Satisfaction

What is the Satisfaction guitar tone?

The Satisfaction guitar tone is a fuzz-drenched riff that was meant to stand in for a horn section, heard on The Rolling Stones' 1960s rock recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and The Rolling Stones reportedly tracked it with a Gibson Firebird, the guitar Ground Guitar says people at the session confirm, engineer Dave Hassinger among them according to Andy Babiuk's book Rolling Stones Gear, with an Epiphone and a 1959 Les Paul, which Keith Richards was photographed playing at RCA that day, as the other theories; Ground Guitar, citing Richards' autobiography Life, says he played through a Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone and a Fender Showman, and The Conversation says the Fuzz-Tone was likely given to the band by Gibson along with Richards' and Brian Jones' Firebirds, though other accounts have someone sent to a local music store for it; Guitar World describes the riff's almost trombone-like tone and the Maestro's tone and fuzz controls and push on/off footswitch, and Richards has said the pedal was a one-off effect; Richards wrote the riff in his sleep and caught it on a Philips cassette player, and Wikipedia says the band first cut the song on 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago, then re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios in Hollywood with a different beat and the fuzzbox adding sustain to the riff; Richards meant the fuzz to show what a horn section would play, but the rest of the band, producer Andrew Loog Oldham and Hassinger outvoted him and Mick Jagger, and the take went out as the single, with the Fuzz-Tone's switch audible at about 0:35 according to The Conversation; Brian Jones played acoustic guitar and Jack Nitzsche piano and tambourine; released in the US on 4 June 1965, it gave the Stones their first American number one, four weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, later topped the UK chart, and sold out the entire stock of the Gibson fuzzbox by the end of 1965. Here the riff's sound is a fuzz box, the Maestro FZ-1, meant as a stand-in for horns, so the fuzz and its sustain carry the part rather than the amp's own 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 The Rolling Stones use on Satisfaction?

A Gibson Firebird, the guitar Ground Guitar says people at the session confirm, engineer Dave Hassinger among them according to Andy Babiuk's book Rolling Stones Gear, with an Epiphone and a 1959 Les Paul, which Keith Richards was photographed playing at RCA that day, as the other theories; Ground Guitar, citing Richards' autobiography Life, says he played through a Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone and a Fender Showman, and The Conversation says the Fuzz-Tone was likely given to the band by Gibson along with Richards' and Brian Jones' Firebirds, though other accounts have someone sent to a local music store for it; Guitar World describes the riff's almost trombone-like tone and the Maestro's tone and fuzz controls and push on/off footswitch, and Richards has said the pedal was a one-off effect; Richards wrote the riff in his sleep and caught it on a Philips cassette player, and Wikipedia says the band first cut the song on 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago, then re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios in Hollywood with a different beat and the fuzzbox adding sustain to the riff; Richards meant the fuzz to show what a horn section would play, but the rest of the band, producer Andrew Loog Oldham and Hassinger outvoted him and Mick Jagger, and the take went out as the single, with the Fuzz-Tone's switch audible at about 0:35 according to The Conversation; Brian Jones played acoustic guitar and Jack Nitzsche piano and tambourine; released in the US on 4 June 1965, it gave the Stones their first American number one, four weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, later topped the UK chart, and sold out the entire stock of the Gibson fuzzbox by the end of 1965.

Sources: Wikipedia: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Guitar World: Keith Richards on why he hardly ever uses effect pedals, The Conversation: Satisfaction 50 years later, the song that almost never was, Ground Guitar: Keith Richards' 1960s Gibson Firebird VII

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.