My Hero

What is the My Hero guitar tone?

The My Hero guitar tone is a straightforward rock sound from Gibson humbuckers through a loud amp, heard on Foo Fighters' 1990s post-grunge recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Foo Fighters reportedly tracked it with the guitars and amp that Guitar.com lists for The Colour and the Shape, in a feature for which Dave Grohl's guitar tech Earnie Bailey went through his notes: Grohl primarily used his Gibson Trini Lopez, along with a Les Paul Goldtop with P-90 pickups, and played the bulk of his guitar tracks through a Fender Custom Shop ToneMaster 2x12 100-watt amp that was at the studio, one of the amps Bruce Zinky built in Fender's Custom Shop, while Pat Smear, given his affinity for Hagstroms, can be assumed to have played his Hagstrom HiiN; no source read here places a guitar or an amp on this song itself, and Guitar.com sums the album up as a Gibson humbucker sound running through a loud amplifier; Grohl first demoed the song alone on 17 July 1995 on an 8-track reel-to-reel in the basement of his Seattle home, singing and playing drums, bass and guitars, with the same vocal melody as the final record, and Nate Mendel has said he knew the band had a future when he heard that demo; the early sessions at Bear Creek Studio went poorly and most of them were discarded, and the band regrouped in early 1997 at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood with producer Gil Norton, Grohl playing the drums himself; Grohl called it a tribute to ordinary heroes, the solid everyday people you can rely on, and it came out in January 1998 as the album's third single. Here the sound is a Gibson humbucker through a loud amp, as Guitar.com sums up the album, so the heavy parts want a driven, defined amp tone with the mids in rather than a pedal's saturation.

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 Foo Fighters use on My Hero?

The guitars and amp that Guitar.com lists for The Colour and the Shape, in a feature for which Dave Grohl's guitar tech Earnie Bailey went through his notes: Grohl primarily used his Gibson Trini Lopez, along with a Les Paul Goldtop with P-90 pickups, and played the bulk of his guitar tracks through a Fender Custom Shop ToneMaster 2x12 100-watt amp that was at the studio, one of the amps Bruce Zinky built in Fender's Custom Shop, while Pat Smear, given his affinity for Hagstroms, can be assumed to have played his Hagstrom HiiN; no source read here places a guitar or an amp on this song itself, and Guitar.com sums the album up as a Gibson humbucker sound running through a loud amplifier; Grohl first demoed the song alone on 17 July 1995 on an 8-track reel-to-reel in the basement of his Seattle home, singing and playing drums, bass and guitars, with the same vocal melody as the final record, and Nate Mendel has said he knew the band had a future when he heard that demo; the early sessions at Bear Creek Studio went poorly and most of them were discarded, and the band regrouped in early 1997 at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood with producer Gil Norton, Grohl playing the drums himself; Grohl called it a tribute to ordinary heroes, the solid everyday people you can rely on, and it came out in January 1998 as the album's third single.

Sources: Guitar.com: the guitar gear used on The Colour and the Shape, Wikipedia: My Hero (song), Wikipedia: The Colour and the Shape

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.