Nail the ToneIron Maiden

The Trooper

Iron Maiden · Piece of Mind · 1983

The Trooper's main riff is a bridge-humbucker guitar straight into a cranked Marshall — Murray's Kossoff Strat with a DiMarzio Super Distortion and Smith's Ibanez Destroyer or SG, both into 50- or 100-watt Marshall heads and 4x12s. The signature of the Piece of Mind rhythm sound is a big midrange hump with the bass pulled back, so the gallop stays tight and articulate instead of woolly. Keep the gain moderate by modern metal standards: you want crunch with pick definition, not saturation, or the sixteenth notes smear together.

Where these numbers come from: worked out from the documented rig and the sound of the record

Tuning

Standard tuning, no capo

Standard E tuning throughout; the intro and pre-chorus figures are two guitars harmonized, so one player covers only one of the two lines.

Part: Riff

Guitar

  • Fender Stratocaster (1957/1963 hybrid, ex-Paul Kossoff) · DiMarzio Super Distortion (bridge), DiMarzio PAF (neck) · bridge pickup
  • Ibanez Destroyer · humbuckers · bridge pickup
  • Gibson SG · humbuckers · bridge pickup

Amp

Marshall JCM800 2204 (50W)

GAIN
7.0
BASS
4.0
MID
8.0
TREBLE
6.5
PRESENCE
5.0

Murray told Guitar World in 1983 he ran four 50-watt Marshalls into Marshall cabs (one with EVs, the rest Celestions); accounts differ on whether the Piece of Mind heads were master-volume 50-watters (JMP 2204/JCM800 2204) or non-master 1987 Super Leads run wide open, and the staged studio footage in the "Flight of Icarus" video shows JCM800s.

Amp

Marshall Super Lead (100W)

GAIN
9.0
BASS
4.0
MID
7.0
TREBLE
6.0
PRESENCE
6.0

Smith's documented amp of the period was a 100-watt Marshall pushed hard for its own breakup rather than a distortion pedal; he later said the Powerslave sessions were just a 100-watt Marshall and maybe a Tube Screamer, and the same approach is generally attributed to Piece of Mind. On a non-master Super Lead the "gain" figure is the single volume control.

Pedals

  • MXR 10-Band EQ · graphic EQ / mid boost · Left on all the time per Murray; broad upper-mid push around 800 Hz–2 kHz, low end trimmed
  • MXR Distortion+ · distortion/boost · Output around 7, distortion around 3–4 as a tightening boost into an already loud amp
  • Ibanez Tube Screamer · overdrive · Drive 2–3, tone 6, level 8 — used as a mid-focused boost, not the main dirt
  • Boss FA-1 FET Preamp · clean boost · Used to push the amp front end for leads

Tone character

forward upper mids · tight low end · medium-high gain crunch · bright pick attack · classic Marshall bite · harmonized dual guitars

medium

The gallop is a fast down-up-down sixteenth-note pattern held at around 200 bpm with palm-muted low E and moving power-chord shapes, so it's a picking-hand endurance test more than a fretting problem.

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