Ola Englund reviewing the Boss Metal Zone years ago is a perfect illustration of the right gear in the right position. He took a pedal that everyone hates because of how fizzy and over the top it is, and nailed a good tone because he put it in the effects loop of his Randall Satan with a noise gate instead of running through the preamp section. And it sounded really good.
The glory days of signature sounds! Some of which were even happy accidents. I always felt that all this effort to copy someone else's sound would be better spent creating your own, but then I am a stickler for teh homegrown.
I saw Priest/Dokken on that tour at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Never forget that event -- I was grounded for a month because I didn't get home until 2:00 a.m. and it was a Sunday night show with school the next day. I went with a friend who was all about Priest. I went to hear Dokken. Was not disappointed.
Not really my generation (born in 82), but i fell in love with that sound. I built my own tiger guitar ordered the custom made pickups from seymour duncan. At some point George commented on one of my tracks on his website, and i ended up meeting him at namm (i'm in europe...)
Back in the 80s I used a Realistic stereo reverb meant for home audio and discovered that in addition to being an amazing bucket brigade verb it gave the most amazing Fuzz tone
George was using #39 Marshall 1959T modded head he rented from S.I.R. Hollywood for the U.S. leg of Under Lock And Key world tour. Yep, you were hearing THAT Marshall head in Detroit in May '86! The Marshall head that Slash tried to steal. The same one used on Appetite For Destruction. The modded circuit that has been copied more times than perhaps any other Marshall including Eddie😎🎸☨
Who would have thought??? This is SOOOOOO simple that it's on a different level. The thing is that we are (maybe) so occupied with getting all the newest stuff that we forget that things used to work great "back in the day's""!!!!!