Adam Dutkiewicz (or Adam D as he is often called) is one hell of a talented guy. Even if you don’t like the metalcore genre that Killswitch Engage is associated with, there is no denying his talent.
Dutkiewicz attended the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston studying production, engineering and bass guitar. Notice that there is no guitar training in there? Wait, it gets better.
When they formed Killswitch Engage, Adam was the drummer. Yes, the drummer. He actually recorded two albums as the drummer for the band before moving to guitars and giving the drummer position to Tom Gomes.
Seriously, I think this is the first time I’ve ever made a guitar tone for a drummer. Still, this story gets even better.
Dutkiewicz is the producer on all of the Killswitch Engage albums and has produced other bands too. His credits include As I Lay Dying, Underøath, The Acacia Strain, Unearth, All That Remains, From Autumn to Ashes, Johnny Truant, Parkway Drive, The Agony Scene and Every Time I Die, among others.
Like I said, a very talented guy.
Dutkiewicz uses Caparison guitars and a collection of amps that made making his tone a little tricky. He has used Hughes and Kettner Triamps, Bogner, Peavey 5150s, Framus Cobras, Mesa Boogie Triple-Rectifiers and Roadsters.
His pedals are fairly sparse considering the tone Adam achieves. He uses a Delay, Overdrive and a Noise Suppressor. With that list of amps, it’s a good thing there is a noise suppressor in there somewhere.
I’m using Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig 3 to build Adam D’s tone on my computer. With high-gain tones like this, the guitar you are using really matters. I’m using an active pickup model, so if you aren’t getting the gain you’re expecting, play with the gain settings until you’re happy.
Guitar Rig’s best high-gain modern amp is the Ultrasonic, so that’s what we’re going to use. While a modern metal guitar sound, Adam’s tone is remarkably clear ― that just added another twist to what we’re trying to accomplish here today.
The Ultrasonic amp settings are Master 9; Volume 8; Gain 10; Bass 8; Middle 4; Treble 10; and Presence 9. The cabinet settings are 100% Mic B, 6.02 for the Dry/Air setting and -28.1db for the Volume.
We are going to put in a Sledge Hammer Overdrive effect with settings of Volume 3; Bass 7; Treble 5; Contour 6; Frequency 3; and Gain 3. Make sure the Distortion/Drive switch is set to Drive.
You’ll notice the settings for that effect are quite low. The purpose of using that effect was not to overdrive the tone beyond recognition, but rather to drive the tone coming out of the amp a bit more. Remember Adam’s tone is modern, but clear.
Next, I added a Tube Compressor with settings of Input 0; Threshold -19db; Ratio 25:1; Attack 0.25; Release 1.22; and Gain 16db. Again not very aggressive, but once you add these together you’ll have a nice modern tone.
I also put in some delay, mostly to get the edgy part of the tone somewhere to go. The Dry/Wet setting is 47.8% Wet; Time 56ms; Feedback 31.9%; Rate 0.26Hz; Depth 3.22.
The last thing I added to this tone is a Noise Gate. This is definitely something you’ll want to have on a tone like this. The settings are Threshold -51.8db; Hold 0.1s; Attack 13.3ms; and Release 0.1s.
That does it for Killswitch Engage. This should be a fairly useful tone for a lot of different bands in the metalcore genre. Enjoy!