dynamics. Richard will remain true to this dynamic for a long time. When he was in a good mood back then, he would sometimes set the mains voltage selector switch on his Vox one position lower - this increased (!) the gear ratio in the mains transformer and all secondary voltages (H.T. and high voltage!) rose slightly, which may have benefited the sound, but not necessarily the longevity of the tubes. And to really knock the Vox out of the park, the then still rather rare treble booster from Hornby-Skewes found its place in the signal chain. Deep Purple Mark I When the legendary Deep Purple was founded in 1968, our guitar rebel, now always dressed in black, was equipped with a brand new Marshall Major head with a brute 200 watt output plus the corresponding speakers - many of the greats of the time used this top-of-the-line model, which Jim Marshall had built at the request of many guitarists who found 50 or 100 watts too little. Ritchie would still use the Vox on stage sometimes until the end of 1969, because the Major has a hell of a sound when turned up high, but at low sound pressure it is too clean - its power amplifier was actually a 200 watt hi-fi amplifier with four fine KT88 tubes in an ultra-linear circuit. The Vox filled this "hole" excellently. Jimi Hendrix introduced the Stratocaster to rock music in the late 60s, and many other guitarists suddenly found this model really good - including Ritchie. And he was particularly fond of the vibrato system; his Strat, a black '68 with a maple neck and glued-on maple fingerboard (maple cap), four-point neck attachment, two-piece vintage vibrato and regular 0.1nF tone capacitor, was given a neat 3/8" fat custom-made lever, which was also used excessively. The strings used were Picato types in gauges .010, .011, .014, .026 (sometimes .028), .038 and .048, and the pick was a pentagonal "house" type made of tortoiseshell. At first, Deep Purple toured the USA frequently and Ritchie's Marshall Major was soon upgraded with two more KT88 power tubes - no mercy! Deep Purple Mark II In the summer of 1969, the Deep Purple personnel carousel began to turn for the first time - singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover joined. This was the beginning of the band's rise to fame and that of Blackmore himself. At the end of 1969/beginning of 1970, the ES-335 was finally retired - it was too harmless, it no longer fit in with Blackmore's aggressive black outfit. The black Strat, on the other hand, was still played until mid-1971. Ritchie only had a few Master guitars in these early days; other guitars were always used for wrecking on stage. When the new Stratocaster series was launched in mid-1971, with new features such as Bullet-Truss-Rod, three-point neck attachment and tilt-adjust neck, one-piece vibrato system with die-cast saddles and 47nF tone condenser he used in Deep Purple. Blackmore chose a sunburst-colored model with a fairly thick maple neck as his new main guitar, and a black one with a maple neck served as a replacement. Since at least mid-1971 (but probably earlier), the Hornby Skewes treble boosters, of which Blackmore owned several, were equipped with additional volume controls. With a reduced level in front of a Vox AC-30 (nicknamed: the cooker), the legendary album 'Machine Head' was recorded in the winter cold - and back then, you could definitely warm your hands and maybe even cook a hot soup on the AC-30. Deep Purple had now reached supergroup status and was touring constantly, so that enormous tensions inevitably arose between the two egomaniacs Gillan and Blackmore - there were increasingly frequent clashes behind the scenes (and sometimes even on stage). Deep Purple's musical highs, documented on the one hand by 'Live in Japan', recorded in autumn 1972, which is generally regarded as one of the best hard rock live albums of all time, and the double live album 'DP in Concert', released in 1980, a performance captured fantastically in a club atmosphere on the occasion of the BBC radio series 'In Concert' in spring 1972 (considered even better by many Deep Purple fans than the regular 'Live in Japan'), were recorded mainly by Blackmore with his Sunburst Strat. Deep Purple Mark III In the summer of 1973, Gillan and, quite surprisingly, bassist Roger Glover, who had been the band's most important source of ideas alongside Blackmore, left under pressure from the choleric Ritchie. Now no new members were to be hired, only employees in the form of David Coverdale (vocals) and the soulful Glenn Hughes (b/vocals) were to fill the vacant positions - according to Ritchie, a power struggle like the one with Gillan should not be repeated! With the new men, a new Stratocaster also entered the Deep Purple Mk3 formation: a '73 with a natural-colored ash body with a maple neck and, for the first time, a deeply scalloped fingerboard. The neck of this Strat was tilted slightly using the tilt neck mechanism and also had a fairly thick neck heel, so that the strings were unusually high above the pickguard and the bridge pickup had to be set to maximum height. So high that a small white plastic plate (2 3/4 × 3/8 × 1/8") was positioned between the string saddles and the vibrato base plate. With this "modification", the Strat sounded quite percussive, which incidentally suited Blackmore's virtuoso single-note phase at the time very well. A black Strat with a maple neck and metal control knobs served as a backup. By playing around with his tape recorder, Ritchie also discovered an echo effect that he liked. So it wasn't long before the tape recorder was also used live, for the first time during the 'Burn' tour in 1974. On this occasion, the treble booster electronics were also integrated into the tape recorder, which made stage operation much easier; the signal chain now ran guitar => tape recorder => amp. This tape recorder became his most faithful companion, both live and in the studio, right up to the modern era! Unfortunately, working with Deep Purple Mk3 did not go as Ritchie had originally imagined. The guys reacted rather indifferently to his stage escapades, for example; Ritchie found no opponent like Ian Gillan had been - his brutal style was practically ineffective and ultimately became an empty end in itself. Rainbow Quite frustrated, Blackmore left Deep Purple in the spring of 1975 and formed his own band, Rainbow. His new opponent was the charismatic singer Ronnie James Dio, the rest of the band was left with extra status, while Ritchie & Ronnie were a really good team for a few years. In the early days of Rainbow, in addition to the ones mentioned above, a white Strat with a maple neck and a black one with metal knobs were used. The famous early '74 Sunburst Strat with a scalloped rosewood fingerboard soon appeared. From that point on, only this type of neck came under the master's finger - apart from show guitars, which usually met an inglorious end because they were splintered. Until the end of the 1970s, only early 70s Fender pickups (2.2 H; 5.7kO) with staggered pole pieces were used in the various guitars. Incidentally, the staggered pole pieces were replaced by Fender at the end of 1974 with (flush) poles of the same height, which allowed for more efficient production. When Marshall's new master volume amps were introduced in the mid-70s, Ritchie also wanted one of these amplifiers - after all, you want to play a ballad sometimes! And for this purpose, a phaser was also needed that could easily handle the not to be underestimated (output) level of the tape machine, which also functioned as a booster. The "Schulte Compact Phasing A" from Germany (subsequently modified) with its ±16 volt operating voltage met this requirement perfectly and was from then on placed on top of the tape in live performances. The "Schulte Compact Phasing" is a professional studio phaser with eight all-pass stages (incandescent lamp/LDR combination), similar to the legendary six-stage Mu-Tron Bi-Phase. From the end of 1976, Blackmore increasingly used a new Olympic White Strat with a rosewood fingerboard and, of course, "staggered" pickups alongside his Sunburst. In the years '76 to '78, Rainbow was at the height of its success with hard, aggressive Blackmore rock. At this point, Ritchie was having fun deceiving interviewers and fans with calculated, half-truths about his equipment - to put it mildly. The rather thin-sounding early '70s Staggered PUs from Fender in that white main guitar (Ritchie smashed the '74 Sunburst Strat in a fit of rage) were later swapped for fat Quarterpounds from Seymour Duncan. Since the Duncans were black, the adjustment knobs and the switch button were color-coordinated. Ritchie kept this black and white appearance of his guitars for the next 25 years. In other guitars, which were now introduced for additional sound nuances (and also because they were hum-free), other pickups (mostly humbuckers in single coil format) were used, e.g. OBL (at that time still with Bill Lawrence) single and double blade types. The reason for the PU and thus sound change was Ritchie's own crazy idea of wanting to storm the US charts with mainstream commercial music, which ultimately only led to the departure of Ronnie James Dio, who did not want to take part in this circus. The powerful-voiced Ronnie James Dio could not be adequately replaced. Blackmore's new Rainbow rock, which interestingly featured Roger Glover as bassist and producer, was too narrow-band and extravagant for the US market with its live, mid-nasal guitar sound - the US audience preferred the fresh and modern sounding Van Halen or George Lynn, for example. Rainbow was therefore hardly able to win new fans in the US, and loyal European fans were annoyed by Ritchie's commercial trip. This definitely put an end to Rainbow in 1984! Deep Purple Mark IV (1984) This event dealt Blackmore a deep blow, which was still evident in the following years at the Deep Purple reunion, when he stood around on stage, motionless and listless. But his guitar technician was not tired yet, because soon another pickup change to the new hum-reducing Lace Sensor (type: gold) followed, and a Roland GK-2 PU system was also installed on a Strat so that a guitar synthesizer could be controlled. Together with the slightly (and questionably) modified Marshall Major preamp, Ritchie's sound now sounded completely awful - somehow it all no longer suited Ritchie as his fans knew him! Rainbow Mark II After his inglorious departure from Deep Purple in 1994, Rainbow was re-formed, without Dio, but at least with a new amplifier, a multi-channel 150-watt model from the German company Engl (tubes: 4x 6L6GC), which clearly did his sound good - the days of the single-channel decibel-spewing Major Saurus Rex were over; however, the old tape machine was still on board. The new formation was now just the backing band for an increasingly disillusioned Blackmore, it no longer had anything to do with him personally. At times the combo cheerfully did its thing as a unit, Ritchie, who was usually standing aside, was only allowed (or had to for contractual reasons?) to hum along a bit. At times he did that quite well - he hadn't forgotten anything. Nevertheless: you can't last long like that in the hotly contested rock circus! In the end, only ultra-hardcore fans gathered in front of the stage, to whom you could serve anything - how frustrating for such a creative and bright mind as Blackmore had been and certainly still is. Mel L. - Gitarre & Bass