Nail the ToneBush

Machinehead

Bush · Sixteen Stone · 1994

The main riff is a fuzz-heavy Jazzmaster into a cranked 50-watt Marshall — Langer and Winstanley re-cut every Rossdale guitar on Sixteen Stone through the smaller Marshall and left them dry and single-tracked, which is why the riff sounds wide but not glossy. Set a mid-gain Marshall-style amp just past the point of breakup, keep the mids up and the treble moderate, and add a fuzz box for the thickness rather than piling on amp gain. Weight comes from playing the shapes hard, not from stacking tracks.

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 riff is C#5 and A5 power-chord shapes at the 4th fret of the A string and 5th fret of the low E; two guitarists play it rather than one part double-tracked.

Part: Riff

Guitar

  • Fender Jazzmaster (1967, ex-Joe Walsh, Bigsby-modded) · Jazzmaster single-coils · bridge pickup
  • Fender Stratocaster Plus · Lace Sensor · bridge pickup

Amp

Marshall 50-watt head

GAIN
7.5
BASS
5.0
MID
6.5
TREBLE
6.0
PRESENCE
5.5

Clive Langer told Mix that most of Rossdale's guitars were cut through a Marshall 100, then re-cut in a single day through a Marshall 50 because it sounded far better, and double-tracking was dropped; the exact Marshall model is not named and the guitars were left dry in the mix.

Amp

Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Trem-O-Verb

GAIN
7.0
BASS
5.5
MID
5.0
TREBLE
6.0
PRESENCE
5.0
REVERB
2.0

Alternate account: Bush's mid-'90s rig (a Jan 1997 Guitar World photo shows Rossdale's Trem-O-Verb next to his Jazzmaster, and Pulsford named the Trem-O-Verb, Blue Angel, Fender Princeton and Super Reverb), so Pulsford's layers may be Mesa rather than Marshall — the producer's account only covers Rossdale's tracks.

Pedals

  • Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi (Sovtek "Green Russian") · fuzz/distortion · Sustain around 2 o'clock, tone around 11 o'clock, volume to unity — dial back guitar volume for the verse

Tone character

thick fuzzy crunch · forward mids · tight low end · dry, no effects · single-tracked, punchy

easy

Two-finger power chords moved between the 4th fret of the A string and the 5th fret of the low E, with steady eighth-note picking and muted scratch strokes that have to stay in time at about 113 bpm.

Want this on your own amp?

These are the record's settings. Tell us what you play through and we'll translate every knob to the amp you actually own — free.

Adapt it to my gear

Sources