
No disrespect to Chuck Berry, but I seriously doubt Johnny B. Goode played guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell unless he was using a ring modulator. That’s the only effect that can give you the complex, clangorous harmonics of a bell or a cymbal. Or make you sound like a ravenous horde of mutant robot ants.
Theoretically, Johnny could have used one. By 1958, when Berry documented the guitarist in song, the effect was already being exploited extensively by avant-garde classical composers, notably the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, who used it to terrifying effect in his Gesang Der Jünglinge [1956].
This post drips with perverse ring-mod love, including a demo of a rare vintage Electro-Harmonix Frequency Analyzer, and another featuring Roswell Ringer, a wicked ring mod plug-in.