SOUND ADVICE

Everything you need to know before playing ‘Paranoid’

Iommi is a renowned Gibson SG devotee, and his early setup also consisted of a Laney stack and a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster (used to wring extra distortion out of his amps). For an authentic sound, you need a guitar equipped with a humbucker in the bridge position. Set the treble on your amp high to recreate the effect of Tony’s treble booster. Depending on how much output your amp has, you’ll either need a high-gain tone on an overdrive channel or a lower gain setting on a full-blown distortion channel. Tony’s solo features a regular fuzz distortion tone in the left channel but there’s a ring modulator effect in the right channel. If you have one of these, experiment with a low frequency level and keep the ring modulated sound a little lower than the main lead tone.