Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Green Day · American Idiot · 2004
The intro riff is a sustained single-note line played through a light overdrive into a cranked Marshall-style amp, with a hard square-wave tremolo after the drive doing all the rhythmic chopping. Armstrong's documented American Idiot rig was a P-90 Les Paul Junior into a gain-modded Marshall or Park 75, with tweed combos for smaller clean sounds. Keep the gain at crunch and the mids up — too much dirt smears the tremolo pulse and you lose the stutter.
Where these numbers come from: worked out from the documented rig and the sound of the record
Tuning
Standard tuning, no capo
The tremolo riff is in standard tuning with no capo (song key is F minor, riff sits around the 8th-13th frets); the acoustic/clean guitar behind the verses is capoed at the 1st fret playing Em-G-D-A shapes, so if you learn that part from a chord chart you need the capo.
Guitar
- Gibson Les Paul Junior (1956, "Floyd") · single P-90 · bridge (only pickup)
- Gibson Les Paul Standard ("Boobie") · humbuckers · bridge pickup
- Fender Telecaster · single-coil · bridge pickup
Amp
Marshall 1959 Super Lead (modified, "Idiot Amp")
Armstrong told Guitar World the album's dirt came from this gain-modded Marshall and a 50-watt Park 75 with his "Dookie" mod; a Super Lead has no gain knob, so treat gain as Volume I on the hot channel and keep it at crunch, not saturation, so the tremolo chops stay clean.
Amp
Fender Tremolux (tweed)
Guitar World reports a tweed Tremolux for the album's clean and "smaller" tones, and its built-in tremolo (Speed high, Intensity near max) will do the pulse; Ground Guitar and Reverb's Green Day garage-sale listing instead credit Victoria tweed combos ("Little Vicky" 35210-T, plus two 80212s) with those clean sounds, so the small-amp account is contested.
Pedals
- Boss TR-2 Tremolo · tremolo · Wave fully clockwise (square), Depth ~3 o'clock, Rate ~12 o'clock to lock a 16th-note pulse to the tempo; placed after the drive, not before
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver · overdrive · Level ~12 o'clock, Tone ~1 o'clock, Gain ~9-10 o'clock — light grit into an already crunchy amp
Tone character
crunch, not saturation · hard square-wave tremolo · forward mids · P-90 bite · tight low end
The notes themselves are a slow single-string line with a couple of slides, but the rhythm comes from the tremolo, so the difficulty is holding steady sustained notes and getting the pedal's rate locked to the tempo.
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 gearSources
No published source — the settings below are estimated by ear.