Bodies

What is the Bodies guitar tone?

The Bodies guitar tone is a heavy drop C riff driven straight from a loud Marshall, with wah accents, heard on Drowning Pool's 2000s alt metal recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Drowning Pool reportedly tracked it with a modded Marshall JCM800 head and a black Les Paul that James Hetfield from Metallica had recorded with, which C.J. Pierce, who wrote the riff, told Guitar World were there when the band tracked Bodies at NRG Studios with Jay Baumgardner, saying they turned it up way loud and just went for it, that he did not need any overdrive pedals for the recording and went straight in, and that he still swears by Marshalls, which have always been a big part of his rig; he says the song is in drop C, which he thinks made it sound bigger than standard or drop D would, with 12 to 60 gauge strings on the recording; the riff began years earlier on a four-track tape in a straight-up funk style, from a player who grew up in New Orleans on funk and then thrash, and the counting in the verses was cut from eight to four in the studio; Wikipedia says the guitar part makes heavy use of a wah pedal, and quotes singer Dave Williams that Pierce came up with the riff and the band built the song around the hook, let the bodies hit the floor; released on 14 May 2001 as the band's debut single, from the album Sinner, it reached number 6 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in August 2001. Detuned parts need the bass control pulled back further than feels right, or the low strings turn to mud as soon as the gain rises.

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 high-gain head 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 Drowning Pool use on Bodies?

A modded Marshall JCM800 head and a black Les Paul that James Hetfield from Metallica had recorded with, which C.J. Pierce, who wrote the riff, told Guitar World were there when the band tracked Bodies at NRG Studios with Jay Baumgardner, saying they turned it up way loud and just went for it, that he did not need any overdrive pedals for the recording and went straight in, and that he still swears by Marshalls, which have always been a big part of his rig; he says the song is in drop C, which he thinks made it sound bigger than standard or drop D would, with 12 to 60 gauge strings on the recording; the riff began years earlier on a four-track tape in a straight-up funk style, from a player who grew up in New Orleans on funk and then thrash, and the counting in the verses was cut from eight to four in the studio; Wikipedia says the guitar part makes heavy use of a wah pedal, and quotes singer Dave Williams that Pierce came up with the riff and the band built the song around the hook, let the bodies hit the floor; released on 14 May 2001 as the band's debut single, from the album Sinner, it reached number 6 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in August 2001.

Sources: Guitar World: How Drowning Pool made Bodies, with C.J. Pierce, Wikipedia: Bodies (Drowning Pool song), Wikipedia: Sinner (Drowning Pool album)

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.