Wherever I May Roam

What is the Wherever I May Roam guitar tone?

The Wherever I May Roam guitar tone is a heavy, layered riff with a Phrygian dominant edge, heard on Metallica's 1990s metal recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Metallica reportedly tracked it with the Danelectro/Coral Electric Sitar that Guitar.com and Ground Guitar say James Hetfield played on the intro, and that he told Guitar Player in September 1991 he used along with open position chords on this song, adding that producer Bob Rock, a guitarist who collects '60s and '70s instruments, had eased him into using odd ones; for the album as a whole Hetfield told Guitar World in 1991 that his primary guitar was an ESP Explorer with EMG pickups and that he ended up using the same Mesa/Boogie Mark II as on the last three albums, which Guitar.com describes as a Mark IIC++, used alongside a Jose-modded Marshall that Rock owned, with two Aphex EQF-2 units cutting 1.2kHz and an Aphex CX-1 compressor in the effects loop, mostly into Marshall 1960 4x12 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30s, and his rhythm sound built from many layered tracks, each on a different setup, though no source read here places an amp on this song alone; Hetfield said Rock showed him that a touch of midrange adds to his tone, after years of treating it as a no-no; Kirk Hammett, who played a Strat-style ESP and a 1989 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe on the album, called this its most complex song, one that suggests a Phrygian dominant scale; Wikipedia says every string instrument on it is in standard tuning, and that the intro adds a gong and an overdubbed Warwick 12-string bass for its accents before a four-string bass takes over; the demo was recorded in Lars Ulrich's home studio, the Dungeon, on 13 August 1990, the album sessions with Rock at One on One in Los Angeles began on 6 October 1990, and the song came out in October 1992 as the album's fourth single, reaching number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two in Denmark, Finland and Norway; at the S&M concerts Hammett played the intro on a Danelectro electric sitar. The weight comes from layered takes and controlled low end rather than from raw gain, which is the part most players overshoot.

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 Metallica use on Wherever I May Roam?

The Danelectro/Coral Electric Sitar that Guitar.com and Ground Guitar say James Hetfield played on the intro, and that he told Guitar Player in September 1991 he used along with open position chords on this song, adding that producer Bob Rock, a guitarist who collects '60s and '70s instruments, had eased him into using odd ones; for the album as a whole Hetfield told Guitar World in 1991 that his primary guitar was an ESP Explorer with EMG pickups and that he ended up using the same Mesa/Boogie Mark II as on the last three albums, which Guitar.com describes as a Mark IIC++, used alongside a Jose-modded Marshall that Rock owned, with two Aphex EQF-2 units cutting 1.2kHz and an Aphex CX-1 compressor in the effects loop, mostly into Marshall 1960 4x12 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30s, and his rhythm sound built from many layered tracks, each on a different setup, though no source read here places an amp on this song alone; Hetfield said Rock showed him that a touch of midrange adds to his tone, after years of treating it as a no-no; Kirk Hammett, who played a Strat-style ESP and a 1989 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe on the album, called this its most complex song, one that suggests a Phrygian dominant scale; Wikipedia says every string instrument on it is in standard tuning, and that the intro adds a gong and an overdubbed Warwick 12-string bass for its accents before a four-string bass takes over; the demo was recorded in Lars Ulrich's home studio, the Dungeon, on 13 August 1990, the album sessions with Rock at One on One in Los Angeles began on 6 October 1990, and the song came out in October 1992 as the album's fourth single, reaching number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two in Denmark, Finland and Norway; at the S&M concerts Hammett played the intro on a Danelectro electric sitar.

Sources: Ground Guitar: James Hetfield's Danelectro/Coral Electric Sitar, Guitar.com: the gear used on Metallica's Black Album, Guitar World: Metallica's 1991 interview on the Black Album, Wikipedia: Wherever I May Roam

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.