Owner of a Lonely Heart

What is the Owner of a Lonely Heart guitar tone?

The Owner of a Lonely Heart guitar tone is a heavy riff that jump-cuts from a processed intro to a dry, mid-boosted crunch, heard on Yes' 1980s rock recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Yes reportedly tracked it with a 1962 Fender Stratocaster with a rosewood board, a DiMarzio FS-1 at the bridge and stock Fender pickups in the neck and middle, Trevor Rabin's main guitar in Guitar World's account, boosted by a Boss DS-1 Distortion and split to a pair of 100-watt Marshall 2203 half stacks whose 4x12 cabinets faced each other about a foot apart, each with its own dynamic mic; on the solo one head carried the straight guitar and the other an MXR Pitch Transposer set fully wet a fifth above, which is why it sounds like a guitar synth, with compression and reverb added at the desk; the intro riff ran through the DS-1 with the treble and upper mids lifted, the lower mids scooped, and compression and reverb on the desk, then cut to a dry distorted tone with a narrow boost around 2kHz; the clean verse arpeggios were on the Strat's bridge and middle pickups with an MXR Dyna Comp, a Boss CE-2 chorus and one repeat of about 250ms delay, though producer Trevor Horn has said a Rickenbacker 12-string played that part, which Wikipedia notes is disputed; for the opening, Rabin used the panned, heavy guitar sound from a session he had played for Manfred Mann's Earth Band; he wrote the song in 1979, and Yes recorded it with Horn producing for 90125; released on 24 October 1983, it was the band's only number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Here the drive comes from a distortion pedal pushing two Marshall heads at once, with the desk's EQ shaping the intro and the main riff differently.

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 high-gain head 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.

Published settings

What amp settings did Trevor Rabin use on Owner of a Lonely Heart?

Presence 4, bass 3, middle 7, treble 5, master volume 8 and preamp volume 8 on the high-sensitivity input of two late-1970s Marshall 2203 JMP MKII heads into two 1960 4x12s with Celestion G12-65s, with the Strat's volume and tone controls on 10. That is Chris Gill's settings box in Guitar World's feature on the song, which details the solo most fully and does not say where the numbers came from, so read them as the magazine's reconstruction rather than a note from the session.

Source: Guitar World: the secrets behind Trevor Rabin's guitar tone on Owner of a Lonely Heart

What gear did Yes use on Owner of a Lonely Heart?

A 1962 Fender Stratocaster with a rosewood board, a DiMarzio FS-1 at the bridge and stock Fender pickups in the neck and middle, Trevor Rabin's main guitar in Guitar World's account, boosted by a Boss DS-1 Distortion and split to a pair of 100-watt Marshall 2203 half stacks whose 4x12 cabinets faced each other about a foot apart, each with its own dynamic mic; on the solo one head carried the straight guitar and the other an MXR Pitch Transposer set fully wet a fifth above, which is why it sounds like a guitar synth, with compression and reverb added at the desk; the intro riff ran through the DS-1 with the treble and upper mids lifted, the lower mids scooped, and compression and reverb on the desk, then cut to a dry distorted tone with a narrow boost around 2kHz; the clean verse arpeggios were on the Strat's bridge and middle pickups with an MXR Dyna Comp, a Boss CE-2 chorus and one repeat of about 250ms delay, though producer Trevor Horn has said a Rickenbacker 12-string played that part, which Wikipedia notes is disputed; for the opening, Rabin used the panned, heavy guitar sound from a session he had played for Manfred Mann's Earth Band; he wrote the song in 1979, and Yes recorded it with Horn producing for 90125; released on 24 October 1983, it was the band's only number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Sources: Guitar World: the secrets behind Trevor Rabin's guitar tone on Owner of a Lonely Heart, Wikipedia: Owner of a Lonely Heart

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.