Ted Nugent Sets the Record Straight About His "Cat Scratch Fever" Amp

The story of Ted Nugent using an early Sixties brown Fender Deluxe to record “Cat Scratch Fever” has become modern guitar folklore. Over the last three decades or so, dozens of books and magazine features have repeated this tale, often citing it as an example—along with similar accounts of Jimmy Page’s Supro and Eric Clapton’s Champ—of how a small amp can deliver big sounds in the recording studio. This story was repeated so often that we didn’t think twice to question its accuracy when we wrote about the rig Ted Nugent used to record “Cat Scratch Fever” in our June 2018 “Tonal Recall” article.

The problem, as we quickly found out after Mr. Nugent himself saw the article, is that this story isn’t true. “I’ve never owned a Fender Deluxe and have never recorded with one,” Nugent says. “I used a 1964 Gibson Byrdland through a Fender Twin Reverb amp pushing a Dual Showman 2x15 cabinet loaded with Electro-Voice SRO speakers. I double-tracked the whole damn song, and most of the entire album for that matter, playing through an ancient Gibson-made Bell 15RV combo with a single 12-inch speaker. Of equal impact on the spirit of the recording was the pure rock and roll ears and touch of producer Tom Werman and engineer Tony Reale, both of whom brought a phenomenal craving and understanding of killer music and killer sounds. The energy, attitude and spirit of my team were the ultimate ingredients to make that song so damn cool.”

We can attest that this story is no revisionist history, as while doing further research we came across Nugent’s cover interview with Tom Wheeler in the August 1979 issue of Guitar Player. “For