Tone · Reference
Sixteen settings. One tone recipe.
Distortion type, clipping type, EQ profile, amp, cabinet, compressor, gate, technique, attack, groove, tuning, modulation, pitch, effects chain, space and character — sixteen groups, each with a plain-English explainer and a beginner tip on every option. Pick your way through and the panel fixed to the bottom of the screen writes it all up as one tone recipe you can copy or download.
This page explains and composes settings by hand, from fixed reference data. For a written-in-words description that gets matched to a full rig automatically, the forge on the home page does that job.
Beginner guide. Off shows only the tip for whatever's selected. On shows every tip on the page at once, for reading start to finish before you pick anything.
01 · The Gain Stage
Where the harmonics get made.
Everything downstream reacts to what happens here. Distortion type is the pedal family; clipping type is the physics underneath any of them; gain level is how far into that physics you push.
A four-step slider from fully clean to fully saturated. Every step above changes how hard you're pushing whatever Clipping Type you picked above.
02 · Shape
EQ, dynamics and what gets let through.
Frequency balance, how the volume of each note is controlled, and what's allowed to reach the amp at all between notes.
03 · Source — Player & Instrument
Before a single pedal gets touched.
Technique (pick more than one), attack, groove and tuning — the part of the tone that comes from your hands and your strings, not from anything with a knob on it.
04 · Modulation & Pitch
Movement and extra voices.
Three genuinely different modulation mechanisms get lumped together in casual conversation — they aren't the same circuit. Pitch and harmony add a second voice rather than moving the first one.
05 · Amplify & Space
Amp, cabinet, chain order and the room.
How the signal actually turns into air — plus where in the chain everything else sits, and how much space gets added at the very end.
06 · Character
The target vibe, and how hard it hits.
Texture is a composite read on everything above; Energy is a plain 1–10 read on performance intensity, not a technical claim about any one setting.
1 to 10, restrained to maximal. This describes the performance, not the gear — it changes the wording of the recipe's closing line, nothing more.
How categories stay readable without colour. Six families group the sixteen settings above — Source, Gain, Shape, Modulation & Pitch, Amplify & Space, and Character — and every one carries a distinct border style plus a distinct glyph, shown as a small badge on each group's heading. Nothing here depends on hue: the badges above read the same printed in black and white as they do on a colour screen, and the same to a colour-blind reader as to anyone else. This follows the same method the estate's RERA developer index (vkjindia/tricity-rera-developer-index.html) established first, for a four-state badge carried entirely by stroke style, fill and glyph.
Sources
- Rod Elliott, "Soft Clipping," sound-au.com/articles/soft-clip.htm — mechanism and harmonic content of soft vs. hard clipping. Accessed 29 Jul 2026.
- Unison Audio, "Soft Clipping vs Hard Clipping 101," unison.audio/soft-clipping-vs-hard-clipping/ — even/odd harmonic content and perceived warmth vs. harshness.
- Sonarworks, "When Distortion Is Good," sonarworks.com/blog/learn/when-distortion-is-good — low-order vs. high-order harmonic generation.
- ElectroSmash, "ProCo Rat Analysis," electrosmash.com/proco-rat-analysis — LM308 op-amp, symmetrical silicon diodes to ground, hard-clipping circuit topology.
- ElectroSmash, "Klon Centaur Analysis," electrosmash.com/klon-centaur-analysis — germanium diodes to ground (hard clipping) blended in parallel with a clean path.
- MusicGearSpecialist and ToneStakr Tube Screamer guides — op-amp feedback-loop diode clipping and the ~700 Hz (500 Hz–1 kHz) mid-hump boost. Accessed 29 Jul 2026.
- Roland Corporation / Sweetwater / Reverb listings, Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus specifications — 120 W, dual 60 W into 2×12", solid-state, built-in chorus and spring reverb, benchmark clean platform since 1975.
- Guitar World and the Boogie Forum, Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier — switchable tube vs. silicon-diode rectifier and the resulting sag vs. tightness trade-off.
- Sweetwater InSync, "The History of the Legendary Marshall JCM800 2203" — EL34 power tubes, midrange-forward crunch, single-channel circuit.
- Celestion, official Vintage 30 product page, celestion.com/product/vintage-30/ — 12", 60 W, 70 Hz–5 kHz response, 100 dB sensitivity.
- ElectroSmash, "EMG81 Pickup Analysis," and Equipboard EMG 81 listing — active preamp design, ceramic magnet, tight low end, high output.
- Guitar-chord.org and guitartuner.io, standard EADGBE tuning frequencies (E2 82.41 Hz–E4 329.63 Hz, A440 equal temperament).
- Sweetwater 8-string tuning guide and Strandberg Guitars, 7- and 8-string standard tunings (B–E–A–D–G–B–E and F♯–B–E–A–D–G–B–E).
- Empress Effects and Fader & Knob guitar-EQ guides — approximate bass (below ~250 Hz), mid (~500 Hz–2 kHz) and treble (useful content to ~6 kHz) control ranges.
- Nail The Mix and Fader & Knob noise-gate guides — threshold, attack and decay behaviour for tight high-gain rhythm tone.
- Audio University and MixAcademia — compressor threshold, ratio, attack and release definitions.
- LANDR and Mixdown Mag modulation-effects explainers — chorus (short modulated delay), flanger (shorter delay with feedback), phaser (all-pass filter chain, no delay line).
- Sweetwater and Joey Sturgis Tones reverb-type guides — spring, plate, hall and shimmer reverb characteristics.
FAQ