Touch and Go

What is the Touch and Go guitar tone?

The Touch and Go guitar tone is a horn-like, mid-heavy lead solo over a polymetric new wave groove, heard on The Cars' 1980s new wave recording. It is a distorted solo tone, and The Cars reportedly tracked it with a 1979 Fender Lead I with an ash body, which Elliot Easton played through a Mesa/Boogie Mark II head and a Marshall 4x12 cabinet for the solo, in Guitar World's account, with the guitar full up, its humbucker in series and the Boogie set on stun, in his words; for a more horn-like tone than the Boogie's midrange control and the 750Hz slider on its graphic EQ could give, Guitar World thinks the lower mids were probably boosted at the desk, most likely at 500Hz on the Trident A-Range console at Cherokee Studios, where the solos were recorded; Easton used the same rig for a sliding figure on the low strings about a minute in, while his other parts went through a Fender Twin Reverb: a Rickenbacker 360/12 for ambient chords in the second verse with stereo delays of about 370 to 375ms and compression at the board, a 1965 Lake Placid Blue Telecaster on both pickups for an arpeggio in the later choruses, double tracked with the tape varispeed nudged for a chorus effect, and a Precision Bass flipped upside down for a short melodic line; Ric Ocasek played the clicky single-note line in the chorus on a Fender Jaguar; Easton told Guitar World that the band and producer Roy Thomas Baker asked him for a different approach before they kept his own written solo, played again in anger, and Wikipedia quotes Ocasek remembering Easton bringing the solo in on a cassette he had recorded in his hotel room; Ocasek wrote and sang the song, whose verses put the bass and drums in a different time signature from the rest of the band; it was the first single from Panorama (1980) and reached number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here the lead is a hot humbucker into a Boogie with its mids pushed hard on both the tone stack and the graphic EQ, so the horn-like voice is midrange rather than extra gain.

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 Elliot Easton use on Touch and Go?

Volume 8, treble 5, bass 3, middle 10, lead drive 9, lead master 7 and presence 5 on a 1979 Mesa/Boogie Mark II, with the shift, gain boost, lead and bright pulls out, and the graphic EQ in with a 4dB cut at 80Hz and boosts of 4dB at 240Hz, 11dB at 750Hz, 9dB at 2200Hz and 8dB at 6600Hz, into a Marshall 1960A 4x12 with Celestion G12M speakers; the Lead I's volume and tone on 10 with the humbucker in series. That is Chris Gill's settings box in Guitar World's feature on the song, for the solo and the sliding figure, which 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 Elliot Easton's tone on Touch and Go

What gear did The Cars use on Touch and Go?

A 1979 Fender Lead I with an ash body, which Elliot Easton played through a Mesa/Boogie Mark II head and a Marshall 4x12 cabinet for the solo, in Guitar World's account, with the guitar full up, its humbucker in series and the Boogie set on stun, in his words; for a more horn-like tone than the Boogie's midrange control and the 750Hz slider on its graphic EQ could give, Guitar World thinks the lower mids were probably boosted at the desk, most likely at 500Hz on the Trident A-Range console at Cherokee Studios, where the solos were recorded; Easton used the same rig for a sliding figure on the low strings about a minute in, while his other parts went through a Fender Twin Reverb: a Rickenbacker 360/12 for ambient chords in the second verse with stereo delays of about 370 to 375ms and compression at the board, a 1965 Lake Placid Blue Telecaster on both pickups for an arpeggio in the later choruses, double tracked with the tape varispeed nudged for a chorus effect, and a Precision Bass flipped upside down for a short melodic line; Ric Ocasek played the clicky single-note line in the chorus on a Fender Jaguar; Easton told Guitar World that the band and producer Roy Thomas Baker asked him for a different approach before they kept his own written solo, played again in anger, and Wikipedia quotes Ocasek remembering Easton bringing the solo in on a cassette he had recorded in his hotel room; Ocasek wrote and sang the song, whose verses put the bass and drums in a different time signature from the rest of the band; it was the first single from Panorama (1980) and reached number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Sources: Guitar World: the secrets behind Elliot Easton's tone on Touch and Go, Wikipedia: Touch and Go (The Cars 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.