Famous Tones

Ever wondered how to get a famous guitar tone without owning the original gear? This chapter breaks iconic sounds into approximate pedal recipes you can build on your own board, each one drawn as a rig diagram with knob settings to start from.

You'll trace the story of rock guitar tone: the buzzy Maestro-style fuzz on "Satisfaction", Hendrix's fuzz with an octave on top, and Eddie Van Halen's phaser, echo and cooking amp on "Eruption". Andy Summers' shimmering clean arpeggios and David Gilmour's soaring, sustained solo tone show two very different uses of space. The Stevie Ray Vaughan tone comes from a Tube Screamer into a loud clean amp, Johnny Marr's throb from fast, synced tremolo, and The Edge's ripple from a dotted-eighth delay. Kurt Cobain's watery chorus and Tom Morello's drop D crunch with a Whammy octave round it out.

Every recipe is an approximation, not the exact original rig, and gear claims are hedged where sources disagree. Each lesson also shows you how to play the sound, because so much of it lives in your hands.