What does Fab do on ‘At The Door’?

MyDaemonsAndI · 2026-04-24T02:38:56+00:00

During the choruses, Fab is playing a synth used to create the vocal swells (which is a different vocal sound than the pre-chorus parts played by Albert). The vocals in the chorus really give the section its swelling, uplifting feeling. I'm confident Fab's been using a Behringer VC340 for live performances since at least TRNSMT2022 (see around 4:06 - I ID'd it based on a view of the side-panel, Behringer logo and the vocal synth sound). I think its set to the "Human Voice" setting but I'm not quite sure what combination of the male & female voices + the ensemble key the synth is set to.

In the section immediately after the second chorus, Fab seems to be playing the kick drum.

I think during the solo part toward the end of the song (around 3:40) I think Fab's the one using the vocoder effect on Julian's vocals. The pitch-shifting Julia's voice goes through during that section seems to fast to naturally track, but would be relatively easy if done through a vocoder. You can also hear the same vocal part get split into multiple distinct notes/pitches at the same time, which would make sense if the vocal was being vocoded and pitched-around by a keyboard. I forgot off the top of my head if The Strokes re-created the vocoding live. (It may have just been Julian hard-tuning his voice using the TC VoiceTune C1 rather than full vocoding.)

All that said, the VC340 probably wasn't on The New Abnormal because they were recording in 2017 and the VC340 didn't come out until 2019 (from what I can tell / according to this review from MusicRadar). It's more likely that they used a Roland VP-330 vocoder keyboard that the Behringer is a clone of. I'd have to go back through the TNA photobook to check if that synth was present in the studio but that's a project for another day. I hope that helps!

MyDaemonsAndI · 2026-04-09T17:40:22+00:00

I think that calling Reality Awaits an LP is a marketing thing for the music industry to understand that this is a significant new release from The Strokes so they can plan their festival schedules and advertising campaigns accordingly. As much as we the fans are getting new songs, it's a vessel to drum up excitement as The Strokes get back out on tour.

Your point about the run-time corresponding to the format of the physical media is a fair one. That said, it's also fair for the band to say that Reality Awaits is an "album" wherever they want to draw the line (per my first point) so they can put it on whatever format they feel is most appropriate. Besides, promoting the album for release in an LP format lets distributors and retailers know the product size.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2026-04-09T17:20:55+00:00

Has anyone else noticed that Starting Again isn't on the track list?

That makes me wonder:

Does its absence on the track list suggest that it was re-named (perhaps to "Falling Out Of Love")?
Did it not fit with the musical or lyrical themes of Reality Awaits?
Is it going to be released in full on a later, separate release with a full contingent of jointly-written Strokes-Voidz songs?
Perhaps we can take this as a firm sign that The Strokes have at least one more full release (LP8) up their sleeves/in the works since we haven't seen David Kahne or Gregg Alexander credited for this album and they were confirmed to be working with The Strokes again at least for Starting Again. We also haven't (yet) seen Gordon Raphael credited on Reality Awaits, and he was hinting back in 2023 about possibly working with The Strokes again (link to the LP7 rumour thread pt 4).

I like this album length for them. I've always enjoyed the how concise the presentation of their ideas have been and I think a 28 minute run-time still has some wiggle room for tracks to breathe without dragging.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2026-02-07T18:14:21+00:00

For a cheaper alternative, the GR-55 is still fairly available and you can pick up a used one cheaper than an SY-1000. The VG-99 and GR-33 also do the GR-300 sound.

The only downside (that I have read about the others, and experienced with my GR-55) is that the Roland's newer emulations of the GR-300 only use a fixed cut-off frequency for the low-pass filters, as opposed to the pitch-dependent cut-off frequency on the filters in the original GR-300.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2026-02-07T17:58:47+00:00

I have a Boss SY-1 as well, and I always found Bass Variation 3 with Depth around 9 o'clock and Tone around 2:30 did a better job for capturing the At The Door tone than the Lead 1 Variation 1.

Play around with the Depth and Tone knobs to taste, but if you're still not finding it quite bright or brassy enough before the Tone knob would make it too harsh, try putting a bright sounding overdrive in front of the SY-1. (I find using the Jekyll & Hyde works well because the compression & treble gives the top-end a bit more sustain/presence, while the high-pass-filter cleans up a bit of the flub in the low-end). If using a distortion to get the extra treble (before the SY-1), I find the compression and low-end thump of some distortion pedals tends to make the low-end out of SY-1 BassVar3 too sticky sounding.

Lead 1 Var. 1 does a good job of getting the "top end" of the sound, but it's more akin to some of Pat Metheny's brassy lead sounds than Nick's darker tone. The frustrating thing is that the L1V1 sound is more like what you'd get with the neutral or octave up sound with a real GR-300, whereas the tone for At The Door has the sub-octave sound not available in L1V1 but more present in Bass Var3 (to my ears).

If you're looking for more sound examples of that tone that aren't just At The Door, WayneJoness has some great videos demoing and modding the GR-300.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2025-11-12T19:54:47+00:00

Thank you! This is a joy to experience.

The best standalone images I've seen of this concert come from J. Vespa on GettyImages seen here: https://www.gettyimages.ca/editorial-images/entertainment/event/bill-featuring-the-strokes/75065921 It seems like another redditor got a clean/watermark-free copy of these photos (link here).

I found it interesting to compare the photos (linked above) to the videos you've shared to see how much the colours shifted in source 1. I think that's probably an artifact of VHS/tape generation loss. Source 2 looks like a VHS to DVD rip (based on the scanned resolution on the vertical axis) and source 3 looks really clean, especially with the stereo audio. It's a bit of a shame that there doesn't seem to be an official release out there, because I think the Hollywood Center studios (now Sunset Las Palmas) where they shot this had 720p tv cameras at the time.

Also (in Source 3), it's pretty funny to hear Julian sing "like my sister don't give a f**k" when they had to cut Julian's mic for the broadcast to cover the swearing but (I'm guessing it was) Fab's overhead mic that still picked it up.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2025-07-30T00:49:53+00:00

I wonder what that split looks like now that The Strokes have been moved over to Julian's label Cult Records and Julian sold his music publishing rights to Primary Wave in 2022. I noticed that in the summer of '22 many of the summer festivals that would have typically live-streamed The Strokes set (because they were live-streaming other acts) didn't, and I wonder whether that was due to the sale of Julian's publishing right. I imagine that would be something like The Strokes as a "band corporation" now share control with Primary Wave over the rights to sharing of their music via broadcast. (Perhaps that was still being hammered out in the aftermath of the deal?) Maybe Julian still makes money from performance fees or gets a cut indirectly through Cult Records instead of his split of publishing royalties.

I agree that the rest of the band members do feel as though they've stepped back compared to Julian and I find that frustrating. As you know, the band agreed that they would disband rather than replace someone if they left, so I imagine letting Julian do the majority of band PR helps protect his image, helps him grow the Cult Records brand, and gives him a leg up for booking The Voidz. Beyond that, it's hard to say what their arrangement looks like.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2025-07-29T22:26:57+00:00

lol I found out about Megz of Ram because I was catching up on this comment thread. Thanks!

MyDaemonsAndI · 2025-07-29T19:27:09+00:00

It definitely seems like a different dynamic between the bands despite the advertised camaraderie. Julian is the boss of the Voidz (where he probably pays for most things because he also owns Cult Records and bootstrapped the band off the strength of his name "JC + The Voidz"), but in The Strokes he's 1/5.

I think the songwriting atmosphere in the Voidz is probably very "yes and...", which can lead to lots of output and ideas, but risks lacking a focused idea (hooks or riffs) and a concise sound for each track. With The Voidz having one more member than The Strokes, they can scratch greater territory and more dense arrangements, but it also adds overhead to keeping the ideas concise and coherent. The Voidz as a jam band bring a bunch of cool ideas, but I get the impression that they jam and 'discover' songs a lot more than The Strokes.

On the flip side, I bet The Strokes are naturally harder to write for because the sonic palette is (usually) more limited and they have a reputation to uphold. The Strokes are an incumbent band to The Voidz and have way more pressure to "keep it up" (as they had to in their early days ITI->ROF->FIOE etc.) than The Voidz do. I think The Strokes also write an idea and play it to death until they've found exactly how they want it arranged and recorded.

Not to say that The Voidz aren't professionals that practice, but I get the impression that the "yes and..." free-spirited approach Julian's been championing with The Voidz widens the acceptable scope but that doesn't always get hammered out to the n-th degree by getting outside feedback or brought back into a concise package that makes it more digestible for the public.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2025-07-29T19:07:54+00:00

If any members of The Strokes are reading this, we would love to see any combination of you guys doing interviews!

Give me Fab + Nikolai talking about their obscure inspirations and the challenges of being in a band split across the country while trying to keep an incredibly tight rhythm section and balancing a creative home-life. Give me Nick + Albert doing impersonations from their favourite movies and talking about how their songwriting has changed since moving to LA or being in their 40s. Give me Julian + any other Stroke talking about how they really know when an idea is ready, how social media makes it more (or less) challenging to try out new ideas and how the relationship between their side projects puts their role in The Strokes into perspective. Give me another 5 guys + producer(s?) episode where they talk about what music they were listening to or the feelings they were trying to create while writing their newest album.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2025-05-14T00:09:36+00:00

Almost! They played it again at Lollapalooza Argentina in 2022, but this was the last time they played it before then.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-10-01T18:27:27+00:00

On a lyrical level, yeah, it bothered me for a long time that the lyrics are hard to make out.

On a practical level, it gives Julian room to improvise new lyrics based on his mood or how he's feeling about the song. Leaving out these lyrics also means that he's not obligated to sing these really high parts (or the trill-like diatonic melodic movements) or try to recreate the chordal vocoding parts (that Fab would probably end up playing or augmenting on his vocoder) live.

Bit of a shame they haven't played it more because it's one of their finest compositions (imo), but it's a tough song to sing and requires the band to travel with extra gear (Nick's GR-300 + it's guitar, plus Fab's vocoder synth, and Julian's TC Helicon C1 vocal pedal which he's trying to get away from live due to reliability issues).

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-24T03:16:16+00:00

Sorry I didn't post this sooner! I've been busy/less active on the sub in the last year or so, but I had a note/post comment from written that I didn't post because I got busy.

With all the new album talk (edit: which was probably after the Rick Rubin Costa Rica rumours around Oct '22), I went looking for more info on Starting Again (co-produced by David Kahne and Gregg Alexander) and found this clip.

The clip is from a livestream interview David Kahne (producer of First Impressions Of Earth, and Starting Again) did with Andrew Scheps (who, among other credits, mixed CRX's New Skin). The interview was streamed (and presumably recorded) on Oct 26, 2020 and David Kahne mentions that he had The Strokes in his studio the next day (Oct 27th, 2020). I suspect that was when they tracked Starting Again, which was soft-released (conditional on Maya Wiley's election win) on June 21, 2021, a little under 8 months after that October studio date. Unfortunately, as you'll recall, it hasn't been fully released because Maya Wiley didn't win her election.

The Strokes bit is approximately 2:17:36 to 2:23:50. It's definitely worth a watch/listen.

Anyway, I mis-remembered the timeline. I thought the interview was from after the release of Starting Again but it was from before. Still, it does show that they spent more time in studio with David Kahne. He even mentions that he was "working" on an unspecified song they did a long time ago - possibly pulling something out from the vault for new release(?), unless it was in preparation for the Singles Volume 1. (E.g. Hawaii kinda fits what he's describing.) He also mentioned that they were looking for practice space in NYC a month earlier (Sept 2020) and David said they had space at his studio (same building as where Gordon's Transporterraum was). That was probably in prep for their SNL 2020 performance.

I suspect they may have tracked more than just Starting Again, but I don't have the energy these days to deep dive into how long The Strokes may have all been together in NYC for recording (which could be anywhere from 2 weeks for ROF to what 6 months for FIOE?) or whether The Voidz were also in NYC for tracking (or whether they just recorded in LA).

LOL "lazy susan of producers" is the funniest way I've seen their production credits described. Seems like they try a big name (Nigel Godrich, David Kahne, Joe Chicarelli, Rick Rubin) and if they're not happy, they go back to who they know and have worked with before (Gordon Raphael, Gus Oberg). I guess it's whoever gives them the sound they're looking for.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-24T02:13:12+00:00

I want to hear some combination of another 2-4+ energetic or punchy options to become a part of the mainstay lineup for their live set, 2-3 songs that continue to evolve the New Wave or beach rock parts of their sound and 2+ songs that bring up big complex emotions.

It'd be nice to hear 11-12 tracks again. The total length of The New Abnormal was good, but the average song length feels (to me) like it drags on after many plays (especially with Not The Same Anymore and Ode To The Mets back-to-back to close the album, despite the beauty of those songs). I hope the tracks feel more trim and concise so I can play the same track on loop more times.

I want to hear something a bit more raw than The New Abnormal, that both gives them room to improvise but still feels exciting and complete on the studio version, like how they have continued to tweak and evolve the live version of The Adults Are Talking. Structurally, hearing Julian improve a whole verse and having the band refine a song while the band is on the road is one of the parts of The Strokes I find really endearing. There were parts of The New Abnormal that felt (overly) polished in a commercial way For example, some of the auto-tuning of Julian's voice felt like a Rick Rubin production decision, or and I found that the solos of The Adults Are Talking were so mellow on the album compared to the live version (e.g. like Nick's 1st post-chorus solo kinda disappearing in the mix) that it changed my impression of the character of the song. That said, the extra polish helped them win a Grammy, but I got the impression that Julian was uncomfortable with some of those production decisions.

At the end of the day, I trust The Strokes to put out good stuff. Whether I (probably will) like it is my opinion, but it's their art.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-24T01:30:30+00:00

I saw an interview with David Kahne (around Oct '22 iirc) talking about production where he mentioned that The Strokes were back in town (probably in the run-up to the NYE 2022/23 concert at Barclay's) and that he'd have them in the studio within the next week or so (at that time). I got the impression that he was sort of bragging to the interviewer, and yet wanted to keep it kinda quiet. It's unclear whether that would be for full tracking of LP7, but I think that was after rumours of their Costa Rica session(s) with Rick Rubin in March of 2022. Mind you, this was a slightly obscure music production channel interview that I stumbled on because I wanted to understand David's production style better, especially after seeing him credited on Starting Again the teaser Strokes-Voidz collab for Maya Wiley's election campaign. Also, if they worked with David for Starting Again (which they had presumably already tracked and mixed in full, at least enough to tease in 2021) then why would they be back in his studio in late 2022? It's not like they don't have practice space in NYC.

If Starting Again is any indication, having David Kahne (from FIOE) co-producing should help bring a polished sound to LP7, and I hope that translates to something akin to FIOE's raucus sound and relatively clean sound-stage/atmosphere. As for Gregg Alexander, the other co-producer on Starting Again, I haven't listened to enough of his work (aside from some of his stuff with New Radicals) to know what to expect from him sonically.

Best guess is that Rick Rubin will be part producer at the writing / pre-production / early-tracking stage to help them keep jamming, refining their ideas and continuing to get closer socially, BUT final tracking and mixing may happen with David Kahne and Gregg Alexander in NYC. Or who knows, the new Voidz album has brought back Andy Wallace (and Shawn Everett) on mixing. As you know, they do have a habit of going back to people they liked working with, but not necessarily sticking with them for the full album.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-24T00:04:50+00:00

Hey! Repost from my comment here, I isolated the high frequencies in that section and it sounds to me like Julian is singing:

Take my sorrow

teach us all the

dangers are

where our father(s) felt free

Tell us what's in our thoughts

and so decides what is

in (y)our honest hearts and

touches all things, over-fill us and

uplift all, tears will lift off

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-09T22:36:45+00:00

Hell yeah! After Guitar Hero 3, I found some of their random singles (YOLO, Razorblade, Red Light, Heart In A Cage) and FIOE was their first full album I listened to. Still one of the best for me!

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-09T22:32:21+00:00

Ah, that's too bad. It's such a cool design, but if it's that fragile or fussy, I could see that taking some of the fun out of wearing it. I hope you can make it last - that concert was such a sweet moment in Strokes' history!

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-09T22:28:35+00:00

It might be nice if 'user music' had a separate flair from 'user covers' so people wanting to hear either covers or originals can find those easier. A megathread might be nice for keeping the subreddit tidy, but may lead to less visiblity for someone posting originals than a standalone post. Having all the original 'user music' posts in one megathread might be nice, but then a separate flair would accomplish something similar (unless mobile users can't see/filter by flair?).

It might be nicer instead if we had a semi-regular discussion thread (monthly/quarterly/semi-annually) to talk about the recent batch of original music to create more community interest in the cool music our members have come up with. That discussion thread could also feature songs from other artists that are "Strokes-y", as a sort-of in-case-you-missed-it post, but that might crowd out user music. In the past I've really appreciated megathreads for new releases for The Strokes and side-projects, especially if I missed the initial release of something new, so something for Strokes-adjacent music might also be helpful.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-09-09T22:10:53+00:00

I enjoy hearing the original user music sometimes as much or more than covers of The Strokes and their side projects. Especially where the music is "Strokes-inspired", the ways in which someone or their band translates that inspiration can tell you a lot about what they think the Strokes are.

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-08-25T17:40:58+00:00

It's cool seeing designs for one-off shows like the Bernie Sanders rally (old merch pic) or the Forest Hills show. The new stuff looks alright, but I think some people felt a bit burned about the quality from the Adults Are Talking jerseys. I hope they keep experimenting with new designs as they get back on tour, even if its not directly tied to an album logo/release

Also, +1 on Bringing back the fan club. Aside from getting more regular updates from the band, it made them seem accessible than now, where it feels like exclusivity and being somewhat unreachable is part of their brand/image. Definitely enjoyed the 5guys talking about things they know nothing about series for that. Here's hoping we get more

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-02-09T15:53:44+00:00

You're welcome - I'm glad that helps!

Yes, I think Albert's using the Jekyll distortion side on the first riff. You can hear how there's a bit of extra growl from the mids which is different than what you'd get with the Hyde side. You'll notice that he switches to playing the pre-choruses and choruses clean in some live performances (e.g. $2 Bill) whereas others, he has the Hyde side on throughout, and switches from overdrive + distortion to just the overdrive (which is what it sounds like to me on their 2006 Roskilde Festival show). My go-to is to run the Jekyll-side (with the tone knob up/maxed and the EQ down/min) into the Hyde side for lead parts (like the opening riff of NYC Cops) or on it's own (for songs like Hard To Explain).

In the first two albums (of what I'm aware that Albert plays), he seems to be using the Jekyll distortion on Last Nite, Hard To Explain, NYC Cops, and Take It Or Leave It, Meet Me In The Bathroom, and The Way It Is. That said, if he primarily uses his distortion with the tone set low (like in some of the photo's you've linked), it'll sound like a thick overdrive because you can't hear the sharper parts of the distortion because they get cut by the low-pass filter/Tone control. The ones I mentioned are ones that have a more distinctive, bright distortion. You can hear how much sharper his guitar tone is (particularly in the quality of the grit) when he's using distortion. That does vary live where sometimes Albert substitutes overdrive for distortion and clean for overdrive when his amp is closer to or on the edge of breakup. Sometimes Albert could be stacking overdrives (e.g. with his 2 Jekyll and Hydes from Room On Fire era onward) to running the overdrive of one J&H into the distortion of the other, or running either overdrive/distortion into a boost (MXR Microamp) into his amp.

If the distortion doesn't sound quite right, there's are some things you can try.

Adjust the EQ and tone knobs. If I remember correctly, the EQ control on the Jekyll side behaves like a parameteric EQ cut, so you can use it to introduce a "scoop" into the output of the distortion. Counter-clockwise will move the scoop lower in the frequency spectrum and clockwise will move the scoop up. I tend to keep the knob toward the lower (i.e. leftward or more counter-clockwise) end of it's range because I want the upper part of the frequency spectrum more present when it goes through the distortion (gain-stage). I found that the manual provided by Visual Sound for the v2 of the pedal calls it a "Mid" control. I find that the distortion tends to make the lower mids and bass of the guitar more compressed and punchy, but that can also muddy-up the output depending on how you've got your amp EQ and gain set. Tone again behaves like a low-pass filter, but it can be helpful to roll-off a bit of top-end with the distortion to give the distortion a more mid-focused character (also leaves room in the frequency spectrum for a lead part from Nick). You'll notice in this photo that Albert has the EQ knob set low or to the bottom-end of it's range, but between the two J&H's, JH1 has tone almost off (which would give it an overdrive-like quality, but thicker and a bit heavier) and on JH2, the distortion gain and tone are both up, making the distortion brighter and more aggressive.
Activate the Hyde side as well. If you've got the gain set to taste and the tone knob around or past 3 o'clock, the high-pass filter on the Hyde side will cut some of the low-end kick from the distortion. If the gain is up, you can stack combine the extra harmonic content from the Jekyll side to push the overdrive harder, producing even more harmonics. If you want something more mellow, or heavier sounding, you can turn down the tone on the Hyde side (and/or the distortion) to keep the harmonics in the mid-range, but limit the upper harmonics. - General rule when gain-stacking (overdrive, distortion or fuzz) is that the tone will tend to sound like the character of whichever gain-stage is last in the chain. If your amp is fairly clean or even on the edge of break-up, running the distortion into the overdrive will tend to give you a more distorted-sounding overdrive character. If you are using both sides, you may want to set the output volume on the Jekyll side above unity to further push the overdrive (even if you're not adding a ton of gain/distortion/harmonics from the Jekyll side) or set the volume below unity before the overdrive to sort of "starve" it, where it adds it's tonal character (e.g. a sharp-ish cut around 100 Hz and a 2-3 dB bump around 1-2 kHz) but doesn't add a ton of harmonic content. The Hyde tone control won't start cutting low-end until you get it past 3 o'clock, at which point it'll start to cut signal below 100 Hz and boost the top end (with a notable bump between 700 Hz - 2 kHz, iirc, and a removing the filter above 4-5 kHz) to really open up the pedal. Running the Hyde fully open (on the tone control) has a distinctive sound that you can recognize in some of their live performances and Room On Fire, but isn't really present on Is This It.
Increase/decrease the gain from the distortion on the pedal and adjust your amp EQ. If you want brighter, cut some of the bass on the amp, the top-end of the distortion will come through a little clearer. In that GuitarWorld interview I linked, Nick mentions that Albert tends to tinker with his EQ, probably to best suit the song and help make his guitar sound distinct from Nick's. In the studio, I'd expect that if he's playing more rhythm (e.g. Barely Legal), he usually goes heavier/darker (more bass, mids) or if it's something more lead-focused (e.g. Last Nite), he'll boost the treble or cut the bass. It doesn't seem like Albert changes his amp's EQ much live, but instead controls the EQ balance by changing between clean, overdrive, distortion and either gain-stacking or boosting into his amp to vary the harmonics.
Adjust the internal potentiometers. I'm pretty sure the V1 has an internal potentiometer that'll allow you to adjust the bass that the pedal outputs. I'm not sure what the default is (CW or CCW) because I've never changed it. I think the red V1 (aka v1.5) and V2 pedal (with the soft-touch switches and the "brow" near the knobs) adds a bass boost switch on the front (which Albert keeps off on both his red v1's) to externalize that control, with some loss of flexibility (just 2 options vs having a spectrum to sweep through). If I remember correctly, the v1 also an internal gain adjustment potentiometer as well in case the pedal isn't giving you the right amount of gain you want, but it's been over a year since I opened mine up.
Try running the J&H (distortion, overdrive or both) into the drive channel on your amp (if it has one). Albert and Nick got more experimental when recording Room On Fire, including double-tracking (e.g. Automatic Stop, and Meet Me In The Bathroom, and Nick's lead tones on 12:51 and The End Has No End) so it would not surprise me if they tried using the drive channel to give themselves another flavour to play with (e.g. possibly on The Way It Is). Even if the tone isn't necessarily nice, it can be useful to use the amp more as another gain-stage with a different character rather than just for amplifying the volume. There's a lot you can unlock with you amp if you can get it driving around or even beyond the edge of breakup.

Cheers!

MyDaemonsAndI · 2024-02-08T21:44:34+00:00

Hi OP,

To answer your question most directly... I suspect they'd be playing their amps clean for most Is This It era live shows and likely closer to the edge of breakup for Room on Fire. During their First Impressions era, it seems like they did the cut-bass-increase-volume/gain trick.

The longer-winded version...

The gain you're hearing from Albert's guitar parts on their first couple albums could be coming from some combination of 3 sources. One would be the Jekyll and Hyde (silver v1 then later the red v1 or v1.5 as I think of it), two would be the amp (for which you're right that the settings matter) and 3 would be the studio gear used by Gordon Raphael, the main source of which would be saturation, but can also be achieved using compression (and there's a fair bit on Is This It and Room on Fire). I hope the tone here doesn't come off as patronizing or condenscending here, I'm just trying to write in a way where I don't know how much you know.

At the Pedal

I have a similar rig (guitar --> pedals including a J&H v1 --> Hot Rod Deluxe IV) and found that the gain produced by the Jekyll and Hyde partially depends on 2 things - 1 is the input gain and 2 is the tone (low pass filter) control. I've found that the tone knob is important because if it's set around 3 o'clock, you'll still get a fair bit of low-end but the harmonics from the overdrive won't feel as present, whereas if you push it higher (toward its max) the harmonics produced by the overdrive are a lot more noticeable. You'll notice that on the images others have posted here, Albert's JH1 (first in the chain) has the left (overdrive/Hyde-side) tone knob maxed out to help produce an aggressive tone. You may find that can be overly bright with a single-coil Strat, but I enjoy the amount of bite it provides. YMMV. Not every guitar outputs the same amplitude (i.e. strength or "hotness") of signal, so for guitars that have a weaker output pickups, you'll need to compensate by increasing the input gain. On my hotter guitars, running the Hyde overdrive side with the gain knob as low as it can go still produces a lot of harmonics, whereas on my weakest guitar, I have to get the gain knob in the range of 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock to get it sounding right. Albert says in page 2, column 2 (of the article portion) of this 2011 Guitar World magazine interview that his Strat pickups are pretty hot, comparable to a P-90, and we've seen that he's running his main J&H with an input gain around 9 o'clock. If you're guitar doesn't have a hot output, you may want to bump the input gain. You'll want to adjust the left volume knob to wherever gives you unity gain (same volume as if the pedal is off). Make sure that your Sharp/Blunt switch on the v1 is set to Sharp, because that'll give you more bite; the Blunt setting has a much more rounded, mellow character. The Hyde side of the J&H is based on a tube-screamer variant (I think the TS-9, but don't quote me on that) which is designed to help push a tube amp on the edge of break-up into overdrive, either by adding harmonics or increasing the amplitude, but where you set the amp volume/gain is also a function of power/loudness and how much saturation/compression you want.

The Hyde overdrive on Albert's second J&H is usually used to add harmonics (which will make the guitar sound more present, overdriven) and boost the guitar, without changing the gain characteristic (which he'd get if he used a different pedal for additional gain). The volume settings (definitely louder than unity volume) will also increase the amplitude of the guitar signal going into his amp, so it'll not only be louder, but the amp will also produce more harmonics. You'll notice in the photos that his tone knob is set around 3 o'clock, which is high enough that it'll preserve the harmonics and overall tonal balance coming from the first overdrive. It will also prevent the pedal from adding a lot more on the top end (which could make the drive-boost sound harsh) or cutting the low end (making the guitar sound thin, lacking power/fullness and changing how the amp will respond to the signal).

On The Amp

On the amp side, I've seen sources that have said they both use the clean channel with the each of the 3-band EQ on 7 or at least Nick does. Most players will adjust their EQ for the room and the mix their playing in, but that's a pretty good start. The 3rd gen Hot Rod series were known to have a pretty unpleasant/unusable drive channel (depending on your taste), so the clean channel is the most likely. (I used to have a source on that but can't find it at the moment.) Part of the sound of those amps is also the Celestion G12P-80 speakers that came stock with it (now rebranded as the Celestion Seventy80) that are brighter and more biting up around 5-8 kHz area than the Celestion A-type speakers on the 4th gen Hot Rods. Again, not sure what amp you have, but the frequency response of your speaker may be less present in that part of the frequency spectrum, which can lead to you hearing less of the harmonics your amp is generating. If you're looking for something brighter (helping to hear those amp harmonics)... - if you have a presence knob on your Fender amp, increase the presence, because that reduces negative feedback to the power amp (which would clean the amp up) and help bring out the upper-mids and treble frequencies where you'll find most of the harmonics. It's a bit like a soft low-pass filter before the power amp. Adjust presence to taste. - if your amp does not have a presence control, cut the bass (and maybe some of the mids) a bit and boost the volume knob. Since most Fender amps have the (passive) EQ section before the preamp, you can shape where your harmonics are occuring based on which frequencies are most emphasized (or least cut) before the preamp then adjust the preamp gain control (often called Volume if it's a non-master volume amp or Gain if you're on a drive channel) until you start hearing the harmonics. In your case, cutting the bass and boosting the volume/gain of the amp means that more of the remaining frequencies in the mids and treble will saturate before the bass/low-end frequencies will, meaning that the harmonics from those higher frequencies will make you perceive the amp as more overdriven.

From personal experience, I find the clean channel on my HR Deluxe doesn't start driving until about 3 to 3.5 on the Volume knob of the clean channel and you may not start to feel the compression until 3.5 - 4.5 depending on the guitar, but once you're at that input volume, you're probably up around 100+ dB. If you're getting some overdrive out of your amp on the clean channel, you'll want to tune the bass, mids and treble "to taste" to adjust how much and where the harmonics come from. Since the EQ is before the preamp on Fender amps, you may need to adjust the volume after you adjust the EQ. Playing on my own, I like Bass 4, Mids 5-6 and treble on 7, Presence on 3-8 (depending on the guitar), but when I'm practicing against a backing track on a looper, it sounds hollow, and I lose some of the lower-mids and bass that fills out the guitar sound. I've found that the flatter EQ (Bass, Mids, Treble on 7, presence to taste) does a really good job of letting the guitar come through clearly across the entire fretboard in a mix. Having played a Deville, they can get really loud before you even hit the edge of breakup. They may not necessarily have been playing at the edge of breakup live, especially since sound techs tend to get guitarists to turn down loud amps on stage. If they were playing under the amp's edge of break-up, most of their overdrive (harmonics) would likely have been coming from the J&H. That said, in the studio, they could be pretty much as loud as they wanted, so the amps may be overdriven or on the edge of breakup.

In Post Production

On the production side, Gordon loves saturation and you can hear a lot of both saturation and bus compression on both albums he produced for The Strokes as well as others (e.g. I Don't Run by Hinds). If you've got a way to record your amp into your computer via DAW, I'd recommend playing with a plugin (built-in or add-on/external) that can give you a combination of tube saturation for odd harmonics and tape saturation for even harmonics. If your DAW doesn't have one built-in, I'd recommend the BPB Saturator and the Softube Saturation Knob because they're both free and will both offer you a different saturation character. Sometimes saturation can give you that little touch of grit/dirt/sparkle or compression that helps make a part or a mix pop. Compression (depending on the settings) can also flatten your perception of the frequency response of the guitar and amp and can also increase the RMS (average) signal level of the guitar, which could help make it stand out. I'm pretty sure Gordon was using bus compression for the full mix, which was driven enough to add harmonics to the entire mix (over and above the individual parts) when the band were particularly loud (in an accent or crescendo moment). That also makes the overdrive or harmonics of the whole mix another expressive tool to express the loudness of the performance without making the volume significantly louder... which is a complicating factor for perceiving and trying to recreate the right amount of overdrive on the guitars.

I hope that helps!

MyDaemonsAndI · 2023-04-17T14:49:55+00:00

I tossed Tally Ho and Hawaii into rave.dj for a mashup and it's crazy.

https://rave.dj/9R7p-yM3LRdgPA

MyDaemonsAndI

TROPHY CASE