Black

What is the Black guitar tone?

The Black guitar tone is a watery, clean Stratocaster lead over Stone Gossard's chords, heard on Pearl Jam's 1990s grunge recording. It is a clean solo tone, and Pearl Jam reportedly tracked it with the black 1962 Japanese reissue Stratocaster that Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament bought Mike McCready out of the band's advance, his first Strat, which he told Guitar World he wanted to complement Gossard, who plays mostly Les Pauls, the way Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had complemented each other in Aerosmith; for Ten he had a Marshall JCM800 with a 4x12 cabinet that he thinks had 25-watt speakers, and a Fender Bassman for the clean tones, and he says you can hear the Bassman on Black and that the sound on it is him using the second pickup position on the Strat, for the out-of-phase thing, which he was way into because he had heard Jimi Hendrix do it; at the beginning, he says, Gossard came up with the song and did what he did, and he went underneath with more of that Stevie Ray Vaughan and Hendrix stuff, those sort of watery chords, and he has called the lead more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan rip-off, with him playing little flowing things, on a song Gossard wrote and let him do what he wanted with; Gossard first wrote the music in 1990 as an instrumental demo called E Ballad, one of five songs on the Stone Gossard Demos '91 tape that reached Eddie Vedder in San Diego, and Vedder wrote the lyrics on his way to Seattle; it was recorded during the Ten sessions at London Bridge Studios with Rick Parashar producing, Parashar also playing piano and organ, and finished and mixed at Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey, England, with Tim Palmer; the band refused to release it as a single or to make a video for it, citing its personal nature, but it still reached number three on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Clean parts in grunge are rarely pristine: they tend to sit near the edge of breakup, often with a chorus on them, so they hold their own when the loud sections arrive.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a clean channel on a modelling combo and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Pearl Jam use on Black?

The black 1962 Japanese reissue Stratocaster that Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament bought Mike McCready out of the band's advance, his first Strat, which he told Guitar World he wanted to complement Gossard, who plays mostly Les Pauls, the way Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had complemented each other in Aerosmith; for Ten he had a Marshall JCM800 with a 4x12 cabinet that he thinks had 25-watt speakers, and a Fender Bassman for the clean tones, and he says you can hear the Bassman on Black and that the sound on it is him using the second pickup position on the Strat, for the out-of-phase thing, which he was way into because he had heard Jimi Hendrix do it; at the beginning, he says, Gossard came up with the song and did what he did, and he went underneath with more of that Stevie Ray Vaughan and Hendrix stuff, those sort of watery chords, and he has called the lead more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan rip-off, with him playing little flowing things, on a song Gossard wrote and let him do what he wanted with; Gossard first wrote the music in 1990 as an instrumental demo called E Ballad, one of five songs on the Stone Gossard Demos '91 tape that reached Eddie Vedder in San Diego, and Vedder wrote the lyrics on his way to Seattle; it was recorded during the Ten sessions at London Bridge Studios with Rick Parashar producing, Parashar also playing piano and organ, and finished and mixed at Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey, England, with Tim Palmer; the band refused to release it as a single or to make a video for it, citing its personal nature, but it still reached number three on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Sources: Guitar World: Mike McCready looks back on 30 years of Ten, Wikipedia: Black (Pearl Jam song)

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.