Always remember that when referencing a recording, the sound of the recording chain has to be taken into account.
And so, when referencing "Stairway", the microphone, the placement of that mic, the mic pre, the console, the mastering, and more have sculpted what we hear.
As an example...if we were sitting in the front row, right in front of D. Allman's amp the nites that the "live At The Fillmore" record was recorded....his guitar would have sounded NOTABLY DIFFERENT than what we have gotten used to hearing via the record.
Very few folks talk about that. Why not?
I talk about it in the EVH forum sometimes.
I think it's because some people with little or no recording experience think it's just the amp and guitar and effects similar to what they would use in their homes and things like mic placement and EQing and reverb (rooms and plate) and compression and the recording room acoustics and mastering etc etc get ignored.
Andy Johns has given interviews about the recording from what I remember and Page had mics in weird places far away from the amp that he used to use and not just for drums, but also other things as well.
Stairway has direct Rickenbackers on it.
"But I mean, even on 'Stairway', if you listen to that, it's fairly simple. We cut the track with drums, John Paul played a Hofner electric piano, looked like a little upright. And I tried to get as much bottom end out of the left hand as I could so we have something on the bottom end when they were tracking and Jimmy Page played the acoustic and then John put bass on it and then Pagey, we put the two 12-stings, Rickeys which I did direct, that's why they're so twinkley…, that stuff. And then there's a main sort of electric rhythm when it kicks in and a solo. And the recorders on bookends type of thing. And that's it. It really isn't that much."
Black Dog is direct with some tricks.
http://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2003/april/index8.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Would you like the “Black Dog” guitar tone story?
UA: Absolutely—which Led Zeppelin album was that?
Andy: That is the fourth one, the really, really big one. “Stairway To Heaven,” “Levee Breaks,” and “Black Dog.” It sold about eighteen million-- something bloody ridiculous. Who would have known, you know? I had been trying to get this sound from Buffalo Springfield for a long time and I met Bill House. He said, “just put two 1176s in series.” He didn’t really want to let me know what “they” were. It was a direct sound and I thought that I knew what to do. There were three guitars on “Black Dog” so I triple tracked it. When I mixed it, these three guitars were down here and the rest of the tracks were up here. Since the sound was so loud, it gave me much more room for the other stuff. Anyways, he meant two 1176s in series, one of which has the compression buttons punched out, so it is like an amp. You hit the front of the next compressor really hard and make the mic amp distort a bit with the EQ-- a bit of bottom to make it sing. So “Black Dog” has a direct Gibson Les Paul Sunburst 52 or something, going right into the mic amps on the mixer, which is going through two 1176s, and it sounds like some guy in the Albert Hall with a bunch of marshals. I couldn’t have done it without the 1176s. There is not another compressor that will do that, because you can take out the compression stuff."
"GW: One music-oriented question before we move on to "Houses of the Holy": Tell me how you got that sound on Black Dog.
Page: We put my Les Paul through a direct box, and from there into a mic channel. We used the mic amp of the mixing board to get distortion. Then we ran it through two Urie 1176 Universal compressors in series. Then each line was triple-tracked. Curiously, I was listening to that track when we were reviewing the tapes and the guitars almost sound like an analog synthesizer."
http://www.iem.ac.ru/zeppelin/docs/inte ... page_93.gw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A lot of Page tones are how he sets up the micing in the recording room etc.
When Alex Van Halen worked with Andy Johns, he asked Andy Johns to show him how he got the John Bonham drum sound on Stairway, meaning that the John Bonham drum sound on Stairway was a studio sound and not necessarily John Bonham's drum sound away from the studio.
" I think Alex mainly…Alex really wanted…He always wanted to sound like Bonzo. And I remember the first time he plays me this one fill of 'Stairway to Heaven', he goes, “Make my snare sound like that.” I said well, you know, yeah right! Sure, no problem. So we went from there and it took a very long time."
http://www.melodicrock.com/interviews/andyjohns.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Glyn Johns, who is Andy Johns brother who worked with Led Zep and VH, anyway, Glyn Johns used to use a small attic in the recording studio and play the snare drum through a speaker in the attic with a mic in the attic picking up the result for snare reverb. This reverb re-amping, is a well known way to get great natural sounding reverb and is on so many great recordings.
Tricks of the Trade.
); the amp was originally a 2x12 but I found the stock amp to be a bit too bright and too loud. In my clone, I opted for 10" green backs which are quite inefficient and notably darker than the Jensen C12Ps. I recently tried playing my Vega through this cab and boy...it rocked!! 
Anyway, I've tweaked the circuit on the 1688 in a number of places to get the trem channel a little less bright and a bit more overdriven and I've added a bright switch to the normal (bass) channel.
