Blink 182 sound setup

[Alasdairiainmacleod]

Hi Guys,

I am a total beginner. I am just learning guitar at the moment. Along with instruction, I am learning to play songs which I like from my youth.

One of the songs I have been learning is Blink 182 - All the small things. Its pretty simple, even for a beginner such as me. I just can't seem to get the Blink 182 sound quite right?

I have an iRIG HD. Could anyone advise me which pedals and amp setups I should go for in order to get a good Blink 182 sound?

Thanks guys.

[carlaz]

I'm no Blink-182 expert, but lots of info seems to be available online. Some quick Googling found me this quote from one of the guitar players (Tom DeLonge) from the early 2000s: "I use a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier and a Marshall JCM 900. Mesa/Boogies can have all that bottom end and saturation of distortion but it doesn't have that string note tone that a Marshall has. And Marshall has a lot of string note tone but none of that overdriven bottom end. So when you mix the two tones I think it sounds incredible. What I do is put the JCM 900 on its clean channel and turn the gain up to 10 and I also do the same with the dirty channel on the Mesa. So you kind of have two totally different unique sounds blended in together. I run that out of 3, Mesa/Boogie 4x12s." I gather the same guy also used some pedals, perhaps particularly a Fulltone OCD?

So, problem solved! Models of all that gear are available in Amplitube. Set up a single pedal chain (in series), split out into two amps (in parallel), and then combined back into two cabs. Put the Fulltone OCD model in the pedal section, leave it perhaps fairly neutral in settings to start with; I'm not actually sure it's necessary! Run the Brit 9000 up to 10 on the clean channel, and the Mesa Triple R up to 10 on one of the dirty channels. Leave the EQ controls around 5 on both. Set up Mesa cabs with probably a Dynamic 57 close up on the cone. See what you get!

Tweak the EQ controls on the amps to taste, but I don't think any of them need leave the 4-7 range. Try a Ribbon 121 as a mic if the top end is too fizzy. Mess with the Fulltone OCD, but again I doubt the settings are necessarily very extreme -- and you might not need it at all to get the tone.

I should note that I have not tested this at all so it might just be an unworkable mess ... but, hey, give it a go!