Nothing Band Guitar Tone: *Tired of Tomorrow* Heavy Shoegaze Settings

Start Here: The core of Nothing's Tired of Tomorrow tone:

1. High-gain fuzz or distortion, tuned down — the fundamental weight comes from pitch first, then gain
2. RAT or Big Muff direction, filter/tone pulled dark — note definition under the wash, not washed-out clarity
3. Heavy compression after the distortion — levels out dynamics, produces the dense, uniform character
4. Moderate reverb, not maxed — plate or hall, decay around 3 seconds, mix around 40 to 50%
5. Will Yip's production fingerprint — the recorded version has controlled room compression that a live chain can't fully replicate; work with what a room gives you

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Quick Reference: Tired of Tomorrow Starting Settings

Element	Setting	Notes
Guitar tuning	Drop B or D standard, baritone	Low register — the weight is in the tuning
Distortion (RAT or Big Muff)	High gain, filter/tone pulled back dark	Notes present but diffuse
Compression (post-distortion)	Medium ratio, medium-slow attack	Density, not limiting
Reverb type	Plate or hall	Smooth tail, no spring drip
Reverb decay	2.5 to 3.5 seconds	Long but not overwhelming
Reverb mix	40 to 50% wet	More wash than neo-shoegaze, less than classic MBV
Delay	300 to 400ms, mix 15%	Depth without clutter
Amp	Clean or lightly driven	Distortion does the work; amp provides foundation

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What Makes Nothing Different from Classic Shoegaze

The reference points for Nothing are obvious — My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Hum — and Dominic Palermo has cited all of them. But Tired of Tomorrow is not a recreation of those records. It's closer in spirit to Hum's You'd Prefer an Astronaut than to Loveless: the tuning is low, the riffs are identifiable, and there's an aggression underneath the wash that classic British shoegaze largely avoids.

The production fingerprint belongs to Will Yip, who also recorded Title Fight's Hyperview and has a specific way of treating heavy guitars — compressed, mid-present, dense — that carries over to Nothing's work. The Tired of Tomorrow guitars sit in the mix rather than consuming it. You can hear the bass guitar separately. The drums have room. This is not the frequency-soup production of Loveless, where the guitars and the reverb become an undifferentiated field.

What this means practically: the tonal targets are approachable. You're not trying to recreate something that required specific vintage fuzz circuits and a specific recording environment. You're building a high-gain, down-tuned, compressed guitar tone with spatial treatment — which any decent signal chain can achieve.

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The Tuning Is Doing Half the Work

This is the part most guides skip, and it's the part that matters most.

The heaviness of Tired of Tomorrow is not primarily a function of gain. It's a function of where the guitar sits in the frequency spectrum. When Dominic Palermo tunes to Drop B or plays baritone guitar, the fundamental pitch of the chords drops below where most guitar signals live. The distortion then saturates those lower frequencies, which have more inherent weight than distorted standard-tuning chords.

If you try to build this tone in standard tuning and just add more gain, it won't get there. The frequency center is wrong. You'll get fizzy and thin before you get heavy, because the distortion pedal is saturating midrange frequencies instead of low-mid ones.

What to do: Drop D at minimum. Full step down (D standard / drop C) gets you closer. Drop B is where the album actually lives. If you don't want to retune your primary guitar, a guitar tuned down dedicated to this material makes a meaningful difference — more than any pedal change at standard tuning.

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Building the Distortion Layer

Two pedals make the most sense for approximating this tone:

RAT2 Route

The RAT is the more articulate option — you can hear individual chord notes under the wash at high Distortion settings if you run the Filter dark.

Control	Position	Notes
Distortion	About 2 to 3 o'clock	High but not at maximum — some note identity survives
Filter	About 9 to 10 o'clock	Pulled dark — cuts the harshness, adds weight
Level	Noon to 1 o'clock	Pushing the amp or compressor; don't run output low

The key thing I noticed testing this: the RAT at high Distortion with Filter rolled back dark sounds thin until you drop the tuning. The same settings in standard tuning produce a middling high-gain tone. Tune down and suddenly the Filter choice makes sense — you're cutting above the frequency range where the fundamental pitch lives, not below it.

Big Muff Route (Russian or Op-Amp)

The Op-Amp Big Muff and the Russian Big Muff (Green Russian, both available as current EHX nano versions) both work for the heavier Nothing direction. The Big Muff produces more harmonic wash than the RAT — less note definition, more density.

Control	Position	Notes
Sustain	About 2 to 3 o'clock	High but not at maximum — some dynamics remain
Tone	About 9 to 10 o'clock	Dark — Big Muff tone rolled off counters the nasal honk
Level	Around 1 o'clock	Loud — the Big Muff needs output to work against an amp

The Big Muff route is closer to classic shoegaze tone, which is why it sits in a mix less cleanly. If you're playing with bass and drums and need chord parts to read as chords, the RAT is more cooperative. If you're playing solo or want more pure wash, the Big Muff gets there faster.

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Compression Placement and Settings

Post-distortion compression is a key character element of the Will Yip production sound and something that's easy to approximate even without a great compressor.

The compression is doing density work, not transient work. It's evening out the dynamics of the high-gain distortion — taking the peaks down, bringing the sustain up — and creating the sense that every chord is uniformly thick rather than varying dynamically with pick attack.

Control	Setting	Notes
Ratio	4:1 to 6:1	Medium-heavy — squashes the gain variation
Attack	Medium-slow (15 to 30ms)	Let the distortion's initial transient through
Release	Medium (80 to 150ms)	Sustain between notes; not pumping
Threshold	Set so gain reduction is 4 to 8dB on loud chords	Compressing, not limiting
Makeup gain	Enough to restore output level	Match your bypassed level

A Boss CS-3 at Sustain 1 o'clock, Level 11 o'clock, Tone noon does a reasonable job in this role — particularly if placed after the distortion pedal rather than before it. The compression character is different post-distortion (smoothing the gain's dynamics) versus pre-distortion (affecting how the distortion responds to attack). For this sound, post-distortion is correct.

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Reverb and Spatial Treatment

Nothing's reverb is heavier and more present than the neo-shoegaze approach I detailed in the neo-shoegaze tone guide. The decay is longer and the mix is higher — closer to classic shoegaze aesthetics, but with the reverb sitting behind a much heavier distortion than MBV used.

The effect is a wash that the distortion is cutting through, rather than the reverb being the central texture. The distortion is the foreground; the reverb is the environment it lives in.

Plate reverb is the right choice here. Spring reverb has a drip and a bounce that interrupts the heaviness. Hall works but can feel too controlled. Plate has a density and a smoothness that suits both the production aesthetic and the frequency content of tuned-down, high-gain guitar.

Settings:

Control	Setting	Notes
Decay	3 to 4 seconds	Longer than most shoegaze guides recommend
Mix	40 to 55%	Present, close to equal dry/wet balance
Pre-delay	10 to 20ms	Small gap — keeps the attack clear
High cut (if available)	4 to 5kHz	Keeps the tail from getting harsh with high-gain input

On a modeler — Helix's Double Tank or a plate algorithm, Quad Cortex's Plate reverb — pull the mix higher than you instinctively would and let the decay run longer. The distortion underneath anchors the sound even when the reverb is prominent.

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Translating This to a Modeler

The Tired of Tomorrow tonal approach translates cleanly to a Helix or Quad Cortex, with one important note: the down-tuning still applies. A modeler at standard pitch with aggressive distortion doesn't automatically replicate this. Tune the guitar down, then build the chain.

Helix signal chain:

1. Compressor block — light, before distortion (optional — sets up the distortion's response to pick attack)
2. Distortion block — Arbitrator Fuzz (RAT model) or Bighorn Fuzz (EHX Big Muff model) at high gain, tone/filter pulled back
3. Amp block — simple clean foundation (Soup Pro or Grammatico Std — Supro or '65 Princeton style), low Gain
4. Cab block — 2x12 or 4x12 depending on density preference
5. Compressor block — after cab, or after amp pre-cab — smooths gain variation
6. Reverb block — Double Tank or Plateaux, decay 3 seconds, mix 45%
7. Delay block — Simple Delay, 350ms, mix 15%

Quad Cortex:

1. RAT or Big Muff model — high gain, filter dark
2. Clean amp model (Fender Deluxe or Princeton) — low drive
3. Compression — after amp, before reverb
4. Plate reverb — decay 3 to 4 seconds, mix 45 to 50%
5. Delay — 350ms, low mix

The how to dial in modeler tone guide covers the amp block setup principles that apply to the clean foundation here.

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The Part About Playing in Bands

The Nothing tone is built for a specific band context — loud drums, loud bass, and guitars that are aggressive enough to compete without being so mid-scooped they disappear. Will Yip's production handles this mix question on the record by compressing everything tightly and using EQ to carve space for each instrument.

Live, without that production layer, the tone has to work harder to sit correctly. What this means practically:

Don't scoop the mids. The temptation with high-gain distortion at low tuning is to cut the midrange and add bass. This makes the guitar sound heavy in isolation and disappear in a mix. For band context, keep the amp's Mid at noon or slightly boosted. The distortion pedal already has mid content from the saturation — you're not adding mud by keeping the amp's mids up.

Run the reverb shorter than the record. The Will Yip plate reverb on Tired of Tomorrow is a production reverb — it sounds long in the record because it was tracked in a controlled room, treated by Will Yip's compression chain, and mixed at a level that supports that decay. Live, a 4-second decay at 50% mix is likely to produce wash that covers the bass player. Trim the decay to 2 to 2.5 seconds for live use and compensate by pushing the mix slightly higher.

The compression keeps the volume consistent. Live, the compressed-distortion approach means chord dynamics are more uniform — which is a feature. You don't have to compensate for a quieter chord getting lost under the reverb or a harder chord cutting through too sharply.

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FAQ

Do I need to tune down to get this tone? Yes, substantially. The heaviness of Tired of Tomorrow is a tuning decision first. Drop D gets you in the neighborhood; Drop C or Drop B is where the record actually lives. At standard tuning, the same pedal settings produce a different (and less convincing) result.

What specific amp did Nothing use on Tired of Tomorrow? Studio recording with Will Yip at Studio 4 — the production uses a combination of amp tones and studio processing that isn't fully documented in public gear discussions. The principles (high gain, compression, plate reverb) translate independently of the specific studio amps used.

Can I use a Big Muff instead of a RAT for this? Yes. The Russian Big Muff (or EHX Nano Big Muff) produces a heavier, more washed-out character. The RAT reads more clearly in a mix. For solo playing or when you want more wash, the Big Muff is the right choice. For band context, the RAT's note definition cooperates better.

Is the Will Yip production sound achievable live? Partially. The compression and reverb characteristics translate. The specific recorded density — the way the guitars feel like they're pressed into the speaker — is partly a production artifact of his mixing and limiting chain. The closest live approximation is a post-distortion compressor with a moderate ratio running into a plate reverb with the mix higher than comfortable.

How does this differ from the Nothing settings in the neo-shoegaze guide? The neo-shoegaze guide covers the Tired of Tomorrow sound as part of a broader overview. This post goes deeper on the tuning, the distortion settings by pedal type, the post-distortion compression technique, and the live translation. If you want a starting point quickly, the overview is fine. If you want to build the tone specifically rather than generically, start here.