The secret to Chuck’s tone wasn’t only the passive but outrageously powerful bridge pickup, but also what we call a “scooped” sound. You can pick up a Jackson X-Series Warrior at an affordable price or a Jackson Warrior WR7 with a heftier price tag.īoth guitars will require a pickup upgrade with the aforementioned DiMarzio pickup. He was a traditional lead player who didn’t use any of the pyrotechnics Eddie Van Halen invented in the ‘80s.Ĭhuck’s original guitars are hard to find in some corners of the planet, so a couple of good alternatives might be the similarly-shaped Jackson Warrior guitars. Other than his X2N-equipped Stealths, Chuck could occasionally be seen, mainly in the studio with a Mockingbird, also made by BC Rich.Ĭontrary to most of his peers at the time, all of Chuck’s guitars featured a fixed bridge.
Although it’s passive, this pickup is capable of some outrageous levels of gain and can drive any amp to the extreme. This was not just another pickup, Chuck chose the hottest pickup DiMarzio ever made, the DiMarzio DP101 X2N. His Stealth guitar featured only one pickup at the bridge position. He had three of them: one in emerald green, one in black, and one sanded down to the wood. He played the not-so-famous BC Rich Stealth almost exclusively. In this case, you will need to consider using a distortion pedal instead.Chuck Schuldiner’s choice of guitars was very metal-oriented. Of course, this can be a problem if you are using an amp with a lot of headroom which will require a very high volume to achieve distortion. To achieve the classic metal tone with a valve (tube) amp, you will need to turn the volume high enough so that the tone begins to break up and distort. If you have a valve (tube) amplifier, things get a bit more complicated. If you have a solid-state amplifier, simply turn the gain up to almost maximum. The gain setting may alternatively be called the drive or distortion setting on some amps, but the same principles apply here.įor most metal songs, the gain will be between 8-10 to give you enough distortion for punchy riffs and solos. On some amps, you may have separate bass, mids and treble controls, but on others, this may be combined into a single EQ control.
Get these spot on, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving that characteristic metal tone. Let’s start with the four main controls you need to consider:
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