The Beatles - Please Please Me - Guitar Cover - George and John

The Beatles' Gibson J-160E guitars added great character to Please Please Me, along with George's tasteful lead playing and John's strumming rhythm. To recreate this very Beatle sound exactly as it was recorded in the studio, a number of things must be done. Both George and John's J-160Es were amplified through Vox amps then recorded and mixed very heavily on the left stereo channel. However, the J-160E has a very large and booming sound, so a lot of the acoustic guitar bled through into the vocal mic and mixed in the right stereo channel. This is most prominent on John's guitar, but it can also be heard on George's. The trick to achieving this sound is to record the same performance both through an amp and acoustically, and then mix the amp in the left stereo channel and acoustic in the right stereo channel.

George plays octave lead in the riff and does a two finger lead that follows the melody during the verses, but lags behind the ending phrase in a syncopated fashion. Notice how George continues to play the low E string even when the chord changes to an A in the second verse. Due to an error in the tape speed, the final pitch of this recording is at A = 432 Hz. The guitars in this video were tuned to this pitch for accuracy and correct sound. The top video is George Harrison's lead guitar and the bottom video is John Lennon's rhythm guitar.

Played with a Gibson J-160E recorded through a Vox AC15 with a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone on the amp and acoustically at the same time with an Audio-Technica AT2035 large diaphragm condenser microphone.

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