Tone Card

Sweet Child O' Mine, Guns N' Roses

Warm, vocal and mid-heavy with smooth sustain and a softened top end, mapped to GarageBand's Vintage British Stack.

S
Slash
Tone inspired by "Sweet Child O' Mine", intro and main riff
Guitar
A 1959 Les Paul style guitar, ideally with Alnico II style humbuckers
Pickup Position
Neck humbucker
Tuning
E♭ Standard: E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B♭ E♭
Amp Settings

Numbers match the 0 to 10 scale printed on the amp in Amp Designer.

Gain
6
Bass
5.5
Mids
8
Treble
4.5
Presence
3.5
Master
6.5
Blue Echo

The only pedal on this card. It should add space, not a rhythmic echo you can count.

Time Around 300 to 320 ms
Repeats 2.5 to 3
Mix 1.5 to 2
Tone Cut Off
GarageBand Settings
Amp Model Vintage British Stack
EQ Type Vintage
Cabinet Vintage British 4×12
Mic Condenser 87, close and near the centre of the speaker. It gives a smoother result here than a Dynamic 57.
Amp Reverb Off
Drive Pedals None. The distortion comes straight from the amp.
Guitar Controls Volume on 10, tone rolled back to around 5 to 5.5. The rolled-back tone is a large part of this sound.
Character to aim for Warm, vocal and mid-heavy with smooth sustain and a softened top end. The neck humbucker and rolled-back tone keep the intro rounded, while the strong mids preserve note definition. Keep the distortion saturated enough to sing, but smooth enough that the high E string notes do not turn fizzy or harsh.
If the top end still bites These settings were tuned specifically to tame harshness on the upper strings, so resist raising Presence. If you still hear fizz on the highest notes, try a very gentle post-amp high shelf cut around 4.5 to 5 kHz, roughly 1 to 1.5 dB.

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 recorded.

Guitar

Slash's Kris Derrig 1959 Les Paul replica, used across Appetite for Destruction.

Pickups

Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro humbuckers.

Amp

The Appetite era sound is strongly associated with the hot-rodded Marshall Super Lead rented from SIR, known as number 36.

The tone itself

The intro is a warm, rolled-back neck pickup sound of the kind usually described as a woman tone.

Effects

A Roland SRV-2000 digital delay was part of the Appetite guitar sound.

Recording

SM57 microphones were used during the original sessions. We recommend the Condenser 87 here because it gave a smoother result in GarageBand, which is a recreation choice rather than a historical one.

What is not documented

  • The exact amp knob positions used in the studio.
  • The precise delay time, feedback and mix on the original recording.
  • How far the guitar tone control was actually rolled back.
  • The microphone placement on the cabinet.
Sources

More tone cards: Brain Stew, Green Day · Paradise City (Intro), Guns N' Roses · Back in Black, AC/DC · Do I Wanna Know?, Arctic Monkeys, or browse them all.