Painkiller

What is the Painkiller guitar tone?

The Painkiller guitar tone is a brutal but clear speed metal riff over double-kick drums, heard on Judas Priest's 1990s heavy metal recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Judas Priest reportedly tracked it with the band's regular rigs, which K.K. Downing told the interviewer for his official website he believes they simply took with them to Miraval Studios in Brignoles, France, though no source read here names the guitars or the amps: asked how they found the guitar sound, he said it may have been just a good room or good mic preamps, or the guys in the control room, or a combination of everything, and that Miraval, a vineyard cut off from everything else, had very limited distractions; producer Chris Tsangarides described the aim as a really brutal but clear sound, and said the original demo was just guitar and a little drum machine, so fast that he asked where they would get a drummer to play it, until the band introduced Scott Travis; the liner notes credit Glenn Tipton with the first solo and Downing with the second, and Tipton has named it one of his two favourite solos to perform, with the one on Beyond the Realms of Death; Travis composed the drum intro in the studio as a warm-up while the engineers were testing the drum microphones, Ian Hill is credited on bass though he may not actually appear, and Don Airey said in 2020 that he doubled most of the album's bass parts on a Minimoog; the band and Tsangarides produced the album, the first Judas Priest record without Tom Allom since Killing Machine and Travis's first with the band, recorded in early 1990 and mixed at Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum, the Netherlands; finished in March, it was held back by the subliminal messages trial and released on 17 September 1990 in Europe, and the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. The bite in this kind of heavy metal comes from a boost or drive pedal pushing a loud amp, so the tone is thick but never smooth, with the mids left in.

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 Judas Priest use on Painkiller?

The band's regular rigs, which K.K. Downing told the interviewer for his official website he believes they simply took with them to Miraval Studios in Brignoles, France, though no source read here names the guitars or the amps: asked how they found the guitar sound, he said it may have been just a good room or good mic preamps, or the guys in the control room, or a combination of everything, and that Miraval, a vineyard cut off from everything else, had very limited distractions; producer Chris Tsangarides described the aim as a really brutal but clear sound, and said the original demo was just guitar and a little drum machine, so fast that he asked where they would get a drummer to play it, until the band introduced Scott Travis; the liner notes credit Glenn Tipton with the first solo and Downing with the second, and Tipton has named it one of his two favourite solos to perform, with the one on Beyond the Realms of Death; Travis composed the drum intro in the studio as a warm-up while the engineers were testing the drum microphones, Ian Hill is credited on bass though he may not actually appear, and Don Airey said in 2020 that he doubled most of the album's bass parts on a Minimoog; the band and Tsangarides produced the album, the first Judas Priest record without Tom Allom since Killing Machine and Travis's first with the band, recorded in early 1990 and mixed at Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum, the Netherlands; finished in March, it was held back by the subliminal messages trial and released on 17 September 1990 in Europe, and the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.

Sources: Blabbermouth: K.K. Downing on the 20th anniversary of Painkiller, Blabbermouth: Chris Tsangarides on the making of Painkiller, Wikipedia: Painkiller (Judas Priest song), Wikipedia: Painkiller (Judas Priest 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.