How do you get a guitar tone similar to the one used by Di' Anno era Maiden?

You can find some info on Iron Maiden's early gear here: http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showth ... p?t=691948

Generally I think the idea is moderate gain + lots of mids + LOUD bass guitar + keep everything simple. Maybe a tubescreamer to tighten things up.

Agreed ! and just to add to the above :

It comes from the mix too. The guitars are mid based and even trebly. The bottom end is mostly provided by the bass and drums. The bass gtr has very little distortion but very aggresively (finger) played, and actually contributes a lot to the sound.

The signal chain is very simple so a head and amp is all you really need basically. They also sound quite dry.

A head IS an amp. You mean an amp and a cab?

Thanks for the replies.

Whoops ! Thats what i meant ...< embarassed emoticon >

cabs are often, though not correctly refered to as amps. It happens often enough that you shouldn't be embarrassed about it nor should been corrected unless someone was actually confused.

And yea... light distortion more mids/treb. bass holds the low. I'm just repeating that cause it's correct.

any old tube amp should be able to pull it off, and by old i mean pre 1980. thats the ton ei go for, the best way i've gotten it is with fender amps. though if you have a decent tube amp with a good clean channel, try getting your gain from an ibanez tubescreamer or an mxr distortion +. neither pedal has a huge amount of gain, but it's more than enough for that sound.

One more thing :

Recording to tape or a reasonable vst simulation thereof. This is quite important in their guitar timbre and the overall sound.

European tube amp tones, ideally a low-wattage EL34 poweramp. Run your amp with fairly little preamp gain on a lead channel, but run the amp loud so you can get more saturation from the power tubes. An overdrive pedal on a low-gain lead channel should get you pretty close. Don't scoop your mids, and if your amp has a presence knob, run that lower but compensate with more treble in the EQ.

Duncan SH-4 JB seems like a good pickup for that kind of tones. Incidentally, I recently installed one into a mahogany Schecter - with a TS-9, I can make it sound like a hot-rodded Strat!