Guitar(s) on Cherub Rock

[soupking]

Hi Mr. Vig,

I think Cherub Rock is one of the top 10 greatest rock tracks ever. There's not many tracks I remember when I heard the first time, but that is most definitely one of them. When the guitar comes crashing in is really (in my humble opinion) just sheer rock bliss.

Was it mostly layering and some kind of varispeed tape effect? It's the most awesome guitar attack since Queen's Flash Gordon Theme or, excuse me, since Nirvana's Bleed.

Anyway, way cool of you to take time for us answering all these questions. Anything you can remember about how the guitars were recorded and what was used for this song would be awesome to know.

Peace & Thanks,
-soupking

[darryl2112]

I'm definitely a huge fan of the SD guitar sound. subsequently, I have alot of fuzz pedals....4 different big muffs (a ram's head era clone, a triangle clone that I built, a stock black russian and a stock US reissue). I can tell you that most big muffs come damn close to that sound out of the box(even through a clean amp). Its well documented that SD was a huge big muff record (corgan even had a chapter in his online autobiography titled "big muff"). The other half of the equation was a JCM800 running kt-88's. Cherub rock is a classic example of an early big muff sound...Its said that the solo's flange sound was actually tape flanging. There might have also been a univox superfuzz in there as well...but I believe the basic sound for Cherub was Clapton Strat(with lace sensor pickups)-big muff-JCM800 set on the cleaner side. Never saw any documentation on the actual recording chain though

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by soupking

Hi Mr. Vig,

I think Cherub Rock is one of the top 10 greatest rock tracks ever. There's not many tracks I remember when I heard the first time, but that is most definitely one of them. When the guitar comes crashing in is really (in my humble opinion) just sheer rock bliss.

Was it mostly layering and some kind of varispeed tape effect? It's the most awesome guitar attack since Queen's Flash Gordon Theme or, excuse me, since Nirvana's Bleed.

Anyway, way cool of you to take time for us answering all these questions. Anything you can remember about how the guitars were recorded and what was used for this song would be awesome to know.

Peace & Thanks,
-soupking

There are LOTS of guitars on Cherub Rock, most of them Billy's Strat going into his Marshall. The one sound that still gets my blood to a fever pitch is the sound that comes in on the chorus. The house engineer Mark Richardson took a distortion box out of a pedal steel guitar, and put it in a little silver box with input and output jacks, and it had the COOLEST white noise blast! Man oh man, I'd never heard a stomp box that did anything like that! We ended up using it on a bunch of songs. Billy still has that pedal somewhere in his archives.

Maybe Jeff knows what exactly that dist box was taken from. I'd love to have one in my gear arsenal!

[soupking]

Originally Posted by ButchVig

There are LOTS of guitars on Cherub Rock, most of them Billy's Strat going into his Marshall. The one sound that still gets my blood to a fever pitch is the sound that comes in on the chorus. The house engineer Mark Richardson took a distortion box out of a pedal steel guitar, and put it in a little silver box with input and output jacks, and it had the COOLEST white noise blast! Man oh man, I'd never heard a stomp box that did anything like that! We ended up using it on a bunch of songs. Billy still has that pedal somewhere in his archives.

Maybe Jeff knows what exactly that dist box was taken from. I'd love to have one in my gear arsenal!

Wow, I thought it was tape flange or something like that, I wouldn't have thought it to be primarily multiple guitars and distortion.

Thanks for the response!

[jefft]

Originally Posted by ButchVig

There are LOTS of guitars on Cherub Rock, most of them Billy's Strat going into his Marshall. The one sound that still gets my blood to a fever pitch is the sound that comes in on the chorus. The house engineer Mark Richardson took a distortion box out of a pedal steel guitar, and put it in a little silver box with input and output jacks, and it had the COOLEST white noise blast! Man oh man, I'd never heard a stomp box that did anything like that! We ended up using it on a bunch of songs. Billy still has that pedal somewhere in his archives.

Maybe Jeff knows what exactly that dist box was taken from. I'd love to have one in my gear arsenal!

Yeah I remember Mark gave him that pedal, Butch. I really don't know as Mark did not share that with me. As a side note I wonder if you are aware that Mark passed away several years ago. He was a super nice guy, great engineer and a good friend.

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by jefft

Yeah I remember Mark gave him that pedal, Butch. I really don't know as Mark did not share that with me. As a side note I wonder if you are aware that Mark passed away several years ago. He was a super nice guy, great engineer and a good friend.

Jeff, I did know that Mark passed away. He was a great engineer, but also one of the sweetest guys I ever met!