“Trust me, he was on 11 for everything” Tony Iommi’s longtime producer explains the secret of the Black Sabbath man’s guitar tone
Tony Iommi‘s longtime producer has revealed how the Black Sabbath legend has crafted his guitar tone – and as you might expect from a man who had to basically invent metal guitar, he tends to go to extremes with his gear.
READ MORE: “Every day the guy with the drugs would show up” Tony Iommi explains why Sabbath album sounds “weird”
Mike Exeter has been working with Iommi for over three decades and is also well-known for working with the likes of UB40, the Specials, Jeff Beck, Cradle of Filth and Judas Priest.
“What’s most important is that there needs to be some sort of response,” the producer tells Guitar World. “The music has to come out of the amp and hit him in the body and head.
“When he plays, there is no beginning or end. It’s all chicken and egg. He goes into a zone where he’s just expressing himself with no plan of what might happen, and that’s when he starts getting the real ideas. It becomes this cyclical thing.”
Over time, Exeter has become very familiar with the way a musician expresses whether they like what they’re doing or not.
“Tony is very easy for me to read,” Exeter says. “I know him so well, I can spot the facial expressions or body language. Sometimes it’s what he plays, other times it’s how he plays. If he does a certain trill, I know that means he’s not getting enough sustain from the amp. What he’s looking for is, ultimately, an extension of himself.”
He goes on to recall that the pair have a habit of listening to live footage from Paris in 1974 and compare it to the sound of the first two Black Sabbath albums, or the post-Ozzy years with Ronnie James Dio.
“When I listen to the first two Sabbath albums, they’re incredibly fuzzy,” Exeter says. “It’s a classic Laney sound. But he wasn’t using that in 1980 for the Dio albums. He’d switched to hotter Marshalls around that period. So there is no singular definitive sound for Tony, but he definitely has his own feel. I can pick him out from a mile off just because of the little things he does.”
He even lends some advice to players who have been inspired by Iommi’s tone. “To sound like Tony, you generally need P-90s going into a thick, soupy sound,” Exeter says. “It’s broken up, almost like speaker distortion. You might not think he was dialing in much gain, but trust me, he was on 11 for everything, because in the old days they had single-channel amps.
“You had to crank the front, turn the treble, presence and mids down, turn the bass up and then stick a treble booster in front. It only sounds right blasting through a 4×12 at full volume and needs to be smooth. It’s the tone of death if you’re in front of his amp when it’s not set properly.
He continues: “He wants the amp crunching past the edge of breakup, but also extra stages in front,” the producer says. “I wouldn’t use a Tube Screamer, particularly; instead I’d recommend things like the TC Electronic Spark. It’s a stacked-gain thing he’s looking for, one that cleans up easily. In the studio we’ll often dial the gain in to suit the riff.
“If you don’t do it right, you won’t get the pick attack or clarity of the notes. Less gain can sound better because it’s clearer, but ultimately it depends on the idea. There’s definitely a fine line; you can find something that suits the artist, who might prefer more saturation, and the producer, who generally wants to back things down.”
Exeter also reveals that Iommi isn’t much of a “gear hound” but it doesn’t mean he’s totally unaware of what’s going on in the gear world.
“But one thing people don’t realize is that he does watch YouTube just to see what’s out there. His rig is generally straightforward. The most complicated it got was on the farewell tour, where he had an insane amount of stuff.
“He’s very particular about having a short delay when he plays live; in the ’80s it was a Korg rackmount. He likes to have a chorus around, and it’s usually the blue one by Analog Man. I think it’s the best chorus out there, especially for distorted guitars. The owner, Mike Piera, is brilliant, and we’ve got a King of Tone, too.
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