Thirty Rigs, and What Each One Solves — Post-Prog-Metal

Part II — The Rigs (30)

The blackface clean rig

Fender, 1963 onward — High clean headroom with the effects built into the amp, so they colour the whole tone rather than sitting on top of it.

• Chain: Strat or Tele → short cable → amp input → onboard spring reverb → onboard bias tremolo → 6L6 power stage → open-back combo
• Mechanisms: Passive FMV tone stack, Spring reverb, Bias tremolo, Fixed bias, Open back vs closed back
• Gear: Deluxe Reverb 22 W, Super Reverb 40 W, Twin Reverb 85 W
• Appears in: pairings 14, 19, 27
• Correction: The bright cap across the volume pot means the volume control is also a tone control at low settings — the amp genuinely gets darker as you turn it down, and it is not your imagination.

Plexi at full volume, no pedals

Britain, 1966–72 — No master volume anywhere, so all the gain is preamp and power stage overload arriving together at one setting: loud.

• Chain: Les Paul or SG → both channels jumpered → Marshall Super Lead → 4x12 with Greenbacks
• Mechanisms: Preamp vs power amp distortion, Tone stack placement, Push-pull cancellation, Multiple drivers, Power supply sag
• Gear: 1959SLP Super Lead, JTM45 for the earlier voice; G12M Greenback 20 W or G12H
• Appears in: pairings 06, 08, 24, 26, 27
• Correction: Jumpering the two channels sums the bright and normal preamps so you blend brightness rather than choosing it. And because power-stage compression and transformer saturation are load-bearing here, an attenuated Plexi never quite matches a loud one — the electrical half survives attenuation, the mechanical half does not.

Fuzz into a cranked amp

1967–70 — Two cascaded nonlinearities, with the first one deliberately able to hear the guitar it is plugged into.

• Chain: Strat → wah → Fuzz Face → Uni-Vibe → Marshall Super Lead → 4x12
• Mechanisms: Low input impedance, Transistor saturation, Shunt-feedback input gain, Uni-Vibe stagger, Sweeping bandpass
• Gear: Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, Vox wah, Uni-Vibe, Super Lead 100; Roger Mayer Octavia on studio dates
• Appears in: pairings 01, 02, 10, 12, 13, 15, 23
• Correction: Sources disagree on where the Octavia sat — before the Fuzz Face in one account, after it in another, and after the wah in a third. Wah first and Uni-Vibe last are the consistent elements; treat the middle as contested rather than picking one.

Treble booster into a cranked amp

1966–75 — Remove the low end before the amplifier clips, and the amp's distortion stays articulate instead of turning to mush.

• Chain: Les Paul or Vox-era guitar → germanium treble booster → cranked Marshall or AC30
• Mechanisms: Treble booster, Frequency-selective clipping, Low input impedance, Preamp vs power amp distortion
• Gear: Dallas Rangemaster; Brian May's Deacy amp and booster; Iommi's modified Rangemaster
• Appears in: pairings 08
• Correction: A Rangemaster is on the same low-input-impedance list as a Fuzz Face, so it interacts with the pickup the same way — which is why it sounds wrong through a buffered board and right straight into the guitar.

The pedal platform

2000s onward — The amp is set just below clipping so the pedal supplies the first nonlinearity and the amp supplies the second.

• Chain: guitar → tuner → buffer → low-gain drive always on → second drive for solos → modulation → delay → reverb → amp at edge of breakup
• Mechanisms: Stacked drives, Feed-forward clean blend, Soft clipping, Buffer, Order as function
• Gear: Klon and descendants, Timmy, Nobels ODR-1, Bluesbreaker circuits; Deluxe Reverb, AC15, Two-Rock
• Appears in: pairings 04, 11
• Correction: The commonly cited 30 W floor for a pedal platform is guitar-press consensus, not a physics constant — and the claim that Fender-style circuits work because of a scooped midrange is received wisdom; no rigorous account of tone-stack placement and its consequences for pedal platforms appears to exist.

Tube Screamer into a saturated amp

1980s onward — The most copied trick in metal, and it is a filter trick rather than a gain trick.

• Chain: guitar → noise gate → TS with drive at zero and level high → high-gain amp input → 4x12
• Mechanisms: Pre-clipping high-pass, Soft clipping, High input impedance drive, Frequency-selective clipping, Post-clipping low-pass
• Gear: TS808, TS9, Maxon OD808, Boss SD-1 into a 5150, Rectifier or JCM800
• Appears in: pairings 07, 22
• Correction: With drive at zero the pedal is barely distorting at all. What it is doing is stripping everything below 720 Hz before the amp's preamp ever sees it, so palm mutes stop turning to mud. The tightening is the high-pass, not the diodes.

The Nashville hybrid rig

1970s onward — Compressor absolutely first, which is the opposite of the usual convention and the defining choice of the genre.

• Chain: Telecaster → compressor first → overdrive → slapback delay → clean amp → often two amps
• Mechanisms: OTA compression, Compressor before drive, Slapback, Attack time, Wattage and headroom
• Gear: Brent Mason's modified '67 Tele; Keeley, Xotic and Wampler compressors; Twin, Vibrolux, Deluxe
• Appears in: pairings 03, 04
• Correction: Pete Cornish puts the compressor absolutely first and warns that a volume pedal in front of it “will defeat any compression.” Bob Bradshaw puts distortion early instead. Dave Friedman calls order “a very subjective thing.” The standard chain is a strong prior, not a law.

The jazz archtop rig

1950s onward — Every choice removes high-order content, because close-voiced chords muddy the instant anything clips.

• Chain: hollow or semi-hollow → neck humbucker only → tone rolled well down → flatwounds → .012 and up → short cable → small clean amp
• Mechanisms: Pickup position comb filter, Pot value loading, String alloy, Wattage and headroom, Pickup inductance
• Gear: ES-175, L-5, ES-125; Polytone, Henriksen, Roland JC-120; Thomastik or Chromes flatwounds
• Appears in: pairings 14

The wet/dry/wet three-amp rig

late 1980s onward — The dry centre keeps the attack and the localisation; the wet outers do nothing but ambience.

• Chain: guitar → drives and dynamics → split → centre amp dry → stereo time effects 100% wet → left and right amps
• Mechanisms: Wet/dry/wet, What is actually stereo, Mono-summing cancellation, True stereo vs ping-pong, Buffer
• Gear: three near-identical amps, a transformer-isolated splitter, stereo rack or pedal time effects
• Appears in: pairings 30, 31, 32, 34
• Correction: Joel Korte's own wet/dry rig used deliberately mismatched amps — a high-headroom solid-state amp plus “a gnarly-little-homemade tube amp.” Two identical amps versus two different ones is a creative choice with no technical consensus behind it.

The stereo ambient rig

2000s onward — The volume pedal removes the attack and the ordering of reverb against delay decides everything else.

• Chain: guitar → volume pedal → compressor → light drive → reverb and delay in a chosen order → stereo out → two amps
• Mechanisms: Volume swell, Shimmer, Algorithmic vs convolution, Self-oscillation, Wet/dry/wet
• Gear: Strymon, Eventide, Chase Bliss and Walrus stereo units into two small amps or two pedal power amps
• Appears in: pairings 20, 30, 31, 33, 35, 40

The shoegaze board

1988–95 and after — Nothing is allowed a clear onset and nothing is allowed to sit still in pitch.

• Chain: Jazzmaster with the arm held → stacked modulations → fuzz → reverse reverb → loud amp
• Mechanisms: Glide guitar, Whammy flutter, Reverse reverb, Cascaded clipping, Flanger
• Gear: Jazzmaster or Jaguar, Yamaha SPX90 for reverse reverb, Big Muff, Boss modulations, Fender and Vox amps
• Correction: Kevin Shields' “glide guitar” — holding the vibrato arm through strummed chords so the whole chord bends — appears on You Made Me Realise and Isn't Anything in 1988. It is a playing technique, not a pedal, and it is the single most-imitated and least-understood part of the sound.

The doom and sludge rig

1990s onward — Cabinet area doing work that no circuit can do, under a fuzz that survives low tuning.

• Chain: humbucker guitar down to C or A → Big Muff or fuzz → optional second fuzz → large valve head → several 4x12s
• Mechanisms: Cascaded clipping, Muff tone notch, Downtuning tension loss, Multiple drivers, Inharmonicity
• Gear: Big Muff and derivatives, Sunn Model T, Orange, Matamp
• Appears in: pairings 05, 09, 23, 26, 37, 38
• Correction: The Muff's 1 kHz notch is why a rig that sounds enormous alone can vanish the moment a band starts. The fix is an overdrive after the fuzz to put the midrange back, not more fuzz.

The djent direct rig

2007 onward — The noise gate is a structural element rather than a utility — the silence between chugs is the rhythmic figure.

• Chain: seven- or eight-string → noise gate → tight boost → high-gain preamp → load box → impulse response → front of house
• Mechanisms: Two-gate detection, Pre-clipping high-pass, Impulse response, Reactive vs resistive load, Multiscale
• Gear: extended-range multiscale instruments, Fractal, Helix, Quad Cortex, Two Notes load boxes
• Appears in: pairings 07, 15, 21, 25, 36
• Correction: The word was coined by Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah as an onomatopoeia for the sound. Also worth knowing: an IR is a linear capture and cannot reproduce cone breakup or compression at all, so a direct rig is missing exactly the parts of a loud cabinet that change with how hard you play.

The four cable method rig

1990s onward — One amp doing what three normally would, by splitting the unit around the amp's own preamp.

• Chain: guitar → unit input → unit send to amp input → amp send to unit loop return → unit loop send to amp return → power amp
• Mechanisms: Four cable method, Effects loop, Order as function, Buffer, Time before drive
• Gear: any multi-effects unit with a routable internal split, into any amp with a serial loop
• Appears in: pairings 16, 18

The silent rig

2010s onward — The amplifier still runs flat out; only the air is removed.

• Chain: guitar → pedals → amp head → reactive load box → IR loader → interface → headphones
• Mechanisms: Reactive vs resistive load, Impulse response, Attenuator limits, Preamp vs power amp distortion, Impedance mismatch
• Gear: Two Notes Torpedo, Fryette Power Station, UA and Strymon IR-capable units
• Appears in: pairings 17, 25, 33
• Correction: A purely resistive dummy load records “far too bright and buzzy” because a tube amp's frequency response depends on the load impedance curve. The load box must be reactive, and the IR is a separate job it does not do.

The rack rig and buffered loop switching

1985–95 — Every pedal in its own buffered loop, so nothing loads the chain no matter how many are installed.

• Chain: guitar → line driver → loop switcher → drives in individual loops → rack preamp → stereo effects in the loop → stereo power amp → cabs
• Mechanisms: Buffered loop switching, Buffer, Bridging ratio, True stereo vs ping-pong, Effects loop
• Gear: Custom Audio Electronics systems; Soldano X88, ADA MP-1, Mesa Quad; Lexicon, TC and Eventide rack units
• Appears in: pairings 13, 18, 20, 28, 32

The post-rock swell rig

late 1990s onward — The chain is a compositional device rather than a tone: layers accumulate over minutes.

• Chain: guitar → volume pedal → long delay near self-oscillation → reverb → looper → amp
• Mechanisms: Volume swell, Self-oscillation, Tank decay rating, Shimmer, Reverse reverb
• Gear: volume pedal, EHX and Strymon delays, Boss and Chase Bliss loopers, EBow
• Appears in: pairings 05

The funk rig

late 1960s onward — The picking hand plays the filter, so the amp must stay clean enough for the transient to survive.

• Chain: single-coil guitar in position two or four → compressor → envelope filter → optional phaser → bright clean amp
• Mechanisms: Envelope filter, Two pickups blended, OTA compression, Stages to notches, Wattage and headroom
• Gear: Mu-Tron III and descendants, MXR Phase 90, Dyna Comp; Twin, Vibrolux, JC-120
• Appears in: pairings 06

The surf rig

1961–65 and after — The reverb tank sits in front of the amp, not in a loop, so the springs themselves are being driven.

• Chain: bright single-coil guitar → outboard tube spring reverb unit → piggyback head → 2x12 or 1x15 → amp's own bias tremolo
• Mechanisms: Spring reverb, Dwell, Tank decay rating, Bias tremolo, Band-limiting
• Gear: Fender 6G15 Reverb Unit, Showman, Bandmaster and Bassman heads, JBL D-series
• Appears in: pairings 19, 39
• Correction: Dwell is not a decay control. It sets how hard the tank's input transducer is driven, so turning it up makes the springs distort rather than making the reverb longer. That overdriven-tank crash is the surf sound.

The blues rig

1960s onward — The amp is set exactly at the clipping threshold so picking dynamics cross it — that is the entire rig.

• Chain: Strat or Les Paul → one overdrive used as a lead boost → small tube combo just past breakup
• Mechanisms: Cathode bias, Preamp vs power amp distortion, Treble bleed, Power supply sag, Soft clipping
• Gear: Deluxe Reverb, Princeton, tweed Bassman, AC15; Tube Screamer, Blues Driver, Timmy
• Appears in: pairings 03, 11

The Texas blues rig

1980s — Very heavy strings at reduced tension, into several large amps at once.

• Chain: Strat with .013s tuned down a half step → wah → TS808 as a level boost → rotating baffle cab → multiple large Fender amps
• Mechanisms: Downtuning tension loss, Rotating baffle, High input impedance drive, Inharmonicity, Multiple drivers
• Gear: Vibroverb, Super Reverb, Dumble Steel String Singer, Fender Vibratone
• Appears in: pairings 01, 29
• Correction: The Vibratone is a rotating baffle mechanically Doppler-shifting a real speaker. No phase-shift circuit reproduces it, which is why a chorus or phaser never gets close.

The Muff-then-overdrive lead rig

1973 onward — A fuzz for sustain and an overdrive after it to restore the midrange the fuzz scooped out. The order is the trick.

• Chain: Strat → compressor → Big Muff → overdrive after the Muff → modulation → long delay → very clean high-headroom amp
• Mechanisms: Muff tone notch, Cascaded clipping, Stacked drives, Buffered loop switching, Flanger
• Gear: Hiwatt DR103 into WEM cabs, Electric Mistress, Binson Echorec, later a Cornish-built buffered board
• Appears in: pairings 09

The dotted-eighth rig

1980 onward — The delay is written into the part, so a simple arpeggio becomes a continuous sixteenth-note pattern.

• Chain: Explorer or Strat → compressor → delay at a dotted eighth → second delay at another subdivision → modulation → AC30 Top Boost
• Mechanisms: Dotted-eighth delay, Vox Cut control, Cathode bias, Ratio and threshold, Digital delay headroom
• Gear: 1964 AC30 Top Boost, EHX Memory Man, Korg SDD-3000
• Correction: The AC30's Cut control is not part of its tone stack. It is a treble filter across the phase inverter, downstream of everything, which is why it behaves unlike any other amp's top-end control.

The Echoplex-front rig

1978–84 — A tape delay used as a preamp, in front of a Super Lead with no master volume and everything on ten.

• Chain: single-humbucker guitar → Echoplex EP-3 always on → Super Lead at full → dummy load → 4x12 → wet effects in a parallel path
• Mechanisms: Echoplex preamp, Preamp vs power amp distortion, Power scaling, Attenuator limits, Push-pull cancellation
• Gear: Frankenstrat, EP-3, 1959 Super Lead, parallel flanger, phaser and delay
• Appears in: pairings 24
• Correction: The EP-3's preamp is a simple JFET stage getting only about 6 dB above unity at maximum — a tone conditioner, not the legendary boost. Van Halen also said “brown sound” originally described his brother's drums, not his guitar.

The scooped Mesa rig

1985–95 — The graphic EQ sits after the preamp, so the scoop is applied to distortion that has already happened.

• Chain: humbucker guitar → little or no boost → Mark-series preamp → onboard graphic in a V curve → power amp → 4x12s
• Mechanisms: Passive FMV tone stack, Baxandall stack, Frequency-selective clipping, Multiple drivers, Preamp vs power amp distortion
• Gear: Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ and IV, quad-tracked in the studio
• Appears in: pairings 07, 21, 22, 36
• Correction: The scoop that sounds enormous alone disappears in a band mix, because the guitar has vacated exactly the band the vocal and snare occupy. It is the best-known live-versus-studio trap in the instrument.

The two-amp grunge rig

1989–95 — A clean amp and a dirty amp running together, so the arrangement is a footswitch.

• Chain: offset guitar with low-output single coils → Big Muff or DS-1 → Small Clone chorus on the clean parts → Twin clean and JCM800 dirty at once
• Mechanisms: Cascaded clipping, Chorus, Muff tone notch, Pickup inductance, Multiple drivers
• Gear: Jaguar, Mustang, Jag-Stang; EHX Small Clone; Fender Twin and Marshall JCM800
• Appears in: pairings 10, 12, 28, 34

The jangle rig

1964–66 and after — The chorusing is mechanical — paired octave courses slightly out of tune with each other — not electronic.

• Chain: Rickenbacker twelve-string or Telecaster → compressor → little or no drive → AC30 Top Boost
• Mechanisms: Cathode bias, Vox Cut control, Optical compression, Chorus, Transconductance
• Gear: Rickenbacker 360/12, AC30 Top Boost
• Appears in: pairings 29

The D-style smooth lead rig

late 1970s onward — The overdrive stage lives inside the amp and follows the tone stack, so the distortion is EQ'd going in rather than after.

• Chain: Strat or 335 → volume pedal → amp clean channel with internal overdrive → preamp boost switching → efficient speakers → time effects in the loop
• Mechanisms: Tone stack placement, Preamp vs power amp distortion, Negative feedback, Amp output impedance, Effects loop
• Gear: Dumble Overdrive Special and Steel String Singer; Two-Rock, Fuchs, Bludotone

The profiler and modeller rig

2011 onward — A captured fingerprint of one amp at one setting, or a simulated circuit that keeps responding when you turn the knobs.

• Chain: guitar → optional analogue drives → profiler or modeller → XLR to front of house → in-ear feed → optional powered cab
• Mechanisms: Profiling vs modelling, Impulse response, Buffer, Four cable method, High input impedance drive
• Gear: Kemper Profiler, Fractal Axe-Fx and FM9, Line 6 Helix, Neural Quad Cortex, IK Tonex
• Appears in: pairings 16, 17, 25, 35
• Correction: Profiling captures a snapshot, which is why Liquid Profiling had to pair profiles with a modelled tone stack — the original method could not make the knobs behave. Also: no authoritative cross-vendor latency measurements exist, and analogue-to-digital conversion accounts for over half of round-trip latency, not the modelling.

Instruments through the wrong rig

various — The amplifier used as a distortion generator rather than as an amplifier.

• Chain: bass into a cranked guitar amp → or guitar into a flat high-power bass rig → or Bass VI into normal guitar gear
• Mechanisms: Band-limiting, Mechanical non-linearity, Multiple drivers, Downtuning tension loss, Wattage and headroom
• Gear: the classic sixties fuzz-bass recording trick; Bass VI and baritone into surf and post-punk rigs
• Appears in: pairings 37, 38, 39, 40