MusicMuse

Thirty Rigs, and What Each One Solves

Thirty Rigs, and What Each One Solves — from What Goes Into What.

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.

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.

Fuzz into a cranked amp

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

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.

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.

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.

The Nashville hybrid rig

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

The jazz archtop rig

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

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.

The stereo ambient rig

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

The shoegaze board

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

The doom and sludge rig

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

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.

The four cable method rig

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

The silent rig

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

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.

The post-rock swell rig

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

The funk rig

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

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.

The blues rig

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

The Texas blues rig

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

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.

The dotted-eighth rig

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

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.

The scooped Mesa rig

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

The two-amp grunge rig

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

The jangle rig

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

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.

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.

Instruments through the wrong rig

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

Now apply it

Turn the physics into a rig

Describe a genre, paste your own gear, or ask the concierge to explain any diagram above in plainer terms.

Fire the tone forge → Try the hybrid lab →