How this works
Three steps from your favorite song to your rig. We do the listening. We do the chain. You get the numbers.
We chase the tone
Our editors are tone nerds. They listen, isolate, and A/B against rigs we already know inside-out. The Pride and Joy session takes a whole afternoon — most of it on the Tube Screamer's tone knob and the Vibroverb's master volume. Recordings get reverse-engineered against producer interviews, gear lists, and (where it exists) the actual session log.
We map the chain
Every block, every knob, every tap-tempo. The full signal path — guitar, drives, amp, cab, mic placement, post effects — documented like a service manual. If the original tone uses snapshot switching, parallel routing, or a specific footswitch assignment, we say so. You shouldn't have to reverse-engineer it.
You get the numbers
The chain gets translated into the exact block names and parameter values your modeler expects — Helix, Quad Cortex, TONEX, Fractal, Kemper, Katana, or your physical pedalboard. dB is dB. Hz is Hz. Time is ms. Download the patch, import once, and you're playing.
What you can count on
Verified, not guessed
Every recipe cites its sources — producer interviews, equipboard listings, gear photos, period-correct mods. When we don't know, we say so.
Era-correct gear
We don't list signature pickups on a recording from 1969. The Hetfield Master of Puppets recipe ships with the Jackson King V's stock pickups, not the EMG 81/60 he switched to on …And Justice For All.
Real ranges, not 0–10
Every knob value reads in the actual unit your modeler expects. dB on the cab Level. Hz on the high-pass. Milliseconds on the delay. Generic 0–10 marks are the enemy of repeatable tone.
Cab + mic placement
When the original tone is dual-mic'd (SRV's 4x10 Vibroverb with a Sennheiser 421 close + a Royer 121 ribbon further back), the recipe ships in WithPan and the second mic is in the same patch.
Ready to play
Browse the archive, pick a tone, dial it in. Or read the field notes if you want to go deeper into the why.