 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential, my name's Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MGRMusic.com and in this video we're going to be taking a look at some Billy Gibbons inspired tones using the Blackstar Silverline Deluxe. For those of you who don't know Billy Gibbons is the guitar player from the group ZZ Top. So in this video we're going to be taking four tones inspired by four classic ZZ Top tracks looking at how you can get those kind of tones out of your Silverline series and also you guys can download these patches yourself. They're all going to be on the Blackstar Insider community and they're also going to be linked down below in the description of this video. So you guys can download these patches, get your own ZZ Top vibe with your own Silverline gear and tweak them to your heart's content. So the first tone we're going to look at is an early 70s tone inspired by the track Just Got Paid. At this point in the band's career Billy was using a lot of real small combo amps absolutely screaming loud in the studio so that's what I've gone for here. I'm using the Crunch channel for this with the 6v6 response. So the 6v6 tubes are typically found in those small little tweed amps you always see from the 50s and 60s. Billy was using a lot of these amps in the early days of the band to simulate that completely dimmed thing. That's what I've done. I've got the channel volume and the gain on 10, the bass middle and treble also on 10. The ISF is set to the American position. I've also got the amps resonance set to 10 so we get that nice warm power amp saturation and the presence is on five. The only effect you're going to hear in this tone is a little bit of plate reverb just for some space. Now I'm going to be using a Les Paul for this with the bridge pickup. You want to roll the volume on the bridge pickup back to about seven just to clean it up a slight bit. The second tone we're going to look at is a cleaner tone. This is inspired by the intro for the track Look Range. So I've moved over to a Telecaster now. There's a rumor going on on the internet that Billy played this with a strat and there's another rumor going on that he played this with his 59 Les Paul. So I've gone for a Tele because that's a nice middle ground and also if he did play this with a 59 Les Paul those early PAF pickups are voiced similar to that of a bridge pickup of a Tele. They've got a lot of bite and a lot of body so I went with the Tele because it's a nice middle ground but if you've got a very vintage voiced humbucker guitar that will also work very well. You need a little extra bite for this because we're playing slightly cleaner. So I'm still on the crunch sound here but now I've moved to an EL34 response. So I've backed off the gain for this one now to about three and a half but the channel volume, the bass middle and treble are all still on 10. The resonance is also still on 10. The presence now is bumped up to seven for a little top end sparkle and because I'm using that EL34 response I've gone fully to the British side on the ISF to give it a little bit of a British flavour. There's a spring reverb on this as well as the tiniest bit of analogue delay performing a slapback function. This just thickens out the tone a little bit more as well. On the guitar you want to back the tone control down to about five or six and the same with the bridge pickup. Maybe about six or seven on the bridge pickup. You don't want to get too hot. You want to just take the edge off the crunch. If you run it on full you are going to get overdrives. You want to back away from that overdrive just a slight bit. This is a really responsive tone so if I now go all the way up on that bridge pickup volume I'm actually going to get some overdrive from the amp so this is great for if you're playing this track you can actually dial the drive up with just the guitar volume for when the track kicks in. Alright I'm back onto the Les Paul for the next tone. This tone is inspired by the track Tush so for this one we're using the 6v6 response and we're once again still on the crunch channel. I've backed off the gain even more now to two and a half. The channel volume is still on 10. The bass is on 7. The middle is on 8 and the treble is also on 7. The ISF is fully in the bridge position. The resonance of the amps on 10 and the presence is also on 7. So I've still got the spring reverb for this one and I've still got the analog delay giving a little bit of a slap back but I've also added a chorus effect to this one. Now chorus isn't something you typically associate with 70s zz top. It's not used at all on the studio record but if you listen to the studio version you can hear there's double tracked guitars and they're slightly out of time with each other so the chorus is just to thicken the sound and to give that extra width that you get from the double track guitar. So it's not really that present as a chorus effect but it's just a subtle way of widening the guitar signal. For this one the guitar is on the bridge pickup. The volume is on 10 but I've backed the tone control off to about 8. Billy would often ride the volume and tone controls on the guitar to manipulate the amplifier. And the fourth and final tone we're going to look at is that from the track Sharp Dressed Man. So now we're firmly in the 80s zz top camp. The guitar tones for this era are super super processed and back on the telly here because Billy was probably using his 59 lb ball again but this is a super bright tone so this guitar will get me very very close to what I want from that bridge pickup. So I'm still on the crunch channel and I'm still on the EL 34 response but now I'm pushing the gain. So the gain is on 9.5 and the channel volume is still on 10. The bass is on 7, the middle is on 8 and the treble is on 9. The ISF is all the way to the British side. The resonance is on 10 and the presence is on 7. Still got the spring reverb. We've still got the slapback to label a little bit more and we've got a lot more chorus because like I said this point of the career the guitar tones were super super processed. There was a lot of double tracking and a lot of other weird stuff going on so I've dialed up the chorus to really nail that 80s sound. So there you go guys there are four Billy Gibbons ZZ Top inspired silver line tones for you guys to take away and have some fun with. Like I said the patches are available on the Blackstar Insider community and they're also linked down below in the description so if you want to get into any of these sort of sounds download those patches and put them into your silver line amp and then you can tweak them and have all kinds of Billy Gibbons related fun with them. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video if you did let us know down below in the comments what you thought of these tones and if there are any other artists you guys would love to see some tones created in the style of please let us know who you'd like to see. Don't forget to go check out the Blackstar amplification YouTube channel for more free lessons just like this. There are a bunch of other artist patches already on there and there's plenty more cool ones on the way and if anyone out there is looking for a guitar teacher please head over to mgrmusic.com it's a network of great teachers all around the UK waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you very soon.