distortion never sounded so good...

[Bmxbarspin724]

i was listening to this cold war kids song, and the guitarist is using a sweet distortion. i know it has reverb on it, but what else makes it so good. where the note is clearly defined yet at the same time there is fuzz? if anyone could enlighten me as to what conditions i would need to get that sound.

the link to the video is right here

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=44694318

[chipaudette]

I saw two things...

(1) He had a big 'ol hollow body guitar. In my opinion, you can't get that kind of sound from a solid-body guitar. Only a hollow body (not even a semi-hollow body) can get that kind of "mushy" sound. "Mushy" is not intended to be an insult...it's just a key component to that really organic distortion sound he's getting

(2) He had 4-6 small combo amps behind him. He could have some on clean and some being overdriven...or he could have had his fuzz going to some of the amps and his straight signal going to other amps. It's hard to tell. You'd have to experiment.

I think that if you had a hollow body and a fuzz set to slightly gritty playing through a big, good reverb plugged into an amp with no treble, you'd get this sound. It all starts with the guitar (well, it actually starts with the fingers, but we all know that part).

Chip