Africa

What is the Africa guitar tone?

The Africa guitar tone is a bright, layered texture of 12-string and direct Stratocaster, heard on Toto's 1980s soft rock recording. It is a clean riff tone, and Toto reportedly tracked it with a Takamine electric-acoustic 12-string, which Steve Lukather told Music UK in 1983 he played in the back for all the keyboard lines, with his Les Paul for the heft parts and a Stratocaster straight through the console, doubling what some of the acoustic guitars were doing, the guitar parts being, as he put it, all over the place; Wikipedia adds a Takamine six-string electric-acoustic, and no source read here names the amp on the Les Paul parts, though for other Toto IV songs he told the same magazine he used two old black-faced Deluxes that Paul Rivera had beefed up and a 100-watt Marshall stack with a '59 Les Paul; Mix says Lukather put a guitar on after David Hungate's bass, that engineer Al Schmitt used a close mic on the amp and another about 15 feet back for room ambience, and Lukather calls himself an SM57 kind of guy; David Paich wrote the song on his living room piano and recorded the opening sound on a Yamaha CS-80, Steve Porcaro programmed the kalimba riff on a Yamaha GS-1, recorded six times with different rhythms and layered, and Jeff Porcaro, who wrote the song with Paich, played his parts without a click track; the band recorded on 24-track with slave reels, living in a Winnebago in the parking lot at Sunset Sound, Greg Ladanyi mixed it at the Sound Factory in sections because the console did not have enough faders, and Toto IV's closing track reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1983. Here the guitars are a 12-string electric-acoustic doubling the keyboards and a Stratocaster played straight into the console, with a Les Paul only on the heavier parts, so the part wants a bright, clean sound with little amp colour rather than drive.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a clean channel on a modelling combo and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Toto use on Africa?

A Takamine electric-acoustic 12-string, which Steve Lukather told Music UK in 1983 he played in the back for all the keyboard lines, with his Les Paul for the heft parts and a Stratocaster straight through the console, doubling what some of the acoustic guitars were doing, the guitar parts being, as he put it, all over the place; Wikipedia adds a Takamine six-string electric-acoustic, and no source read here names the amp on the Les Paul parts, though for other Toto IV songs he told the same magazine he used two old black-faced Deluxes that Paul Rivera had beefed up and a 100-watt Marshall stack with a '59 Les Paul; Mix says Lukather put a guitar on after David Hungate's bass, that engineer Al Schmitt used a close mic on the amp and another about 15 feet back for room ambience, and Lukather calls himself an SM57 kind of guy; David Paich wrote the song on his living room piano and recorded the opening sound on a Yamaha CS-80, Steve Porcaro programmed the kalimba riff on a Yamaha GS-1, recorded six times with different rhythms and layered, and Jeff Porcaro, who wrote the song with Paich, played his parts without a click track; the band recorded on 24-track with slave reels, living in a Winnebago in the parking lot at Sunset Sound, Greg Ladanyi mixed it at the Sound Factory in sections because the console did not have enough faders, and Toto IV's closing track reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1983.

Sources: Music UK: Total Toto, Steve Lukather interview (1983), Mix: Classic Tracks, Toto's Africa, Wikipedia: Africa (song)

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.