Gear & ToneJohn's guitar tone is god-like for many guitar players. 80% of his tone comes from his fingers, his aggressive style is a big factor in his tone.GuitarsJohn is a Les Paul player, his main axe is the very cool looking 1978 Gibson Les Paul Custom with chrome hardware, it has the pickup covers removed. He owns many different Les Pauls including the '59 and Les Paul Juniors. Also he owns and has played with different Fender Stratocasters, Telecasters and some superstrats. One of his superstrats is Charvel San Dimas which has a Original Floyd Rose tremolo, this guitar was used for dive bombs and many other whammy bar tricks on many albums where John played.PickupsHis Gibson guitars have stock or Gibson's replacement pickups. Gibson pickups usually aren't very hot, they sound warm and have great dynamics. His Fenders have stock pickups too. John mostly uses pickups which have great tonality and not a lot of output gain. The hottest pickup he has used was the old Gibson Dirty Finger humbucker which was in his '78 Les Paul Custom but it has been replaced with a PAF reissue. As said before John mostly plays with Les Pauls. Les Pauls sound fat and massive, these things are essential in great rock rhythm tone. I believe John has used Strats for some of the clean sounds, leads and bluesy licks. But most of the stuff is played with Les Pauls. He uses the neck pickup for some clean sounds and for some leads, sometimes the tone knob is turned half or all the way down for slower solos.AmplificationJohn owns many Plexi type Marshalls and JCM800 series Marshalls. Some of them are modified. Some are modified by the legendary Jose Arrendondo who worked on Eddie Van Halen's amps. Marshalls have been John's main amps most of the time but during the Whitesnake and Blue Murder days he mostly used Mesa Boogie amps. The main amps for the Whitesnake '87 and Blue Murder's self titled albums were two Mesa Boogie Mark III Coliseum 300 heads. These amps are very rare and one of the loudest ever made. John also owns Mesa Boogie rackmount 2 channel Dual Rectifiers, Mark IIC+'s, Mark III's, Triaxis preamp and Strategy 500 power amp, he has used some of them for recording and gigging. H&H V800 power amp was also part of his rig durning the Blue Murder days. His speaker cabinets are also various Marshalls and Mesa Boogies, 4x12 mostly.- Marshall and Mesa Boogie amps both have very good and powerful mid-range, Mesa Boogies have lower frequency mid-range which is good for fat and smooth tone, Marshalls usually have higher frequency mid-range which is good for cutting-through tone.John's rhythm tone is pretty heavy, it has less mid range than the typical 70's classic rock sound but more than heavy and thrash metal rhythm tones. He uses more gain than most of the 80's rockers. I can describe it as really heavy in your face crunchy rock tone with a lot of sustain. It is very distinctive. John's lead tone is very "cutting". It sounds fat, thick and "middy". Sometimes it is very smooth, sometimes it is rough. His clean tone is usually very warm and "sparkling", it is crystal clear and processed.
It has to be Cold Sweats!
My newest acquisition. Not a big fan of John Sykes but I am a fan of this '84 Greco JS98K. All it needs now is some BKPs , but I just can't decide. Help?
