Iris

What is the Iris guitar tone?

The Iris guitar tone is a lush, melodic slide solo over strings and an alternate-tuned guitar, heard on Goo Goo Dolls' 1990s alt rock recording. It is a distorted solo tone, and Goo Goo Dolls reportedly tracked it with a Les Paul, a Crowther Hot Cake boost and a Matchless amp, the rig that session guitarist Tim Pierce told Guitar Player he played the slide solo on, a very simple, melodic part in one take, with producer Rob Cavallo helping him find the last two bars; Pierce had been hired to play mandolin after the band could not get Dean Parks, brought his electric rig anyway, did three mandolin passes and was then asked to try a solo, and John Rzeznik, who calls the slide solo his favourite part of the song, says his own attempt sounded like a bunch of cats fighting; Rzeznik wrote the song in his own alternate tuning, B D D D D with the top E string taken off, having first written it on a guitar with four strings, and he told Guitar World that D'Addario wound special strings for the low string on his Iris guitar, tuned down to B, with the other strings all Ds in different octaves; Wikipedia says the song moves between 4/4 in the intro and interludes and 6/8 in the verses and chorus; written for the 1998 film City of Angels, with an orchestra on the recording, it came out as the lead single from Dizzy Up the Girl on 1 April 1998, spent a then-record 18 weeks at number one on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart and reached number nine on the Hot 100. Here the lead is a slide part, a Les Paul through a Crowther Hot Cake boost into a Matchless amp in one take, so the boost and the slide's sustain carry it rather than amp gain.

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 Goo Goo Dolls use on Iris?

A Les Paul, a Crowther Hot Cake boost and a Matchless amp, the rig that session guitarist Tim Pierce told Guitar Player he played the slide solo on, a very simple, melodic part in one take, with producer Rob Cavallo helping him find the last two bars; Pierce had been hired to play mandolin after the band could not get Dean Parks, brought his electric rig anyway, did three mandolin passes and was then asked to try a solo, and John Rzeznik, who calls the slide solo his favourite part of the song, says his own attempt sounded like a bunch of cats fighting; Rzeznik wrote the song in his own alternate tuning, B D D D D with the top E string taken off, having first written it on a guitar with four strings, and he told Guitar World that D'Addario wound special strings for the low string on his Iris guitar, tuned down to B, with the other strings all Ds in different octaves; Wikipedia says the song moves between 4/4 in the intro and interludes and 6/8 in the verses and chorus; written for the 1998 film City of Angels, with an orchestra on the recording, it came out as the lead single from Dizzy Up the Girl on 1 April 1998, spent a then-record 18 weeks at number one on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart and reached number nine on the Hot 100.

Sources: Guitar Player: John Rzeznik on the alternate tuning behind Iris, Guitar Player: Johnny Rzeznik on his number-one regret about Iris, Guitar World: John Rzeznik's guitar tunings, Wikipedia: Iris (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.