Help Needed For Cover Song

[danthecoat]

Hi all

Probably a long shot here but. Im thinking of doing a version of "Janine" (David Bowie) and was wondering what effect Mick Ronson was using on his lead guitar ? It is quite simple to work out the notes he is playing but i cant figure out if he using a Wah or not. Its some sort of volume swirls but how did they do these back in the day

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Greeny]

It sounds to me like a Leslie rotating speaker cabinet. There are pedals which emulate those, but you could get close with a univibe effect or even a phaser. I use a univibe pedal whenever I need vintage / psychedelic swirl.

I did check bowiebible.com to see if they had any info (they go into the detail of every song), but they didn't cover the fx part - only that it wasn't Ronson on the recorded version. He only played it live apparently.

Good luck!

[danthecoat]

Many Thanks for your help and of course you are right it was Tim Renwick that played on this track as he was part of "Juniors Eyes" the backing band that Bowie was using in 69.

I posted the question on a Bowie group and was answered by a very knowledgeable studio technician that was present during those recordings and he said that the sessions were all done extremely fast and Tim in those days was very into his progressive rock and psychedelia therefore used a pedal that was like a volume and uni vibe mixed and he had bought it to have a hendrix sound that it really couldn't produce so it was just experimental. He also added the the guitar used was a telecaster bridge position but a fair amount of room mic is in there too. So you were pretty much spot on with what you thought.