Nail the ToneThe Cranberries

Zombie

The Cranberries · No Need to Argue · 1994

The heavy riff on "Zombie" is not one guitar but three stacked — Hogan's ES-335, a Les Paul, and a Tele or Strat — all pushed through cranked Marshall and Vox AC30 amps plus the first distortion pedal he ever bought. Dial a mid-forward, saturated crunch rather than tight modern high gain, keep the low end from getting boomy, and let the amp do most of the dirt. The big move is dynamic: the intro is nearly clean, and the riff hits with the pedal on.

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

Tuning

Standard tuning, no capo

Standard tuning throughout; the riff is Em–Cadd9–G6–D/F# and the recorded heavy part is several guitars layered on the same shapes, so one guitar will always sound thinner than the record.

Part: Riff

Guitar

  • Gibson ES-335 · humbuckers · bridge pickup
  • Gibson Les Paul · humbuckers · bridge pickup
  • Fender Telecaster (or Stratocaster) · single-coils · bridge pickup

Amp

Marshall JCM800

GAIN
7.0
BASS
5.0
MID
6.5
TREBLE
6.0
PRESENCE
4.0

Hogan told Guitar World the Zombie sound was "a combination of Marshalls and AC30s cranked up"; in a 2019 MusicRadar interview he named a JCM800 for heavy material like Zombie, though that quote describes his ongoing rig rather than the 1994 session specifically.

Amp

Vox AC30 Top Boost

GAIN
8.0
BASS
4.0
TREBLE
6.5
REVERB
2.0

AC30 has no mid control and no presence — the Cut knob around 6 does that job; Hogan bought a new AC30 around 1992 and it was his main amp, driven hard rather than pedal-heavy.

Pedals

  • Unspecified distortion pedal · distortion · Hogan says he bought his first distortion pedal for this song but has never named the model; set gain around 6, level slightly above unity, tone flat, into an already-crunchy amp.
  • DOD Chorus · chorus · Very subtle — slow rate, low depth; his lifelong pedal, more audible on the clean intro strum than on the heavy riff.

Tone character

thick fuzzy distortion · forward mids · layered multi-guitar wall · cranked tube breakup · clean-to-loud dynamic swing

easy

Four repeating two- and three-finger shapes (Em, Cadd9, G6, D/F#) in steady eighths — the only real work is the clean-to-distorted dynamic jump and keeping the D/F# thumb or first-finger bass note clean.

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.

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Sources