Citation:
Uli's answer:
Hello Per,
Here are some answers regarding my equipment in the early days:
1) The guitars were not modified in any way except for the heavy duty tremolo system.
2) My picks tended to vary – very early on I used Fender medium, but soon I started using stronger plectrums such as Joergensen Heavy, which I played for quite some time. The picks I use nowadays are even heavier.
3) My string gauges have always varied, but I have always favoured heavier bass strings. The top-string during Scorpions was always a 008. The B probably 011. The G was 015 – the others varied a lot.
During Electric Sun I played heavier strings in general – on the ‘Earthquake’ album they were quite heavy with probably a 052 bass string and a 011 top-string. For the 'Fire Wind' album I went to slightly lighter strings with an 09 at the top – then I started favouring 014 G strings, because I preferred the sound.
4) The Roland 301 Echo only made an appearance just before Tokyo Tapes – I didn’t use echo before then during Scorpions days. (I did use it before Dawn Road, though). Whatever echo you are hearing on those albums was created in the studio.
5) I did have quite a few effects lying around and used them now and then – but not very often during ‘serious’ or melody driven leads. Here is what I can remember:
I had an Electric Mistress Flanger which I used on a couple of occasions.
The Univibe made its first and, I believe, only appearance on ‘I’ll Be Loving You Always’.
I used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face during ‘Fly To The Rainbow’ at the end of the song. This was also used at the beginning of the track ‘Earthquake’.
The ‘Polar Nights’ lead sound was played through a Roland Jet Phaser, which you can also hear at the end of ‘Enola Gay – Hiroshima Today?’
The Wah-Wah pedals tended to be Vox Cry Baby. I played most of my leads through it back then in order to achieve a more singing tone, but onstage it tended to be very piercing and extremely loud, which is why I always used cotton-wool in my ears. I don’t use these piercing sounds any more, nor do I use cotton-wool, but against the drums these brutal, relatively thin sounds were cutting through better.
6) My main Marshall amp was always the same: 100 Watt Super Lead Tremolo from 1972. To this day I have not found a better one for my needs, although I have other Marshalls which sound great, but this one gives me more magic.
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Citation:
As far as pedals go Uli has used a variety in the past. On the TSG album the pedals he used were a cry baby 535 whah, a roland jet phaser(which gives distortion along with a phase shifter) a digitech whammy pedal, and roland RE-301 space echo chorus. His amplifiers were his 1971 Marshall super tremolo and a fender twin. Also for some of the songs he used a reissue plexi super lead marshall in tandem with the other amps. In the two songs you mentoined the distortion sound came from the gain knob on the sky guitar in combination with amps turned up loud. Then he would back off the gain knob for the clean parts. This allows him to have seemless transitions from high gain to crystal clean guitar sounds.
On the american tour Uli played his main 7 string Mighty Wing most of the time. There were a couple of shows where he played the six string sky guitar, sky III, however for the most part it was Mighty Wing that took center stage. The pedal and amp configuration was like this. He used a Cry baby 535 whah, a roland jet phaser, a reissue fuzz face (dallas arbiter), a korg stage tuner, a roland volume pedal and a roland RE-201 space echo. His RE-301 had a frozen gear and could not be used for the tour. He settled for the RE-201 even though it did not sound as good as the RE-301. At the first two shows of the tour he rented a Roland RE-501 but returned it after the ventura show in california. He used the RE-501 for both of those shows House of blues Los angeles and ventura theater.After the first show in chicago the jet phaser switch began to malfunction so for the rest of the shows he replced the jet phaser with a pedal called an afro fuzz. This pedal was bright Yellow but I am not sure who the maker is. Uli also had an on off switch for the echo designed by Peter Cornish and an amp switching pedal also designed by Pete. The main power supply box for the sky guitars was also new and designed by Pete.
As far as the amp configuration goes Uli had his 100 watt super tremolo running through a marshall full stack. A new Vox handwired AC-30 running through a marshall half stack and his custom sky amp designed by Alan Cyr running through half of a stereo marshall half stack. He would use the custom amp switching pedal to switch between different combinations of the amplifiers.In a nut shell this is most of what Uli is using today. I did not go into what he was using in the far past but we can leave that for another time. And by the way that was a pretty good response to my first post by NmUK however I think he was slightly offended by some of my points. This was not my intention and if anyone did get offended I sincerely apologize. Good luck to all and keep it coming.
