"Then we bought the CD version that we could not wear out." Kids these days don't know how much of a technical improvement a CD was over previous formats.

Fantastic video!! Dave was so cutting edge for the time, I’m pretty sure if he had the tools we have now he would have utilized them. You’re right, all that matters is the end result! Great work! Alice In Chains are such an amazing band!

The key to Jerry's tone is Jerry. He said that he and EVH tried out each others rigs one time. And that EVH sounded like EVH through Jerry's rig. And that Jerry sounded like Jerry through EVH's rig. That & processing.

Dirt is an absolute masterpiece it was their last album with bassist Mike Starr and was recorded in their prime great video dude!

Jerry Cantrell is one of the most influential guitarist from the 90s. Thanks for this video!

I remember one weekend in 1992 my sister came home from college and she had 'Dirt' playing in her car. I heard 'Would?' and was immediately hooked. I listened to the entire album front to back and it's nothing short of a masterpiece. Jerry's dark modality on 'Would?' along with his wild vibrato and extreme string bends made me a fan from the start.

The "Bogner" amp was a Marshall JCM800 modded by Reinhold Bogner, supposedly.

its such a shame that every youtuber has to justify their way how they do things infront of 12year old comment writers anyway great tone - got really close!

Sludge factory might be the greatest guitar tone ever recorded

The bogner amp was the fish preamp thru his mosvalve power amp, at least that was what he said back then. They basically divided frecuencies in low mids (mesa) mids (fish) and high end (rockman/Marshall microstack i think) The bogner 800 was on facelift, there was a huge thread on gearslutz about it

I love how people think this is "too woofy". Bruh... have you even heard music made before 2005? Add some low end in your guitar it won't kill you. I think you got pretty damn close. AiC definitely had some beefy, thick guitar tones.

Definitely need to do a Hum or Deftones (around the fur era) tone recreation

Fun fact: Jerry Cantrell’s Dual Rectifier was a prototype gifted to him by Mesa. Another fact: a key factor of his tone was a modded JCM800 maybe a JVM with a gain mod, running into a open back 1x12 mic’d on both sides.

I'd love to hear and see how Rain When I Die was rigged up and things. I feel it's an underrated song from DIRT.

SO good!!! Yes, Dirt was a masterpiece! Keep these coming please. Some Soundgarden next perhaps???

I've always liked the snarly guitar tone on this album, even if I wasn't a big fan of all their work. The one thing I found lacking in the album was the bass guitar was just thinned out because of the focus on getting a heap of punch out of the kick drum. I ended up running this album through Ozone to boost the mid-bass in the EQ, then compress the low-end up to around the 220Hz mark with about 5dB boost and fast attack and release, add some harmonic excitation of that band as well and finally control whatever remaining peaks through the final limiter on reasonably fast settings too. As a drummer, I should be biased and demand more kick but my head just loves a phat low end to complement such snarly guitars, so a compromise is needed. :) What you did with your rendition of this tune is exactly what my ears want. Killer stuff mate!

Your voice is identical to Bert Kreischer. 😂

In my humble opinion that finished tone wasn't even close.. I ate and drank that cd for years and the tones are tattooed on my brain.. lol

One of the best albums to come out of the 90’s!!! I played it until the lacquer melted of of my cd!!! 🤘🤘🤘 RIP Layne...

You got damn near spot on. As we say in the mechanic's world, "run what you brung and hope you brung enough!" Good job bud.

I remember reading somewhere that on the first two AIC records Dave would mic up the back of the speaker cabinet as well as the front to make the guitars sound even larger. Great tone, super close

Respect. Get the tone how you can. I don’t think I’d be able to get out of my mental box enough to get that experimental with the axe. Good work man

Black Gives Way To Blue guitar tone video?

I got to see them play parts of Dirt live, for free, in a basketball auditorium just prior to the album release. Felt pretty special.

The Bogner Jerry Used on Dirt was actually a Marshall JCM800 2204 Modded by Reinhold Bogner (His mod can be acheived with either the Brown Channel of the Fish Preamp or his "recent" Helios amplifier)

Really cool! That tone is huge and you came pretty close. The hard word paid off! Waiting for a Ghost - Meliora tones! Keep up the great content Fluff!

Another great video R~B~G !!! thanks for the content & keep pumping out the vid's.... 🐈

You're essentially creating a model of a tone so using a modeling rig for that isn't blasphemy. I think it's cool! As long as you're using something to make music and it sounds good, I don't think the amp matters. Being a hardcore tube amp guy, I think all amps and really any kind of guitar gear have their place.

12:07 without the plugins- is the only time in this video I thought the tone was really close. Every other time in the video- I doesn't sound close at all, in my opinion. Good video either way :)

I remember reading an interview from jerry when dirt came out. He used three amps for different frequencies. Rectifier was used solely only the lowend , Marshall for midrange and the Tom sholtz rockman for the highs. Sounds massive when you assign specific heads for specific frequencies. Somewhere his bogner fish preamp and vht power amp was fitted in there as well.

Jerry's playing on that album is amazing I mean truly amazing his bands everything as much as lanes voice hits you Jerry's guitar is just as important

I personally like Facelift more, its my favorite album of all time. But there's no denying Dirt is their best piece of work

The dog doesn't care either. He's chillin!

I would never fault you for the digital gear. You are my new hero.

I'm actually curious how you got that bass tone. I see some a "pedal" plugin(Logic Pro plugin?) on what I believe is a DI track. Any chance of a run down on how you got that tone?

doesn't matter what you were running through, those chops were tight.

Fluff my dude I loved your "all the toys are awesome" speech. On every level. Killer.

This is my favorite of all your "find the tone" videos. You really killed it. And, I know you don't care, but the bass, when solo, did sound a little computery. But wow, you really crushed it this time. Also, this is one of my favorite bands, seen them with Staley and the "new guy". Great job.

Me, a Millenial: *GTA San Andreas - Radio X*

Back in my addiction 5 years ago I sold my Signature Dunlop JC95SE Pedal and had now idea that only 250 of them where made. Fast forward to today, I finally caught up with buddy I sold it to and managed to get it back. I’m soooo damn excited to get playing that Wah again

Fluff I’m glad you floss.... omg there’s a dead dog in your room!!! Awesome video and awesome job on the recreation. I love these videos. To get to see what you get to play with and how much you know about music and recording is years and years beyond me. Your effort for things like this, It’s fascinating. Gj bruh

Fluff, who won the full licence for Amp Roots ? Who did you pick up ? :)

Great Tone, also I like how you balance the film volume between playing and talking i hate having to go back and forth with the volume bar. Very professional, and great tones!

Right on man. That's the tone and vibe brother. AMAZING VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!

It's pretty good, but to my ears it sounds like the original tone has a lot more highs (almost hm2 sounding) and tighter bottom end. It also sounds to me like jerry's playing alternate picking during the palm mutes so the pick attack is way messier than yours. But great video regardless!

I went to Lollapalooza 93 at the Milan Dragway in Michigan. All I knew about Alice in Chains was Man in the Box at that time. When they came out, they ABSOLUTELY SLAYED. It was one of the best shows of my life. So incredible.

pretty damn close! nice work. DIRT is a fucking epic album

like the positivity dude. I adore AIC and dirt is a masterpiece. dude could you imagine Halpern drumming for AIC?

The fact that you got so close to his tone with digital amps is damn impressive. It sounds great!

OH MY GOD YES. I LOOOOVE ALICE IN CHAINS!!!! Jerry is the man that inspired me to pick up guitar! Unfortunately I do not have the money to be able to recreate his tone well enough. I'm just a teen. But music is my love and I hope that I can get to the level of having my dream instruments and all that!

Awesome! Dirt, my favorite album of all times! Jerry is one of my biggest influences when it comes to my own music making. You really did a great job there Fluff! You definitely succeeded in getting both that crispy and fat guitar sound from the album! I love Jerry’s guitar tone and I actually think that it’s improved in a great way for every album they are releasing! Thanks and take care! 👊🏼😎

Playing for 25 years and I still can't tell what you all talk about when you say far, bright, dark, etc. I understands mids, top and bottom obviously, but all the other tone language I just can't hear it. I buy pedals, amps, effects units and I always do the same fuzz, delay, and reverb combo I have used since I was a teenager. I rock my own tone no matter if I'm playing Mick Mars riffs, Jerry Cantrell, or my own shit. I wish I could do the tone thing though but can't grasp it for whatever reason.

You should try to recreate the “Devil put the dinosaurs here” tone. Because personally that’s my favorite AiC album

I'm just now watching this a day late. Hats off to you the reproduction is as good as your going to get with out all the innuendos involved "Original studio gear etc." great job I'm impressed!

Fantastic job in recreating such a fabulous and iconic tone (from a classic album). Quad-tracked . . . Wow. Who would have thought. Definitely makes sense to explain such a thick sound.

In short, he used Fluff FX ... thank you, i'll be here all week

I'm just glad your teeth are freshly flossed for the vid! & Long Live Jerry Cantrell.

Great Vid man. I think you got real close to nailing it 100%. 👍

Amazing video Ryan. Thanks for the learning experience.

Jerry now uses Motor City afwayu and 2nd degree black belt, in the G&l’s I think he uses the afwayu and the Gibson customs 2nd degree black belt. I use them both in my guitars and they are an upgrade from the JB.

I've played a Friedman JJ and Dual Rectifier together. Yeah, it sounds like Cantrell. You have to get both of them pretty juiced to do it though.

This couldn’t be better timing, I have been learning the entire album during quarantine 🤟

Love this video, man. Liked and Subscribed.

Pretty cool man. Nice work. Thanks too!

The Dirt album was the soundtrack of my teens!!! I even named one of my kids after Layne Staley. You hit it on the head to my ears, and Jerry's tone is difficult to get right. You can find ALOT of terrible attempts. I'd like to see you do Billy Corrigan "Siamese Dream" tone🤘😎🤘🎵🎼🔥🤞

This is so cool, man! Love it! thanks!

Love the video man! IMO you nailed it...

Make more of these!!! This was fucking awesome.

Had to like before I even watched, but WILL watch later(soon!).👍

i love these videos. your best so far imo, keep it up

Sounds Killer dude! and the tone is bang on!! Rock on

Great video Fluff!

Great work, man! First time viewer. Really enjoyed it! Thank u for sharing.

Great tone sounds killer. Please try to do facelift that guitar tone is monstrous

Dave Jerden interview about Dirt album, 1977: "What are some of the techniques that you use to record guitars?" On the first Alice in Chains record, Facelift. Jerry Cantrell and I had several amps, and were trying to find sounds on each one. I said, “Lets combine them.” Usually when you combine amps you end up with nothing but mud. But I came across the idea of using different amps for different frequency ranges. That could mean ,for example, using a Vox AC30 closed back for the low end, a Marshall or Bogner Ecstasy or a Mesa Boogie for the midrange, and then using something like a Bogner Fish preamp or Soldano preamp for the top end- something thast I could get a real hard bite from on top. I record those on separate tracks. They all go down at the same time, and then sometimes I double that. "So the first set of three is one performance…….." One performance. My Engineer Brian Carlstrom and I have been making our own active splitter boxes to help deal with hums, buzzes, and all that. The cable comes out of the guitar and the box splits the signal to the three amps. But I just did an album in the Bahamas last year at Terry Mannings studio (who is also a great engineer) and Terry invented an active splitter box with one in and six outs. It has ground lift switches to take care of grounding problems and it works like magic. "And the whole point of having the box is so the pickups aren’t loaded down making the guitar sound different." Exactly. Even the length of the guitar cable can kill the tone. When we’re doing basic tracks, the guitar and bass players are in the control room with the amp heads, and this makes the leads shorter. Keeping the guitar leads short is important because long leads can really take down the high end. "Do you have particular mics that you use for the three amp set-up?" The mainstay for me has been the Shure SM57. We always keep relatively new ones around and we front and back mic open back cabinets with them. I also use AKG C12’s for pulling out the room sound a little bit, or Neumann U47’s or U49’s are great mics for the room. But I don’t tale a $10,000 mic and put it right on a Marshall cabinet. A 57 will get the sound for me. "How much of the mix is there between the close and distant mics?" Probably 20 percent room as opposed to the close mic, and those mics go down to the same track. "When using the multiple amp technique, do the amps go into separate areas or into one room?" There’s two set-ups that I use: one is for basic tracks and the other is for overdubs. When I am doing the basic track, I am not sire if it is going to be a keeper, so I will isolate the guitar and bass amps from the drum room. But, when I actually do guitar overdubs, we pull all of the guitar cabinets ( the heads always stay in the control room) out in the main room and then I have the option of using room mics on them too. "When you mic the front and back of an open back amp, are you generally using a 57 in front and a 57 in back?" It can be a 57 or sometimes I use 421’s. Sometimes it’s a 57 in front and a 421 in back. It varies. The rest of the article : -About the tracking. All guitars and bass were recorded through 24 channels of Summit Tube pres (assembled by Rupert Neve himself), and Summit Tube compressors with a ratio of 4:1 knocking back 6 db. Cut flat to tape. (the SSL was used only for monitoring at this stage. Eqing was done at mixdown) All DI's and mics are compressed together. -The SM57 (for guitars) is placed at a 45 degree angle. Dave says at this position the mic acts like a cardoid and doesn't collapse the capsule when placed in front of a Marshall at 120db. Gives him a certain sound that he likes. (When using the rear mics, make sure to flip the phase.) -He also discussed the eqing of his three amp technique at mixdown. This is where the SSL board eq was used to fine tune the bandwidth of the three amps. It was: bass: amp, low pass only 300 Hz; mid amp: 300 Hz - 4K cut; high amp: 4k- 8k cut.

Great work. Would LOVE to hear what tones you were getting with the real amps. Especially compared to the afx.

The "Bogner" jerry talks about is actually Bogner modified jcm800 combo put into a head, its called the "snorkler" amp its kindof a cool story. Those were the days when Bogner was still just doing mods before he started making his own amps. Its the same amp that he used on Facelift. it has that really midrangy nasal tone. I was hoping the JJ would have that sound. but really the JJ just sounds like all the other Friedmans to my ears (i've played a few JJs)

Solid tones! Pretty dead on with the amps used, even plugins. A friend of mine has a Mesa 3 channel dual rectifier, & i've got a signature font peavey 5150 (the OG, not the II/+). We had gotten pretty close with double tracking those amps using the 5150 for the midrange, the Mesa for the low end. We compared using the amp plugins he had (most were 5150 clones so we chose the best one that was closer to my real amp), we toyed with a soldano slo100 as the top end clarity & while it worked when it was only 3 amps (5150, dual rect, slo100) it got lost/sounded too shrill when we double tracked. So we went for a jcm800 instead more of a crunch top end rather than a full on gain monster. The gain factor was taken care of more by the 5150's fizziness, & the Dual rects smoother low end rumble. All played with a 24.75" scale jaguar with a single JB bridge pickup. Godly tone, & we got pretty close - not dead on, but close enough were we had fun recreating Cantrell's tone.

Enjoyed the video and the tones, good job 👏🏻 👏🏻👏🏻

Hell yeah more chains please!!

Great video! I love the tone you arrived at.

It was the Bogner Snorkler FYI

Thank you SOOOOOO Much!!! Great video Bro!!!

When this video started I was about to comment and tell you you can get his exact tone with the AxeFx lol. You nailed it. Nice job man

I heard a little rumor from someone who was studio personnel on Dirt that Jerry used a matchless amp for cleans AND distortion depending on the song. (He didn’t want anyone to know because he didn’t want to be copied during the era.)

Not sure if you're a big crowbar fan or not but, I would love to see a crowbar tone video.

Love your videos fluff ❤️❤️ they’re just so cozy

Sounds great! Awesome job!

Usually I don’t really like his tone but he nailed this one ngl

Great video man. Always loved jerrys saturated tone!

Thanks for giving a lot of good details on how you made this tone.

Nice bro, took me back. Sounds killer sir.

Well done

That sounded incredible

Awesome vid Fluff, no derogatory comments here. I can get really close with my Bogner, Friedman, Splawn, and KSR Orthos. Lots of reverb on that track but you don’t really hear it too much on the studio version. Really enjoy your stuff!

Sounded awesome! I liked your personality in your playing too!

Great video man. Must have taken you a while. Iv’e was on the hunt for this tone a few years back. And the trick is that one of the speakers was recorded from behind the cabinet. With the back of the cabinet open. That gave is that rich low end. And the rectifier was a modded pre-production model. So you won’t get the same sound out of a modern rectifier. Anyways sweet vid and keep em coming!

That sir, is a top job. Well done.

It’s interesting to compare the live tone vs the studio tone. You were spot on with the grungy setting. It’s very tool yet more alternative brighter sound. it’s interesting to see if they change it live though. . I’d say some if not most match it as well as they can but if your adding studio FX you can’t match it perfect live. Interesting topic

I can really appreciate the work you put into this quest to find that tone, awesome job breaking this down very interesting for sure you are good at this.