Question for Michael Wagener - Guitar on Stryper Albums

[heyman]

Michael, I was and still am a big fan of the early Stryper albums( hairspray aside).

The guitars sound bigger than life on that album. Greta Job!!

I know that they used the Boogie Mark 3 or IV on that album, am I right?

Can you take us thru the signal chain on what was used (Pre's mics and amps)

Thanks very much...

Jim

[heyman]

Sorry, also what was used for solo's... Harmonizers? delays?

Thanks

[maskedman72]

Originally Posted by heyman

Michael, I was and still am a big fan of the early Stryper albums( hairspray aside).

The guitars sound bigger than life on that album. Greta Job!!

I know that they used the Boogie Mark 3 or IV on that album, am I right?

Can you take us thru the signal chain on what was used (Pre's mics and amps)

Thanks very much...

Jim

i agree....stryper had that totall 80's jackson crunch tone. it sounds great.

[ramjet]

Originally Posted by heyman

Michael, I was and still am a big fan of the early Stryper albums( hairspray aside).

The guitars sound bigger than life on that album. Greta Job!!

I know that they used the Boogie Mark 3 or IV on that album, am I right?

Can you take us thru the signal chain on what was used (Pre's mics and amps)

Thanks very much...

Jim

man you beat me to the question. Michael if can indulge us also in drums and bass and vox info as well that would be so rad

and one more question, are the cool guys or a^&holes

cheers ramjet

[6strings]

Originally Posted by ramjet

and one more question, are the cool guys or a^&holes

I once worked with one of their road crew from their early days. He said they were going bankrupt and figured out if they got an ordained minister to play keyboards backstage, they wouldn't have to pay taxes. That's how they "found religion", according to his recount. But mostly he bitched about all the yellow and black duct tape.

Originally Posted by 6strings

I once worked with one of their road crew from their early days. He said they were going bankrupt and figured out if they got an ordained minister to play keyboards backstage, they wouldn't have to pay taxes. That's how they "found religion", according to his recount. But mostly he bitched about all the yellow and black duct tape.

That was a most uneducated statement by this person. They were legit at the start. They are most legit now. They were not perfect. Nobody is. But the reason for the message that they delivered was clear. They could have made more money NOT doing Christian music. The religious community did not want these guys. They were not cut from the same "churched" cloth that other, less brash, "performers" came from. They were kind of doing their own thing, outside of the Christian music industry. Churches were barely accepting Petra at that time. Petra sold way over 7 Million records, won Grammys, Doves, etc.

Stryper's guitar sound was also attributed to a Furman EQ, with 1kHz cranked all the way, and the the thing clipping non stop.

[heyman]

MW, care to chime in?

[mwagener]

Hey guys

sorry, I'm totally locked in the studio right now. I'll have to do some research on the issue before I can answer correctly and get back to you, might take me a few days.

Hang in there...

[heyman]

Thanks Michael...


Look forward to your insight..

[mwagener]

Well, looks like I have to pass on this one. I looked through all my session notes and couldn't find anything about the guitar amps or guitars used. I seem to remember that Oz used a Mesa amp, but I'm not even sure about that. When I get a couple of hours, I'll try to dig my way through pictures from that session (if I can find them). The recording chain most likely was a Fostex M11RP ribbon as the main mic and the MCI 500 mic pres of the console with a UREI 530 EQ on the buss. All the guitars were recorded to the 3M 32track digi machine.

Just ran into Stryoper at NAMM, maybe I can contact them and ask (no promise)

[HERCULEES1]

this is an old thread but I thought ID chime in anyways,
I took lessons from Oz in Passedena for a while last year hes still a great player and offers lessons to almost anyone! Great chance to meet him and talk with him,
I also have an article he posted online a while back about his gear , from the Soldiers under command album to the to hell with the devil album him and michael both used Mesa boogie mark iic they ran furman eqs in the front and cranked the mids

heres the article from the site oz used to have up

My earliest rock influences started in my pre-teens when my teenage uncles and cousins were listening to the Doobie Brothers, Deep Purple, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin. My dad at that time had a few 8-track tapes of Santana, El Chicano and Malo where the guitar tones had more bite to them than I would have expected pops to be used to!

As time went on, I became mesmerized by the guitar tones of Tony Iommi of the group Black Sabbath. I spent so much of my allowance on different types of fuzz boxes and distortion pedals to try to match his tone. My favorite box then was the MXR Distortion +. I ran it into the front of a Kustom 2x12 combo. Eventually I talked pops into springin' for a Marshall stack with a 100 watt tube head. It punished my poor mother severely. A friend of mine, named O.D.,turned me on to an MXR 10 band graphic EQ that I started running into the front of my Marshall head. This is where we start..............

Let's start with my "Yellow and Black Attack" tone. I was hacking away at a Karl Sandoval creation.It was a Mighty Mite Explorer body with a Chavel neck...21 frets, unfinished.The body had only one humbucker pickup cutaway in which was placed a Seymore Duncan distortion humbucker. It had a stock strat tremolo bridge that never stayed in tune. I used a Modified 100 watt Marshall tube amplifier with an MXR 10 band graphic equilizer...I plugged my guitar into the EQ and the EQ into the front of the Marshall. On the EQ I boosted 10 to 15db at around 1K... (this causes a lot of noise because you're boosting more power than you should into the front of an amp that already has high sensitivity.) I would also drop a steep slope from 1K back to 100Hz where 100Hz would be set to -10 to -15db. This caused frequencies that would muddy up the distortion tone to be cut. Marshall amp settings were something like this---- master volume- 0, preamp volume- 10, presence- 10, bass- 0 to 3, mid- 8 to 10, treble- 10.

The master volume would become my main volume control. In some cases Marshalls go to 20. In that case the above settings should be doubled. This setup should work with most stock Marshall amps... any wattage. All of this was a basis for the rest of my tone search.

I used the same train of thought when I changed to Mesa Boogie amps for "Soldiers Under Command." I also switched from the MXR equilizer to a Furman PQ3 parametric equilizer preamp. This was a "LOW - MID - HIGH" section EQ with + or - 20db boosting or cutting. The low section would be set at a narrow bandwidth, 50 to 100hz at -20 db.......mid section at a narrow bandwidth, 1500 or 1.5Khz at +20db......high section at a wide bandwidth, 2000 or 2Khz at +20db. It had an input level control and I set it around 8. The rear input and output had a choice between -10db or +4db jacks. I used the -10db jacks.This setting would work with a Marshall as well.

My Mesa Boogie amp was a Mark-II-C long chasis head with a variable voltage transformer for traveling. For some reason this head sounded like no other Mk-II.Originally the Mesa Boogie Co. sent this head to Grover Jackson at his guitar plant in San Dimas for some of his artists to try. It was also said that this head in particular was the prototype to the Mk-III amp still in development at the time.It was obvious that I had to have this head so Mesa Boogie allowed me to buy it and they sent Jackson a Mk-III in it's place. Later on, when I test drove a Mk-III head, my Mk-II-C blew it away.............To this day I still have this head. This head like most Boogie heads has push-pull knobs to change the characteristics of its parameter.It had a lead mode with a pull knob to turn it on and adjust its level and a separate lead gain knob.

The lead gain would be set to around 8; lead volume to 10. Preamp volume on the head would be set to 8 or 9 and pulled out; treble around 9 or 10 and pulled out; midrange around 2 or 3 and pushed in; bass around 3 and pushed in. The master volume knob would be my volume control but I wouldn't go past 3- 1/2. The master volume also had a pull gain feature that I would use on occasion. This head also had a graphic EQ that I would set in a "V" shape, dropping out honking mids and boosting lows & highs to my tastes. These settings plus slamming the front end of the head with the Furman PQ3 helped to make that Stryper tone that buzzed through halls around the world and caused many treble controls on home audio systems to be turned off ! I used this setup for "Soldiers Under Command" and "To Hell with the Devil" albums.

On "In God We Trust" I replaced my Mk-II-C with a Mesa Boogie Quad preamp powered by a Mesa Boogie Strategy 400 power amp. Mesa Boogie founder Randall Smith personally modified my Strategy 400's to give me more bottom thump! He always took care of me...... Love ya Randy!

For "Against The Law" I decided to give the Furman PQ-3 a rest and just plugged straight in to my Mk-II-C! For that album I became a different kind of guitar player, and the extra preamp was too much gain for my new style.Yet when ever I want that tone again, I just plug it back in.

Grover Jackson, founder of the Jackson Guitar Co. graciously gave me a collection of guitars that I will always cherish not only because they are great guitars, but because he always went out of his way to help me in any way he could.I still have a bunch of his records he loaned me back in 1989 to help season my guitar playing. I miss those days !.......

My favorite guitars of the bunch are my custom Soloists. It's only obvious because to this day I play them the most!!! They have SeymourDuncan Distortion pickups in the bridge position and Jackson PAF type pickups in the neck position. I used them on every album we recorded except for "Yellow and Black Attack" only because I didn't own them yet!!!

Recently I aquired an ESP-LTD model. A good friend of mine from ESP, John Gaudesi sent it over for me to check out...............It's pretty cool!!!

Another friend, Larry Bolon gave me a Blaze guitar. It has a nice neck. I don't know anything about this company. Anyone with info on Blaze guitars, please E-mail me.

Later.......OZ.

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