Looking for a tone… new distortion and more.

Soundgarden tones are amp driven. Early SG is peavey jcm800 based amps and then they went mesa by superunknown... high preamp gain, sometimes layered with a marshall plexi, crazy tunings though, that really contributes a lot... for Kim's chorus just get a ibanez cs9, get a wahwah... it's the amps, not what's on the floor... and its nothing special going on other than a real leslie for blackhole sun, a lot of the sound of that record is down to Michael Bienhorn though. Look him up on YouTube. The edgy guitar midrange is down to the mic preamps, old germanium neve preamp/eq modules. The bass uses various cabs and a dbx disco subsynth to fill the room with throb. It's all about creative recording methods... radiohead? More pedals. Get a Marshall shredmaster to start. Thats the Greenwood fuzz tone. I think he used to use a cheap fender solid state amp from the 80s AND a tube amp. I forget. But also very creative recording methods... the 90s were a lot of fun.

Yes jimmarchi1 said it all, Soundsgarden Tone is based on the Amps, Kim Thayil uses only Pedals to boost the Amps and Live on stage he does switch Amps between a Mesa/Boogie Electra-Dyne Head and a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier. He does use Live MXR the Custom Audio Electronics MC-402 Boost/Overdrive and the MXR MC401 Boost/Line Driver just to push the Amps. Live on Stage he replaced the Leslie with the Hughes & Kettner Tube Rotosphere MKII The Analog Leslie Simulator, of course not so good as a real Leslie. For Experimental stuff he does use often the POG , a Dunlop MC404 CAE Wah Pedal and Technics playing behind the Guitar Bridge. https://equipboard.com/pros/kim-thayil?gear=amplifiers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEl7u9Z3lK0

Jonny Greenwood is very different to Kim Thayil, Jonny uses a lot of Pedals doing very different Jobs and Amps more as a Pedal Plattform and not so much as a Gain Stage and I think you got already a good starting Point with the Fender also when I never played a Tone Master , but I think it can also do the Gritty Gain Stuff ?
The main Sound is by reverb and delay using the Roland Space Echo Tape Machine mostly over everything , Live sometimes the Boss Pedal Version of that and a lot of Electro-Harmonix Pedals like the Polychorus, Small Stone, Mistress , Freeze ... to build a very wide and big Sound. For weird sounds Envelope Filter , Pitch Fork , Whammy , Tremulator, EarthQuaker Devices Pyramids, combined with Delay , Fuzz, Overdrive or even more Reverb. And he does use Loopers , to layer more Guitars playing different Stuff. https://equipboard.com/pros/jonny-greenwood?gear=effects-pedals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWKYP1oZY7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUgjC-1rfs

The Things both got in common is just some short weird Sounds created by Wah , Pitch .. combined with Gain , Fuzz, Delay and Reverb. You Equipment is already a very good Starting Point .... for Gain like already said its very different Kim Thayil uses extrem pushed Gain Amps, Radiohead uses very different Gain Stages Fuzz , Overdrive , Distortion by Pedals like Boss Overdrive to push the clean Amp , Fuzz for heavy gain, Boss Distortion like Nirvana and so on .... There is not really a so called 90ties Distortion Tone everyone did use, this is the Time where you still got very High Gain Amps used also in Rock, Grunge .... not only in Hair Metal and Trash Metal , but also Bands using a clean Amp more as a Pedal Plattform, but mostly high Quality Gain comes from Amps not so much from Pedals, when you play mostly Gain driven music , it is better to find Amp matching your Tone of Gain you like , when you play also a lot of clean with also effects are based on a clean sound , there is also a lot possible to consider as 90ties Distortion Tone it is not just the Boss Distortion , there are also Pushed clean Amps with a Tube Screamer or Overdrive, the Rat Pedal very extreme dirty aggressive Distortion, Fuzz Pedals on lower Gain settings , Kobain even used special Speakers in his Cabinet with a Power Amp on Stage, the Speakers were important to his Gain Sound , Smashing Pumpkins Gain was also on High Gain Amps and mostly on Big Muffs , it was not just the Boss Distortion Pedal there were a lot of different possible sounds in the 90ties with different ways to achieve a Gain Stage. Also to say on a Record there is also Stuff used from the Studio , the Bands did not use on Stage , different Amps mostly to get more Quality to the Gain Stage and Live solved a different way , the Quality does not so much matter anymore and gets lost , to play Live is not a HiFi enviornment anymore.

You got already the MXR M69 Prime Distortion and the Plumes , giving you a good Gain Sound Pedalwise , on your whishing list is the Electro-Harmonix Op-Amp Big Muff Pi what makes sense, when you do not hit with that a Gain Stage you do like , it might be more to the Amp or the Tone you searching for is very Studio quality. When you wanna switch to a High Gain Amp and do a clean and High Gain , keep in mind that this is your Gain Stage so you choose exactly the right Amp you want and mostly it will get very Loud , yes you can still put effects on it , but to switch Amps on the pedalboard or to get of the Amp Gain and using Pedals instead is always a painful job on the Pedalboard. The Pro is you got much better quality of the Gain, the negative is less variation of the Gain is possible or gets more complicated, more used to Music got Gain most of the Time. The Clean Amp as Pedal Plattform gives you more different ways to use Gain by Pedals, but the Quality will mostly not be that great it will always sound a bit more LoFi-ish, you might also use more effects on the Gain like reverb and so on , but this is better when your music is not so much Gain Related all the time and more experimental and uses a lot more clean sections or Effects based on a Clean Amp. Also to say when you listen to a Band you hear very loud Amps and the Whole Band, so you got the felling there is more Gain or Distortion to it, but you can not do this by just turning up the Gain Knob on a Distortion Pedal, the settings on the Pedal are mostly much lower then People think they should be, otherwise it gets lost in Distortion and muddy or too dark.

Okay, I have to say this again, gain stages are not inherently distorted. Gain and distortion are not interchangeable. Gain is short for gain in voltage, a catch all engineering term for a type of amplification that doesn't produce power or convert low voltage to high current. It just means an increase of input voltage. The stage can be designed as a voltahe to voltage amplifier or an IV converter, IV stands for current to voltage. You don't see that in tube amps but you do in pedals.

The 'gain stage' you're thinking of in you jcm800, a slo100, dual rec, basically anything but a mesa mark series? Adds little to no gain in voltage. The "gain" knob on your amp is a voltage divider to ground in front of the distortion producing element. The nickname for that distortion producing triode is the "cold clipper". Its typically half a 12ax7 with very low bias voltage on the cathode (cold bias) and no cathode bypass capacitor causing very little amplification before asymmetrical clipping due the improperly charged cathode and huge Miller capacitance creating internal negative feedback inside the tube. The "gain" surrounds this triode... the distortion lives there. The tube is purposely improperly set up to create lots of distortion instead of gain. Before this innovation most tube amp distortion was produced by the power section. As all the clean gain on tap was sent to the power amp the phase inverter and power tubes would go into overdrive because the preamp stages provided more gain than needed on paper, but the extra gain in voltage was typically designed in to provide a full clean sound at low volume settings and the assumption was that no one would run their amp full tilt... heh heh. Kinda funny.

Little late to this thread, but seconded to the Shredmaster. This https://equipboard.com/items/joyo-high-gain-distortion is supposedly a Shredmaster clone with a simplified EQ if you just want to try something in that circuit family, the Visual Sound Jekyll and Hyde is also one prior to the V3.

excellent suggestion my friend, better late than never! the jekyll and Hyde sounds very good in my opinion. I never owned one but tried a v1 and almost bought it before I came to my senses and decided not to dump yet another distortion in a drawer that I would use once a year. I was defintiely taken with the hyde section and it had that raunchy shredmaster proco rat with rabies tone... I wound up doing a TC nova drive later because it had a TS/Rat thing happening but with midi for my short lived midi rig

Greenwood's not afraid to make ugly sounds that are cool in contect, which I always respect because I struggle with that sometimes. So much easier to do as a keyboardist than a guitarist. The guy is a huge talent, the soundtrack to "There Will be Blood" was striking!

Tyla, you already have really nice gear, if you like your gear just experiment more and be yourself, find YOUR tones... its not going to do soundgarden ever, wrong amp and definitel the wrong guitars... maybe you could do radiohead, but you should do YOU instead, innovate

Old bandmate had one that was awesome with an Origin 50, I know there's an ODR derived circuit in the one newer one but it's supposedly different from the VS-XO which they claim is the same as the truly perfect Open Road. Speaking of ODRs, I just picked up an original for $200, might flip it, but very settled on that kinda circuit and the Hot Cake as my drive section.

Apart from Radiohead I mostly know the Phantom Thread soundtrack he did, him and Nels Cline both have that thing where they can make crazy guitar sounds with a band and then make the most beautiful compositions solo.

Seconded, huge fan of Soundgarden, probably was the only bad I listened to for months at a time in High School. I've never heard anyone else play like Kim, but he certainly inspires me to play.

Old bandmate had one that was awesome with an Origin 50, I know there's an ODR derived circuit in the one newer one but it's supposedly different from the VS-XO which they claim is the same as the truly perfect Open Road. Speaking of ODRs, I just picked up an original for $200, might flip it, but very settled on that kinda circuit and the Hot Cake as my drive section.

I like the open road, is that an ODR1? It sounded different to me than my nobels... I know we're both nobels fans, great stuff, I have an original I bought before the hype, should I sell it and buy an RI for a profit??? but I'm confused by VS stuff, I can never figure out what's what

Apart from Radiohead I mostly know the Phantom Thread soundtrack he did, him and Nels Cline both have that thing where they can make crazy guitar sounds with a band and then make the most beautiful compositions solo.

Phantom Thread was good too, but There Will be Blood was the first time I heard him do soundtrack work and those strings caught me off guard in the theater... I think I saw that flick with my mom and my wife LOL, they didn't dig it like I did.... the sound design was killer too

Yeah, the bright yellow Open Road is the oldest Nobels clone and among the best, hasn't been priced out of reach like the silver ones yet, but they're built better than any of the old ones were. The VS-XO combines that with a TS in the dual format, tons of switches on both sides, didn't like it very much.

I just like the nobels, man... they're readily available! And its a sweet sound and that spectrum control is hella useful versus a normal low pass or big muff tone knob

I'm so boring, I still think the ODR1 and the TS9/SD1 are the best overdrives... TS9 for fender amps, SD1 for marshalls, ODR1 for everything else or another flavor

100% agree, any version of it is an awesome pedal, you'd be hard pressed to find a better pairing with a Twin or any Vox (other than the Hot Cake but they're amazing combined)

Currently my AC10 in indisposed due to overheating, my new main amp is a Rivera Chubster given to me by a friend and occasional bandmate with a crazy gear collection (all Cornish board, Klon, Mesas, Soldano, Two Rock)

oh, the vox pressure cooker! check the cathode bias resistor on the power tubes, motherfuggers burn up and when they do the choke burns out, the modern iron is way less tolerant too.... if the cathode resistor drifts the wrong way you'll overheat and that overheating puts too much voltage across the choke in the PSU as the tubes try to overdraw and it toasts... my 62 ac30 is a griddle you can make breakfast on when its running right, and it isn't always running that cool if I'm between maintenance cycles. Its the fiat of amps, gotta keep her tuned up.

I've been breadboarding a hotcake derivative. Its a little more compliated with a different opamp and a fet out front. I'm using a dual opamp, experimenting with different flavors, the first stage is setup like a hotcake but then I threw in a baxandall tone stack and a clean makeup opamp on the output in the feedback loop of the output buffer so that tone controls at noon are stock first gen 2 knob hotcake, not there yet... I might try that weird lofi IC that tech21 uses

On it as far as checking the catbode bias resistor, I've been so afraid some small surface mount part is busted I haven't looked at it entirely yet. I went through the Rivera when I got it and rebiased it cause it was running at 18ma per tube instead of 35 and sounded choked, threw a 5751 in V1 which helped the Fender channel but isn't my favorite on its Marshall voiced side. Also ripped out the reverb tank cause I wasn't a fan and threw a Vox grill cloth on.

Is this Hot Cake derivative taking any influence from the Tech 21 XXl you told me about?

On it as far as checking the catbode bias resistor, I've been so afraid some small surface mount part is busted I haven't looked at it entirely yet.

I hate PCB amps, but if its a good double sided through hole I can deal, surface mount? ARGH!!!! You're in a tight spot, man.

I went through the Rivera when I got it and rebiased it cause it was running at 18ma per tube instead of 35 and sounded choked, threw a 5751 in V1 which helped the Fender channel but isn't my favorite on its Marshall voiced side. Also ripped out the reverb tank cause I wasn't a fan and threw a Vox grill cloth on.

18ma? holy sh!zn!t! Something's up

Is this Hot Cake derivative taking any influence from the Tech 21 XXl you told me about?

yup, but lower gain, still working it out, I alwys design stuff for me and my sound and it has to be perfect for me, I rarely build a lot ofmoptions in because its made to do my thing, from pedals to amps... people try my stuff and say it doesn't have a lot of range but its designed to get me from gibson to fender and that's it, I just want my general balance with a limited range to F it up, just enoughto dial in all my favorte axes to sit in the mix, which is something I love about the JCM800, those tone controls and the presence provide such minor tweaks until you go to full up or full down, just subtle shaping, like it or lump it

18ma? holy sh!zn!t! Something's up

Yeah, it's been running EL34's I didn't end up changing, even though I'm using it for the Fender thing. This amp can run pretty much any power tubes that fit, except for KT88's I think. Stock Celestion 70/80 (yikes) was changed to a G12 Vintage 30, not my favorite but it works for now.

18ma? holy sh!zn!t! Something's up

Yeah, it's been running EL34's I didn't end up changing, even though I'm using it for the Fender thing. This amp can run pretty much any power tubes that fit, except for KT88's I think.

what about the small but mighty 7591? like the 6v6 is to the 6l6 in beam tetrodes the 7591 is to the el34 in true pentodes! the 7591 is usually used conservatively by late 60s ampeg but its a great output tube... for fender bias for 6L6es I guess

Stock Celestion 70/80 (yikes) was changed to a G12 Vintage 30, not my favorite but it works for now.

there are V30s and V30s, the original marshall branded 'vintage' speakers are amazing and then they forked something up around 91 and they suck now

what about the small but mighty 7591?

Can't find anything about them being used in this particular Rivera, but I see a lot of people recommending E34Ls. I also want to try 6L6s and see how Fender-y I can get.

The Vintage 30 isn't bad until you try the amp's gain channel, the low end looses all definiton and it stops taking any pedals well once you use either of the boost circuits.

Can't find anything about them being used in this particular Rivera, but I see a lot of people recommending E34Ls. I also want to try 6L6s and see how Fender-y I can get.

bias up a some GT 6L6GEs if you wanna go new, those 6L6es are @$$kickers. Aspen Pittman did a bang up job restarting GE style production off the old tooling he bought up. I used them OFF the road mostly studio in my blackfaces when I still played blackfaces.

The Vintage 30 isn't bad until you try the amp's gain channel, the low end looses all definiton and it stops taking any pedals well once you use either of the boost circuits.

generally agreed; the old ones are fine though, the new ones (90s on) are mushy

look for some american speakers if you go 6L6, try a JBL K120 hopefully not a reconed one but they handle a lot of wattage and were meant for PA use so there are many available