Unchained

What is the Unchained guitar tone?

The Unchained guitar tone is a drop-tuned, flanged riff of suspended chords, heard on Van Halen's 1980s hard rock recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Van Halen reportedly tracked it with an MXR M-117 Flanger that Eddie Van Halen kicked in and out on the riff, which he told Guitar World in 2015 was totally by accident: his normal setting just happened to fit the tempo, and Guitar Player says he set its speed to sweep up on the first half of the riff and down on the second; that setting was the yardstick when he and MXR's Bob Cedro spent about nine months comparing prototypes of his EVH117 signature Flanger with his original 1970s unit; Guitar.com says he used a 1967 or 1968 Marshall 1959 Super Lead on the first six Van Halen records, which takes in Fair Warning, though no source read here names the guitar on the take; Wikipedia says the song uses a Drop D flat tuning, drop D a half step down, with suspended fourth chords between, and Far Out says the same; Van Halen called Fair Warning a dark album on which the band butted heads, him against the rest, and said he would sneak into the studio around four in the morning with engineer Donn Landee to re-record things the way he wanted them, telling Guitar World he did 90 percent of the guitar tracking at that hour because he felt producer Ted Templeman no longer understood him; Templeman's only vocal on a Van Halen record is his reply to David Lee Roth in the breakdown, "Come on, Dave, gimme a break!", after Roth teased him about the sharp suit he had on for a meeting after the session; Roth's working title was Hit the Ground Running; on Fair Warning, released on 29 April 1981, and out as a single on 22 July, it did not chart, but Van Halen said it is one of the rare recordings of his own playing that give him goose bumps, and a 2011 Rolling Stone readers' poll named it the band's best song. Here the riff is a Marshall crunch with a flanger kicked in and out, its sweep timed to the riff, so the flanger's speed makes the part recognisable more than extra gain does.

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.

Published settings

How did Eddie Van Halen set the flanger on Unchained?

The three knobs on the left between 11 o'clock and 11:30, and the last knob on the right, regeneration, all the way up, with the speed fine-tuned so the sweep goes with the riff. Van Halen told Guitar World in 2015 that he used the same MXR Flanger setting for almost everything, from the intro of And the Cradle Will Rock to Unchained, with the exception of Outta Love Again and Bullethead, and that the flanger on Unchained was an accident: his normal setting happened to fit the tempo. Guitar World's review of his EVH117 signature Flanger lists the controls as manual, width, speed and regeneration and says its preset switch recalls the Unchained setting. These are pedal settings; no source read here gives his amp settings on the song.

Source: Guitar World: Eddie Van Halen on his MXR Phase 90 and Flanger

What gear did Van Halen use on Unchained?

An MXR M-117 Flanger that Eddie Van Halen kicked in and out on the riff, which he told Guitar World in 2015 was totally by accident: his normal setting just happened to fit the tempo, and Guitar Player says he set its speed to sweep up on the first half of the riff and down on the second; that setting was the yardstick when he and MXR's Bob Cedro spent about nine months comparing prototypes of his EVH117 signature Flanger with his original 1970s unit; Guitar.com says he used a 1967 or 1968 Marshall 1959 Super Lead on the first six Van Halen records, which takes in Fair Warning, though no source read here names the guitar on the take; Wikipedia says the song uses a Drop D flat tuning, drop D a half step down, with suspended fourth chords between, and Far Out says the same; Van Halen called Fair Warning a dark album on which the band butted heads, him against the rest, and said he would sneak into the studio around four in the morning with engineer Donn Landee to re-record things the way he wanted them, telling Guitar World he did 90 percent of the guitar tracking at that hour because he felt producer Ted Templeman no longer understood him; Templeman's only vocal on a Van Halen record is his reply to David Lee Roth in the breakdown, "Come on, Dave, gimme a break!", after Roth teased him about the sharp suit he had on for a meeting after the session; Roth's working title was Hit the Ground Running; on Fair Warning, released on 29 April 1981, and out as a single on 22 July, it did not chart, but Van Halen said it is one of the rare recordings of his own playing that give him goose bumps, and a 2011 Rolling Stone readers' poll named it the band's best song.

Sources: Guitar World: Eddie Van Halen on his MXR Phase 90 and Flanger, Guitar World: MXR EVH117 Flanger review, Ground Guitar: Eddie Van Halen's MXR MX-117 Flanger, Guitar Player: Eddie Van Halen's Unchained guitar, isolated, Guitar World: Eddie Van Halen's Prime Cuts (1996), Ultimate Classic Rock: how Unchained used two secret weapons, Guitar.com: the gear Eddie Van Halen used on Van Halen I, Far Out: Eddie Van Halen's isolated guitar on Unchained, Wikipedia: Fair Warning (Van Halen album), Wikipedia: Unchained (song)

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.