Glycerine
Bush · Sixteen Stone · 1994
Glycerine is one distorted electric guitar and a string overdub — Rossdale's rhythm part carries the entire track. On record that was his purple '66 Jazzmaster, the only guitar he owned at the time, into a 50-watt Marshall with a distortion pedal doing most of the dirt, cut at Westside Studios in London. Aim for a thick, slightly woolly fuzz with the top end pulled back, no modulation and no delay, and let the chords ring rather than chugging them.
Where these numbers come from: worked out from the documented rig and the sound of the record
Tuning
Standard tuning, no capo
Standard tuning at concert pitch — the whole part lives in first position on F, C(sus), Dm and Bb, and the record is one distorted electric plus overdubbed strings, no second guitar and no drums.
Guitar
- Fender Jazzmaster (1966, purple, ex-Joe Walsh) · Jazzmaster single-coils · bridge pickup
Amp
Marshall 50-watt head
Producer Clive Langer says most of Rossdale's guitars for the album went to a "Marshall 100," then everything was re-cut in a day through a "Marshall 50" because it sounded better — the exact model isn't named, so treat presence as optional and reverb as absent. Knob values are inferred from the record: fat lows, present mids, top end pulled back so the fuzz stays woolly rather than spiky; pickup selection is not documented.
Amp
Vox AC30
Competing account: Rossdale told MusicRadar that in this period he had one guitar, the purple Jazzmaster, and played it "through a Vox AC30 with some pedals," adding that it didn't sound as good in the studio and that Marshall cabs suited it better — which is why the Marshall reading is listed first. Treble here is the Top Boost tone control.
Pedals
- Distortion pedal (model undocumented) · distortion/fuzz · Distortion around 1 o'clock, tone slightly rolled off, level set for a small volume jump — the dirt on the record comes mostly from the pedal, not the amp
Tone character
thick pedal fuzz · rolled-off treble · fat low mids · compressed sustaining chords · no chorus or delay
Four first-position chords in a steady eighth-note strum; the only real work is a clean Bb (playable as a three-string power chord), keeping the strumming hand even, and controlling how much the fuzz blooms on held chords.
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