Outshined

What is the Outshined guitar tone?

The Outshined guitar tone is a slow, heavy drop D riff in 7/4 with a Sabbath-like murk, heard on Soundgarden's 1990s grunge recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Soundgarden reportedly tracked it with the Guild S-100 that Kim Thayil told Guitar World he was still using on Badmotorfinger, with Chris Cornell, who wrote the song and plays rhythm guitar on it, offsetting his sound so they did not get the same tones on a song, perhaps with a Fender, though no source read here names either guitar or the amp on this take; asked whether they used Peaveys, Music Mans and Mesa/Boogies, Thayil said probably, that the band endorsed Peavey for a while and made pretty radical amp settings, sometimes turning off the treble to make it sound warmer; Wikipedia says the song is in D major, played in drop D tuning, with the verses in 7/4, a meter Thayil says came about by total accident, and AllMusic's Steve Huey hears a main riff that strongly recalls the heavy murk of prime Black Sabbath; Thayil told Guitar World that he naturally plays behind the beat on Outshined, dragging it because it sounds a bit heavier, with Matt Cameron accenting the groove towards his playing; Terry Date produced the album with the band, and Cornell wrote the line I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota on tour, thinking it was the dumbest thing until crowds screamed it back; the second single from Badmotorfinger, it was the band's first to reach Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart, peaking at number 45, and Thayil was unhappy that his guitar solo was cut to make the video single-length. The point here is a raw, barely controlled tone, so cleaning it up too much moves it away from the record rather than towards it.

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 Soundgarden use on Outshined?

The Guild S-100 that Kim Thayil told Guitar World he was still using on Badmotorfinger, with Chris Cornell, who wrote the song and plays rhythm guitar on it, offsetting his sound so they did not get the same tones on a song, perhaps with a Fender, though no source read here names either guitar or the amp on this take; asked whether they used Peaveys, Music Mans and Mesa/Boogies, Thayil said probably, that the band endorsed Peavey for a while and made pretty radical amp settings, sometimes turning off the treble to make it sound warmer; Wikipedia says the song is in D major, played in drop D tuning, with the verses in 7/4, a meter Thayil says came about by total accident, and AllMusic's Steve Huey hears a main riff that strongly recalls the heavy murk of prime Black Sabbath; Thayil told Guitar World that he naturally plays behind the beat on Outshined, dragging it because it sounds a bit heavier, with Matt Cameron accenting the groove towards his playing; Terry Date produced the album with the band, and Cornell wrote the line I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota on tour, thinking it was the dumbest thing until crowds screamed it back; the second single from Badmotorfinger, it was the band's first to reach Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart, peaking at number 45, and Thayil was unhappy that his guitar solo was cut to make the video single-length.

Sources: Guitar World: Kim Thayil on Badmotorfinger at 30, Guitar World: Kim Thayil on Badmotorfinger and the heavy, dark and psychedelic, Rolling Stone: Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger at 25, Kim Thayil looks back, Wikipedia: Outshined, Wikipedia: Badmotorfinger

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.