Now that I have thousands of studio hours under my belt, and my engineering skills have finally caught up to my childhood fantasies (haha!), I thought it would be fun to see how close I could come to some of the classic Metallica tones with my beloved Mark IV. Obviously they’re not going to be exact, considering that literally everything is different (player, guitar, pickups, cables, cabinets, rooms, recording equipment and medium, etc.). But since those tones came from Mesa Mark series amps, and I have a lot of the same (or similar) gear, I wanted to give it a shot since these guitar sounds are a big part of what started my love affair with recording in the first place.
I also recorded a quick riff from Theocracy’s “Wishing Well” with each of the three tones, both because I thought it would be cool to hear my own riffs with these tones, and because it seemed useful to have the same part played through all three sounds for comparison’s sake.
Everything is played through the same Mesa/Boogie Mark IV head, with an EQ in the loop. No pedals or anything, just guitar straight into amp. I wanted to show the huge difference that different cabinets and speakers + different microphones + engineer’s ears make, even with the same guitar and amp. There’s no impulses or software EQ matching or any of that nonsense; I simply tried to get as close as I could by ear. Again, of course it’s not exact, but I think I got fairly close and I certainly had fun doing it. I hope you get a kick out of it as well! :)
Black Album 0:00
"Wishing Well" w/Black Album Tone 1:18
...And Justice For All 1:40
"Wishing Well" w/Justice Tone 2:41
Master of Puppets 3:05
"Wishing Well" w/Puppets Tone 4:03