Rusty Cage

What is the Rusty Cage guitar tone?

The Rusty Cage guitar tone is a fast, filtered riff in a low B tuning that ends in a heavy, stop-start breakdown, heard on Soundgarden's 1990s grunge recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Soundgarden reportedly tracked it with a wah pedal in the low position used as a filter, which Kim Thayil says was Chris Cornell's idea, to get a weird tone you cannot really dial in on an amp, the first time the band did anything like that, giving a riff that almost sounds backward; Thayil told Guitar World that Cornell worked out and tracked the filtered intro, that a wah was used on the demo and on the record to get the weird sound of the rhythm guitars, while live they played it with straightforward heavy guitars, and that the song had no guitar solos; in another Guitar World interview he says he used his Cry Baby on Rusty Cage to change the colour and timbre of the song, and that the opening has a bit of an Eastern feel; on Badmotorfinger Thayil was still playing his Guild S-100, and Cornell might offset it with a Fender or something so their tones differed, and asked whether they used Peaveys, Music Mans and Mesa/Boogies he said probably, that they endorsed Peavey for a while and made pretty radical amp settings, sometimes turning off the treble to make it warmer, though no source read here names the amp on this take; Wikipedia says the bottom E string is tuned down to B on this song, and Thayil calls the tuning pretty nutty; Terry Date produced the album with the band, basic tracks were cut at Studio D in Sausalito, and the song, written by Cornell and the third single from Badmotorfinger, released on 8 October 1991, was later covered by Johnny Cash. 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 Rusty Cage?

A wah pedal in the low position used as a filter, which Kim Thayil says was Chris Cornell's idea, to get a weird tone you cannot really dial in on an amp, the first time the band did anything like that, giving a riff that almost sounds backward; Thayil told Guitar World that Cornell worked out and tracked the filtered intro, that a wah was used on the demo and on the record to get the weird sound of the rhythm guitars, while live they played it with straightforward heavy guitars, and that the song had no guitar solos; in another Guitar World interview he says he used his Cry Baby on Rusty Cage to change the colour and timbre of the song, and that the opening has a bit of an Eastern feel; on Badmotorfinger Thayil was still playing his Guild S-100, and Cornell might offset it with a Fender or something so their tones differed, and asked whether they used Peaveys, Music Mans and Mesa/Boogies he said probably, that they endorsed Peavey for a while and made pretty radical amp settings, sometimes turning off the treble to make it warmer, though no source read here names the amp on this take; Wikipedia says the bottom E string is tuned down to B on this song, and Thayil calls the tuning pretty nutty; Terry Date produced the album with the band, basic tracks were cut at Studio D in Sausalito, and the song, written by Cornell and the third single from Badmotorfinger, released on 8 October 1991, was later covered by Johnny Cash.

Sources: Guitar World: Kim Thayil on Badmotorfinger at 30, Guitar World: Kim Thayil on Badmotorfinger and the heavy, dark and psychedelic, Rolling Stone: Kim Thayil tells stories of Soundgarden's best songs, Wikipedia: Rusty Cage, 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.