Very few guitarists will ever be able to say they created a rock riff that became a staple of modern rock and roll. Joe Perry has done it several times over his long career with Aerosmith.
Think about some of the classic songs led by Perry’s Les Paul and Marshall-driven amps. Who doesn’t stand up when the opening riff to “Walk This Way” begins blasting at a concert venue?
How about “Dream On”? That has to be one of the most classic songs of all time. I believe that song was also used as the formula for many of today’s most popular rock songs.
Perry is well-known for his collection of Les Paul guitars, an instrument he’s used faithfully throughout his career. The classic tone Perry has become known for also includes a fairly simple setup.
When it comes to amps, Joe is best known for his Marshalls―but then, most rockers who came up during the ’70s and ’80s were. Of course, Joe has used other amps as well, especially for his clean tones, but the Marshall epitomized that rock crunch that we’ve come to love.
Perry didn’t use many effects, although in later years he did try out some Line 6 gear pedals in his setup.
To create Perry’s tone at a home computer I’ll be using Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3 to build Joe Perry’s tone. (Don’t have Guitar Rig at home? Click on the contest link at the bottom of this page, and you may win virtual amp and cab emulation from Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig—and a Les Paul Traditional, to boot!) I will also give you the settings for the tone, so if you’re using another software product, you can build the tone yourself. If you are using Guitar Rig, you can just download my tone at the bottom of this article and start using it.
Since Perry used a Marshall, I’m going to start off with the Lead 800 and the matched cabinet in Guitar Rig. For the amp settings I used Master: 7; Pre-Amp: 9; Bass: 6; Mid: 7; Treble: 10; and Presence: 8. It’s important to leave the “Boost” button off on the amp or else you’ll overdrive the tone too much.
The mic settings on the cabinet should be 90 percent towards “Mic A” and the “Dry/Air” setting all the way over to dry. That takes care of the amp and cab―if you give a strum on your guitar, you should hear the beginnings of a nice crunchy tone.
Before the amp and cabinet we are going to insert a chorus pedal and a quad delay. We aren’t going to go overboard with the settings here; we really want to be subtle about what we are adding, so we don’t take away from the crunch we are looking for.
For the chorus the settings should be Volume: 5 and Intensity: 7. The quad delay settings are Dry/Wet: 9.8%; Time: 135ms; Feedback: 45.9%; Modulation Rate: 0.26Hz; Modulation Depth: 0.
You may notice that the tone isn’t as crunchy as you were expecting. I have one more effect to insert and that is a Screamer. That’s why we didn’t use the “Boost” button on the amp―using the Screamer will be a bit more subtle for the tone we’re going after in this tone.
The Screamer settings are Volume: 2.5; Tone: 7; Drive: 3. Now you should be able to get that extra little punch you were expecting from a Joe Perry tone. Enjoy playing some classic Aerosmith!
Click here to download the Joe Perry Guitar Rig preset.
Click here to enter to win Guitar Rig 3 and a Les Paul Traditional!