House of the Rising Sun

What is the House of the Rising Sun guitar tone?

The House of the Rising Sun guitar tone is a ringing A minor arpeggio picked under organ and a howling vocal, heard on The Animals' 1960s folk rock recording. It is a clean riff tone, and The Animals reportedly tracked it with a Gretsch Tennessean through a Selmer Selectortone, the rig Guitar World gives for the track, and the one Hilton Valentine named when Tom Guerra asked him song by song; he told Guerra he had bought both shortly before joining the group that became the Animals, the Selmer as a bigger amp with push-button tone selectors, and that the Vox and Rickenbacker gear came later, once the band had some success; Valentine took Bob Dylan's chord sequence and played it as an arpeggio, and when Alan Price asked him to play something different because it was so corny, he refused, and after a few rehearsals Price started playing the riff too; the Animals recorded it in one take on 18 May 1964 at De Lane Lea Studios on Kingsway in London, with Mickie Most producing, who said it took only 15 minutes, Price on a Vox Continental organ and Eric Burdon singing; played in 6/8 rather than the 4/4 of most earlier versions, it ran four and a half minutes and went out at full length, reaching number one in the UK in July 1964 and in the US on 5 September 1964, and it has been called the first folk rock hit. Here the part is a picked arpeggio on a hollowbody Gretsch into a clean amp, sitting under organ and voice, so it wants clarity and a little bite rather than any 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 The Animals use on House of the Rising Sun?

A Gretsch Tennessean through a Selmer Selectortone, the rig Guitar World gives for the track, and the one Hilton Valentine named when Tom Guerra asked him song by song; he told Guerra he had bought both shortly before joining the group that became the Animals, the Selmer as a bigger amp with push-button tone selectors, and that the Vox and Rickenbacker gear came later, once the band had some success; Valentine took Bob Dylan's chord sequence and played it as an arpeggio, and when Alan Price asked him to play something different because it was so corny, he refused, and after a few rehearsals Price started playing the riff too; the Animals recorded it in one take on 18 May 1964 at De Lane Lea Studios on Kingsway in London, with Mickie Most producing, who said it took only 15 minutes, Price on a Vox Continental organ and Eric Burdon singing; played in 6/8 rather than the 4/4 of most earlier versions, it ran four and a half minutes and went out at full length, reaching number one in the UK in July 1964 and in the US on 5 September 1964, and it has been called the first folk rock hit.

Sources: Guitar World: Hilton Valentine of the Animals dies aged 77, Tom Guerra: interview with Hilton Valentine, Wikipedia: The House of the Rising Sun

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.