3 Bruce Springsteen Tones with Cab Rig
The Boss, as he’s known by many, is a man with a huge catalogue of hits. We all know the songs, and we all sing along with those huge, anthemic choruses. But what about the guitar parts? Bruce Springsteen is never seen too far away from his trusty Telecaster.
Underneath the song writing are some great guitar riffs, which are backed up by some great guitar tones!
In this lesson we’re going to check out 3 tones from the Springsteen catalogue and look at how to create those tones with just the St James 6L6 and Cab Rig. The Cab Rig presets for each patch are listed below.
The amp is set the same for all 3 tones. You can use the following settings:
For this video the amp is set to the drive channel, with the second voice engaged, but the drive is set very low. A big part of the Springsteen guitar tone is loud amps so the master is pushed along with the channel volume to get some natural tube breakup.
All the tones you hear in the video are coming from Cab Rig which is running in mono for the whole video. Some tones have been supplemented with additional pedals to access tones the amp can’t do itself.
Born to Run
Get the Cab Rig Patch Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hijhkt3esgzo47/BORN%20TO%20RUN.cabrig?dl=0
This tone was created with just a single amp which is modelled after Bruce’s favourite 4×10 guitar combo, the 4×10 Vintage USA Open Back:
The tone you hear in the video also has 2 additional pedals running to supplement the tone. The Analogman King of Tone is acting as a clean boost, just pushing the amp a little harder (Any flater response overdrive, or clean boost will do the same job), and the Tremolo effect on the song is coming from the IK Multimedia X Vibe.
This amp is mic’d with the 67 Condenser microphone which is placed on axis with the speaker. This mic is an industry standard in many studios so the chances are this would have been used on many of the sessions for these tracks.
EQ wise, the cab is EQ’d fairly flat with no extreme tweaks going on at this stage. This is to try to capture to natural tone of the a amp and retain that big, fat ringing sound for the chords.
This tone has the Large Room sound blended in at just a touch about 0dB:
On the master bus, the top end of the EQ has been rolled off slightly, as you would usually do when mixing guitars to allow to just sit in the mix without clashing with anything else that needs access to the upper frequency range.
I’m On Fire
Get the Cab Rig Patch Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl2o7efgw13du0v/I%27M%20ON%20FIRE.cabrig?dl=0
This tone is a very clean but spacious tone. It is once again created with the same cab selection, the 4×10 Vintage USA Open Back.
The only additional pedal in this tone is the Boss DM2 delay, but any vintage style delay will do. The delay is set very low and fast to just add some extra ambient space to the sound. You don’t want to hear a defined repeat, you just want the space it creates.
For the mic choice, once again the 67 Condenser is the mic of choice.
When we come to the EQ section, this is where we start to see the biggest differences. This tone is set fairly flat with everything roughly -2dB but the highs have been pushed to +2.7dB to add some extra air and crispness to the tone.
This tone has a lot of the room blended in, with the Large Room set at +3.5dB, coupled with the higher reverb setting on the amp will give you a lot of room sound.
The Master EQ also has a +2.7dB boost on the highs but also a slight scoop on the Low Mids to free up some mix space and allow the guitar to cut.
Glory Days
Get the Cab Rig Patch Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vlxfr2vbtpze93m/GLORY%20DAYS.cabrig?dl=0
This final tone is reverb soaked, big stadium rock guitar tone. This is once again built around the same 4×10 Vintage USA Open Back cab:
This is also once again mic’d with the 67 Condenser, except this time the mic is placed off axis:
The EQ for this tone is quite an extreme EQ setting, the lows and low mids are cut and the High Mids and Highs are boosted by over +6dB each. This tone is very bright and snappy so requires a lot of high end without too much low end detail.
This riff has a lot of space, and as you’ll see from this next image, this leans heavily on the room sound to recreate this. The room sound is mixed in at +4.3dB and the dry guitar mic signal is actually cut to -4.8dB.
On the master EQ there is some more extreme EQ tweaking taking place with another +5.5dB boost of the highs and a slight pull back on the High Mids.
