Jul 9
What Effects Do You Need to Get the Metallica Sound/Tone?
To help duplicate Metallica's amp settings, make sure your amp has low, high, and mid-range EQ or tone knobs, or you may have just low and high tone settings, this will work too. You may have these settings on your distortion pedal or effects unit instead, and that okay, you can use these.
If you have them on both your effects and your amp then use one to dial in the sound and on the other place the settings in the middle so they don't clash.
How it Works
The trick James Hetfield uses is to reduce his midrange completely or almost completely, and enhance the low and high tone as much as possible. This technique is especially employed on the earlier albums. You're going to get a heavy sound that also leaves room for vocals. The downside is this tone tends to eat up the bass guitar sound.
What To Do Exactly
If you have a mid-range knob, turn that all the way down (or almost all the way). Then turn your low and your high tone knobs all the way up. If you have no mid-rang knob, just turn your low and high all the way up.
A Little Extra Bite to Sound More Well Rounded Metallica Sound
I have a mid-range knob myself, and so in practice I'll usually turn the mid-range back up just a little, just until I hear the midrange giving the sound a little more bite.
Equipment Recommendation
Kirk Hammet uses the Metal Zone guitar pedal which is a metal staple and it has a sweepable mid range. I highly recommend this pedal for anyone wanting to play heavy music. You don't need more overdrive than this baby delivers and it will last forever.
There's More to It
Amp settings will only get you so far. To get a full Metallica sound you also need to strike the strings the right way with your right hand for proper crunch and tone. Click here for part 2 of this post: Metallica Sound: Right Hand Techniques for Massive Tone (Part 2)
This post was written by
Michael Jae.
Michael is a guitarist of over 18 years and has taught lessons, played in front of live audiences, and wrote and recorded his own acoustic fingerstyle albums. He's especially fond of playing classic rock, heavy metal, classical guitar, and fingerstyle acoustic guitar in the style of Leo Kottke and John Fahey.
this is so ridiculous. This will make your guitar sound like absolute crap.
Hi Joel, to the contrary I’ve used this setting for over 10 years and it’s still the setting I dial in today! I’m dead serious.
This setting has been described by Hetfield a number of times in interviews, and was featured in Guitar magazine years ago.
You may not like it, but I love it! To each his own.
Hey thatnks for the help! In my opinion the setting dosen't sound real great with modern rock today, but i love to play and sing Metallica, and it sounds just like the record!! Again thanks alot!!:)
At the moment I’m only learning the guitar but being a fan of Metallica, this will be worth noting for the future!
My son LOVES Metallica and has been taking guitar lessons for the past few months. I will pass these tips onto him… I think he will really appreciate it. Thanks.
Awesome dude! My parents will hate this, I just started playing and now I can really rock it! They are not real big Metallica fans but they did grow up in the 80′s maybe they’ll come around.
Being in a worship band I can honestly say that this doesn’t really sound very good for that type of music. I am always looking for a way to get the people up on their feet but I don’t think this is it. Before the worship band though this really would have been a great tip for the heavy metal band I was in. I do agree it doesn’t really sound that great for the more modern rock either. Your post was a great tip though keep up the good work and post any more tips you can come up with.
Thanks Cherri. Yeah, the sounds is not everyone’s cup of tea. Because it’s bass and treble heavy it swallows the bass guitar, but leaves a lot of room for the vocals.
I’m very new to playing the guitar. I am practically a babe whose just beginning to take lessons (finally taking the plunge after procrastinating it for many years). It is interesting to know that you can tune a guitar to specific tones kind of like you configure the settings on various sound editing software programs. That is where my experience lays – in the area of digital sound production or mixing, but almost entirely centered around dance tracks or HIP HOP. I know a lot of rock bands now deploy high tech production effects. I look forward to more articles. Keep them coming, Sir!
This is an enlightening discussion about a very technical topic. So I thought since the readers here are most likely made up of musicians, music listeners and fans, that they would appreciate my sharing an awesome documentary I just watched last night about the origins and history of the Synth Pop music genre and how it influenced Rock and spawned the Electronica/Techno/Dance genre which is now beyond a craze. It’s here to stay. This BBC feature is called, “Synth Britannia and it took me on a journey back to circa 1980′s when I was coming of age and being influenced by some classic groups and some underground artists, too. Check it out in its entirety on youtube at: youtube.com/watch?v=69Wjc6QYuKI