Sometimes tip-offs about Beatle stuff come from the most unexpected places…

Beatlesblog is located in Australia, but it took an email from our friend and avid collector Andrey – based in Russia – to let us know about this magazine, out now in Australian newsagents.

Its the latest edition of Australian Guitar and, following Andrey’s email, we simply walked up to to the corner store and got a copy. Wouldn’t have known it was there otherwise!

As you can see, the mag has a major article (13 pages in all) called ‘The Ultimate Beatles Tone Guide’. In it they unpack how the band crafted their sound from the perspective of the instruments and the electronics used.

To do this writer Chris Gill examines 11 specific songs: ‘Please Please Me’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘I Feel Fine’, ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘Michelle’, ‘Taxman’, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, ‘Revolution’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, Let It Be’, and ‘The End’.

Obviously, this article has been published previously in the US by parent magazine Guitar World (and you can read it here), but it’s nice to have a physical copy to flip through.

Being a guitar magazine the focus is entirely on the gear – the makes, model and year of manufacture, the amplifiers, studio speakers, etc. In some cases they even get right down to the likely strings used on the guitars to achieve a particular sound quality.

Gill acknowledges a big part of the challenge here is the great amount of sometimes conflicting information out there about these things. The Beatles themselves, their producer George Martin, and even engineers like Geoff Emerick, have offered over the years conflicting accounts. They even contradict themselves in some of their personal recollections.

So, its a tough ask to get this stuff right. Gill says that what the feature contains are his best efforts to determine the guitars, basses, amps and effects actually used. He admits it is not perfect and in many cases highly speculative (for example the amp used by John Lennon to record his solo on ‘The End’), but he reckons it is a good guideline for any guitarist wanting to replicate those magic sounds.

The feature is richly illustrated with great photos and examples of the the actual guitars and amplifiers, plus a list of suggestions for modern-day or way less expensive alternatives to get your hands on if you want to sound like John, Paul or George.

And yes, there’s a whole section on guitar string specifics. To quote: “Many guitar nerds note that perhaps the most important detail of replicating the Beatles’ tones after their guitars and amps is the types of strings that they used. It is generally believed that Harrison and Lennon used flatwound strings in the early years up until late 1965, just after the release of Rubber Soul. After that, from Revolver and beyond, they apparently switched to roundwound strings.” Check out the section on string theory here.

The feature ends with a short article called ‘Beatles Unplugged – A Guide to the Fab Four’s Acoustic Arsenal’. You can read that too online here: