Is there a rock fan alive who doesn’t instantly headbang when the intro to “Rock You Like a Hurricane” comes on? Those crunchy power chords, the pound of the drums, and the harmonized lead break all combine to make a true hard rock classic.
The raucous, high-gain sound of the Scorpions, as you’d expect from these titans of 80s European metal, was fuelled by powerful guitars and even more powerful amps. In this article, I’ll give you all the inside info you need to nail the tones from “Rock You Like a Hurricane” and “Still Loving You.”
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Scorpions Guitars
What 80s metal band was complete without a few pointy guitars?
Both Scorpions axemen used aggressively shaped guitars, namely the Gibson Explorer and Gibson Flying V.
The mid-forward, aggressive sound of these guitars is critical to the first part of capturing the Scorpions sound. You aren’t trying to nail extended chords and delicate voicings here. This is a band that used power chords and white-hot lead breaks extensively.
The Gibson 80s Explorer is a great place to start for the Matthias Jabs tone, particularly if you’re looking at nailing the crunchy rhythm sound of Scorpions.
For Rudolf Schenker’s tone, you’ll want to use a Flying V such as Gibson’s 80s Flying V.
For both of these guitars, it’s important to have a mahogany neck and body with high-output passive humbucking pickups. This gives you the midrange definition you need to operate at the higher levels of distortion the band played with.
If you listen to “Rock You Like a Hurricane” or “Still Loving You,” you’ll hear a buzzsaw-like distorted tone that you can really only get from guitars like these.
For more affordable alternatives to these Gibsons, I highly recommend Epiphone’s offerings. The Epiphone Flying V and Epiphone Explorer are both affordable variations on these classic shapes with plenty of power on offer.
I usually find Epiphone’s pickups to be a little on the muddy side, especially when under high distortion. If you also have this issue, it’s a relatively easy (and affordable) upgrade to put new humbuckers in.
For the 80s metal sound of Scorpions, it’s hard to beat Seymour Duncan’s PAF-style humbuckers, like the SH-4.
Scorpions Amps
Scorpions are firm in the ranks of 80s metal bands playing through the go-to high-gain amp of the era, the legendary Marshall JCM800.
Full-powered 100-watt Marshall amps are very loud and rather pricey, however. Most guitar players, myself included, often prefer more portable amps with volume levels that won’t rattle the windows.
Fortunately for us, Marshall has finally come around to delivering their classic tone in a smaller package.
On the larger side is the classic DSL40C, a classic combo amp with 40 switchable watts of power. This amp doesn’t totally nail the JCM tone (or, for that matter, the 60s/70s Plexi tone), instead offering a very workable facsimile of most of the classic Marshall sounds over the years.
If you’re going for a more faithful recreation of an 80s-style Marshall amp in a smaller package, the Studio Classic feels like a JCM800 in all but name and size. I’d suggest this amp, with its aggressive gain staging and portable packaging, for most guitar players looking to capture the Scorpions tone.
Scorpions Amp Settings
For this article, I aimed at two distinct guitar tones: the clean, chiming sound from “Still Loving You,” and the pounding heavy-metal tones of “Rock You Like a Hurricane.”
One is much cleaner than the other, and in the studio the band would have changed amps and settings quite a bit.
“Still Loving You” Amp Settings
These are the settings for the clean, arpeggiated tone on “Still Loving You.” For the dirty, overdriven sound, you can use the same settings as on “Rock You Like a Hurricane.”
Volume: 8-9
Just because it’s clean doesn’t mean you want to be quiet. I strongly recommend a lot of volume for this tone.
Gain: 2
You can go even lower here, but most Marshall amps need some juice on the gain knob to get any appreciable volume.
Bass: 7
You need some low-end to balance out the naturally trebly nature of a Marshall amp.
Mids: 5-6
You don’t want much midrange for this sound, instead opting for a “scooped” clean tone.
Treble: 7
There’s an appreciable amount of high-frequency “frosting” on this tone.
“Rock You Like a Hurricane” Amp Settings
Use these settings for your basic Scorpions rhythm tone. Test it out with the power chord intro to “Rock You Like a Hurricane.”
To get the lead sound, you’ll want to add some extra power with pedals, detailed in the next section.
Volume: 8-9
As with the clean tone, you want lots of volume for that classic blow-your-hair-back 80s metal tone.
Gain: 8
This is a high-gain, saturated guitar tone. You want lots of poweramp crunch and preamp sizzle to make the tone really sound right.
Bass: 6-7
You may want to cut back on low end compared to the clean tone to ensure that you don’t lose note definition.
Mids: 5-6
You really want a scooped-mids sound for this, so avoid getting any higher than 6.
Treble: 7
You want enough treble to hear your pick attack, especially when you break into the legato bends for the lead break.
Scorpions Pedals
You’ll need to use a few key pedals to really lock down the Scorpions tone.
The clean “Still Loving You” tone demands a little bit of classic 80s chorus. For this, I recommend the Boss CH-1 Super Chorus, as used by Matthias Jabs himself. You’ll also want a little bit of digital reverb, and the TC Electronic Hall of Fame is a great, affordable option.
To get the overdriven tone, you’ll want something that can kick your amp up to the next level. You can actually hear Rudolf Schenker’s guitar signal increase in power about halfway during the first solo in “Still Loving You,” as the signal increases in distortion on a held note.
It’s most likely that Schenker simply rode his volume knob to get this effect. However, to dirty up the signal in the first place, Schenker and Jabs seemed to have used the classic (and super affordable) Boss DS-1 Distortion, a popular model of the 70s and 80s.
I’ve also heard it said that part of the piercing Scorpions lead tone was a half-cocked wah pedal. You just need to turn the wah pedal on and leave it in a single position instead of rocking the pedal back and forth.
It’s a bit fiddly to find this “sweet spot”, but I usually find it about halfway between full toe and full heel position, which on its own can sound a bit like a saxophone. I hear it as more “ah” than “w.”
While I wouldn’t consider this an absolutely essential piece of the tonal puzzle, it does help make up that final 5% of the tone. For this application, I believe they used the Dunlop Cry Baby, which remains one of the finest wah pedals on the market to this day.
Final Word
If you want to unleash the arena-ready hard rock of the Scorpions in your own home, or at your next gig, you don’t need a complicated rig. A quality humbucker-equipped guitar in an appropriately MTV-ready shape, an overdriven Marshall, and a few choice pedals are all you need.
