You Really Got Me

What is the You Really Got Me guitar tone?

The You Really Got Me guitar tone is a raw power-chord riff distorted by a speaker slashed with a razor blade, heard on The Kinks' 1960s garage rock recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and The Kinks reportedly tracked it with a Harmony Meteor, which Guitar.com names as Dave Davies' guitar, into a small green Elpico amp, the AC55 in Guitar.com's account, whose speaker cone he had sliced with a razor blade and poked with a pin, in Wikipedia's account; Songfacts says he did it in his bedroom in North London when he was irate, to a cheap amp that had been giving him problems; in the studio the Elpico was linked to a Vox, which Davies remembers as an AC30 and producer Shel Talmy as an AC10, and Guitar.com says the Elpico was daisy-chained into the AC30; Talmy told Songfacts he recorded the guitar on two channels, one with distortion and one without, so that together they made a loud, gritty sound; the riff is played in perfect fifths and octaves, and the musicologist Robert Walser called the song the first hit built around power chords; Ray Davies wrote it on the piano in March 1964, and the Kinks recorded it at least twice, on 24 June and 13 July 1964, the first studio version slower and, by Davies' account, covered in reverb, and when Pye would not pay for another session the band's management funded the one that made the single, with Bobby Graham on drums, Arthur Greenslade on piano and Mick Avory on tambourine; Dave Davies played the solo, not Jimmy Page as a persistent myth has it; Pye released it on 4 August 1964, and it reached number one in the UK and number 7 in the US. Here the distortion is a torn speaker in a small amp feeding a bigger one, with a clean channel recorded alongside, so the rasp sits on top of a clear attack rather than replacing 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 The Kinks use on You Really Got Me?

A Harmony Meteor, which Guitar.com names as Dave Davies' guitar, into a small green Elpico amp, the AC55 in Guitar.com's account, whose speaker cone he had sliced with a razor blade and poked with a pin, in Wikipedia's account; Songfacts says he did it in his bedroom in North London when he was irate, to a cheap amp that had been giving him problems; in the studio the Elpico was linked to a Vox, which Davies remembers as an AC30 and producer Shel Talmy as an AC10, and Guitar.com says the Elpico was daisy-chained into the AC30; Talmy told Songfacts he recorded the guitar on two channels, one with distortion and one without, so that together they made a loud, gritty sound; the riff is played in perfect fifths and octaves, and the musicologist Robert Walser called the song the first hit built around power chords; Ray Davies wrote it on the piano in March 1964, and the Kinks recorded it at least twice, on 24 June and 13 July 1964, the first studio version slower and, by Davies' account, covered in reverb, and when Pye would not pay for another session the band's management funded the one that made the single, with Bobby Graham on drums, Arthur Greenslade on piano and Mick Avory on tambourine; Dave Davies played the solo, not Jimmy Page as a persistent myth has it; Pye released it on 4 August 1964, and it reached number one in the UK and number 7 in the US.

Sources: Wikipedia: You Really Got Me, Songfacts: You Really Got Me, Guitar.com: Classic combinations, Harmony Meteor and Vox AC30

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.