Does anyone know much about this, circa Everybody Knows this is Nowhere?
Bizarre absence of info on Guitar Geek.

a new biography was written on him... might say a few things. It's pretty in depth.
Also there's a website that catalogues guitar rigs not just by player but also breaks it down by what they were playing every year.
The database is far from complete though. Kinda hit and miss.

I'm not sure what year that is, but one thing I've always been impressed with in his rig is "The Whizzer". The Whizzer is a set of robotically controlled switches that fit over the knobs on an old Fender Twin (or something like that) and are controlled by a footpedal apparatus. Neil is the only one who has something like this (so I've heard).

not sure on the first couple records

i've seen footage of him playing 'down by the river' on an es-335 thru a twin, but who knows if that was his 'setup'

i don't think he had his magic les paul back then

now, he has a magic les paul, an old black one that is magic that he plays

the amp guts of neil's sound for many years has been a '59 fender deluxe

supposedly, he has exactly one magic deluxe, which is immaculately maintained by his dude

the whizzer fits on top of that. he can hit a switch to change settings--turn the volume from 7 to 9.5 on the channel he's not using, etc.

seriously, he makes volume changes to the channel he's not using. it loads the preamp differently and grunges things in a special way.

anyway, he's got the deluxe. then he's got some gnarly old baldwin solid state amp--he mics the deluxe and feeds it thru the baldwin. then he's got some other amp with which he does the same thing.

then he's got a reverb tank attached to the stage, so he can stomp on the stage and make it go boom

then he's got a big-ass effects thing, with NASA-grade switching in it to avoid signal degradation. i remember him saying he had a particular digital reverb (alesis microverb, i think) strictly for a 'popcorn' gate sound, which he used at the end of solos when he was out of ideas.

i read all this shit in a massive article in _guitar player_ magazine a few years back

i guess 'hey hey my my' on _rust never sleeps_ only sounds like that b/c someone dropped his amp on the way into the studio, busting a power tube in the process. no time to fix it, so they went with what they had.

..and a little more:

http://www.thrasherswheat.org/friends/amps.htm

i heard neil has something done to his tubes in his Deluxe and has huge fans blowing on the amp the entire time it is on so it doesn't over heat and catch fire.....either way i know neil is very much into the electrician type stuff...and his whizzer is one of the coolest things i've ever seen a musician come up with for their sound.....he most definately has his "signature" sound....

neil runs his deluxe on 6L6s

this is sort of crazy

it roughly doubles the output power

can't argue w/the results

It took a long time for me to really see it but now I see that Neil Young's gtr sound is the best rock gtr sound ever. And Neil might be my favorite rock gtrist ever (???).

"Shakey", the biography, is awesome but it doesn't go in to that much detail. It covers the magic Deluxe but not the Whizzer. It also mentions that Neil hates, really hates, to change strings, and rarely does so.

Last week for work, I was at this reception thing at the Experience Music Project. I realized that the only piece of famous musician's gear that I'd have any interest in seeing/holding/playing is that magic Paul of his.

That's probably a Gretsch White Falcon on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

Neil always used a Mutron Octave Divider to get the blown Jensen sound. I thought it was an MXR Blue Box. It's just an old Deluxe on 10 barfing.

The '53 Les Paul has a real microphonic Firebird pickup in the bridge position, that's half of his sound right there. It is an awesome ROAR in a hockey rink.


Bear VS. Neil Young

Jay

What's the popcorn sound?