GET THE SOUND

Everything you need to know before playing ‘Smoke On The Water’

From 1970 onwards, Blackmore’s preference was for a Fender Strat with a scalloped fingerboard, run through Marshall Major 200-watt heads (modified with an extra output stage), spiced up with a treble booster, and played so hard that he even snapped the whammy. His tone on Smokeon Thewater is surprisingly not as distorted as you might think; Jon Lord’s Hammond organ sound actually provides a lot of the weight in the overall sound.

Select a bridge single coil pickup. If your guitar has humbuckers, raise the treble and lower the bass on your amp to compensate.