Supermassive Black Hole

What is the Supermassive Black Hole guitar tone?

The Supermassive Black Hole guitar tone is a strange, futuristic fuzz sound on a straight blues riff, heard on Muse's 2000s space rock recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Muse reportedly tracked it with a fuzz recorded DI, straight into the desk: Matt Bellamy told Total Guitar, in an interview Guitar World published, that the band first learned on Supermassive Black Hole to do everything they could to make a blues riff sound as futuristic and strange as possible, that they had around 50 fuzz pedals so he cannot say what got used where, and that this song relies on DI'd fuzz, a technique he calls very underrated and more modern-sounding than an amp, usually starting from an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff; Wikipedia says he used guitar amps including a Vox AC30 and an Ampeg V4 on the album, and Mixdown says he uses a Dickinson 2x12 Mk2 to manipulate the squealing feedback of his fuzz on songs like this one, while no source read here names the guitar on the take; the bridge solo was added at producer Rich Costey's insistence during mixing, over the band's objections, and Chris Wolstenholme brought a four-string electric guitar from his hotel room and played the riff that became the solo; Bellamy called it the most different thing the band had done, mixing R&B rhythms with alternative guitar, a bit of Prince and Kanye West and Rage Against the Machine riffs underneath, after nights in New York clubs where he learnt to DJ, and Costey wanted to capture his personality as a guitarist, recording the sound of his fingers and plectrum on the strings; written and rehearsed at Studio Miraval in southern France and recorded mostly at Avatar and Electric Lady in New York, it was released on 19 June 2006 as the lead single from Black Holes and Revelations, reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, the band's highest position there, and later played over the baseball scene in Twilight. Here Bellamy says the sound relies on DI'd fuzz, a fuzz recorded straight into the desk, so the pedal's own voicing and EQ carry the riff more than an amp's 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 Muse use on Supermassive Black Hole?

A fuzz recorded DI, straight into the desk: Matt Bellamy told Total Guitar, in an interview Guitar World published, that the band first learned on Supermassive Black Hole to do everything they could to make a blues riff sound as futuristic and strange as possible, that they had around 50 fuzz pedals so he cannot say what got used where, and that this song relies on DI'd fuzz, a technique he calls very underrated and more modern-sounding than an amp, usually starting from an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff; Wikipedia says he used guitar amps including a Vox AC30 and an Ampeg V4 on the album, and Mixdown says he uses a Dickinson 2x12 Mk2 to manipulate the squealing feedback of his fuzz on songs like this one, while no source read here names the guitar on the take; the bridge solo was added at producer Rich Costey's insistence during mixing, over the band's objections, and Chris Wolstenholme brought a four-string electric guitar from his hotel room and played the riff that became the solo; Bellamy called it the most different thing the band had done, mixing R&B rhythms with alternative guitar, a bit of Prince and Kanye West and Rage Against the Machine riffs underneath, after nights in New York clubs where he learnt to DJ, and Costey wanted to capture his personality as a guitarist, recording the sound of his fingers and plectrum on the strings; written and rehearsed at Studio Miraval in southern France and recorded mostly at Avatar and Electric Lady in New York, it was released on 19 June 2006 as the lead single from Black Holes and Revelations, reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, the band's highest position there, and later played over the baseball scene in Twilight.

Sources: Guitar World: Matt Bellamy on beaming blues riffs into Muse's space-age guitar sound, Guitar.com: Matt Bellamy is designing a fuzz pedal based on his Supermassive Black Hole tone, Mixdown: gear rundown, Matt Bellamy, Wikipedia: Supermassive Black Hole, Wikipedia: Black Holes and Revelations

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.