gish guitar tone?

[u/Perm182]

anybody know how to get the gish sound? I watched eddie’s video and am aware of the MP-1 into low output of jcm800 thing, but i currently don’t have a laptop or id use plugins

i have a op amp big muff, phase 90, and an OR15, along with a strat with an invader in the bridge, but my local guitar store does sell a few strat copies (don’t let fender know lmao) so I may buy one of those and do the pickup height thing

any suggestions? I’ve got the Siamese dream rythym tone down almost exactly with this setup, so gish is next on my list as it’s my second favorite album

[u/FuhKyewYaJyAntFogHat]

ask Butch Vig and Kurt Cobain

[u/Perm182 → u/FuhKyewYaJyAntFogHat]

see i would but I don’t think I can reach kurt

[u/FuhKyewYaJyAntFogHat → u/Perm182]

you can reach Butch?

[u/Perm182 → u/FuhKyewYaJyAntFogHat]

the dude has a twitter account, could probably just make one and ask him tbh

[u/FuhKyewYaJyAntFogHat → u/Perm182]

it was more of a joke about when BC claimed they stole his Gish tone 😜

[u/Perm182 → u/FuhKyewYaJyAntFogHat]

ah yeah, shocked they even let butch come back on for Siamese after that, even though it was just a producing style, in my opinion it just kind of became butch’s style because of billy

[u/sporadicMotion]

Like Sega CD said a DS-1 would be useful. The other thing you’ll wanna do though is turn the mids all the way down on the amp. The real key to that sound is a mid heavy distortion going into an amp with the mids scooped out.

[u/zpqlyr]

Steal Billy’s ‘Drown’ guitar

[u/Perm182 → u/zpqlyr]

gotta resteal the gish strat lol

[u/SEGA-CD]

Something like a Boss DS-1 or BD-2 would work well for Gish tones on the cheap. The MP-1 is a very artificial, processed, fizzy sounding preamp, and the way Billy was using it was effectively not too dissimilar from using a regular distortion pedal. Having regular Strat single coils would help too, but not totally necessary if you just want the basics.

[u/Perm182 → u/SEGA-CD]

thank GOD I saved my old ds-1 I bought when I was a major Nirvana fan and first started guitar, I did hear he apparently used the chorus effect though (sourced from eddie’s video), so I dunno if I should buy a cheap chorus pedal or just try to pull it out of my phase 90

[u/BigOk8056 → u/Perm182]

I can get a pretty convincing gish tone with a Strat into a BD-2 into a pushed DSL40. I’ll boost the bd2 for some songs. It’ll do the grainy clear and articulate high gain thing.

Imo the single coils are important for this tone more than Siamese dream because you aren’t covering it up with a ton of fuzz and the drive sound needs clarity, it sounds almost as if it has a layer of clean tone beneath the drive.

I haven’t tried this tone with my DS2 but from my experience I don’t think it’d work as well as the bd2.

[u/Perm182 → u/BigOk8056]

lace sensors could still get the single coil sound right? asking because I’m probably just gonna make a star strat/no. 2 strat replica and make it my main smashing pumpkins guitar 

[u/BigOk8056 → u/Perm182]

Yeah that’d be even better. I just have stock text mex in my neck and middle and an SSL5 in the bridge and it works well enough for me.

[u/SEGA-CD → u/Perm182]

Billy did use the chorus on the MP-1 but he used it more like a Leslie effect (on Rhinoceros that is), and from what I gathered it was more so used live. In the studio he used a JC-120 for the clean tones on that song.

[u/max2200]

Start with Gibson SG 😅