Numbers match the 0 to 10 scale printed on the amp in Amp Designer. Gain was set by eye at 3 o'clock, which is about 8.
The only pedal on the board. Values as GarageBand shows them when you adjust each control on the pedal.
Our own finishing touch for the recreation, not a claim about how the original was EQ'd.
The real rig behind this tone
Everything on the card above is our own GarageBand recreation, not a set of documented studio settings. Here is what is actually known about how the original was made, including where the accounts disagree.
The opening track on Collective Soul's debut, Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid. It started as one of Ed Roland's basement demos for a publishing deal, recorded on his eight track, and the demo became the record. Nobody went back and remade it in a big studio once it took off.
In a 2024 Guitar Player interview, Roland said he played his 1990 Rickenbacker, the only electric guitar he owned at the time, tuned to drop D-flat and plugged into a Soldano amp.
In a 2011 Guitar World column, guitarist Joel Kosche wrote that when the band set out to re-record Shine, Roland remembered the main riff as a Rickenbacker through an Ensoniq DP/4 rack processor. The DP/4 included amp style distortion algorithms, so the two accounts can both be partly true, but no source confirms how or whether the two were chained together.
Roland has said he shaped the tone by where he struck the strings, playing higher up the neck at some points and raking near the bridge at others.
Ross Childress played the guitar solo on a Les Paul, added after the main recording. The often repeated claim that the intro was played on a Les Paul is wrong; the Rickenbacker was Roland's only electric guitar for the original.
What is not documented
- Which Soldano model Roland used, and any of its knob positions. None of the numbers on this card come from the session.
- The exact signal order, if the Rickenbacker, DP/4 and Soldano were all used together.
- Which pickup Roland used, and how the guitar was miked or recorded direct.
- Any EQ or compression on the guitar during or after recording.
Playing it
Pick and rake closer to the bridge than you normally would, with a firm attack. That gives the P-90 more of the clanky, wiry transient a Rickenbacker has naturally, and it is the same trick Roland describes using on the original.
The Vintage Drive does a lot of the work here. Its Tone at 1200 Hz keeps the drive focused in the midrange instead of fizzy, and the Ribbon 121, which Apple describes as bright yet still warm, takes the edge off without dulling the attack.
Resist the urge to make it sound better. Shine was a basement demo that became the record, and some of the oddness is part of the tone. The Les Paul solo is a different sound again and does not belong in this preset.
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