Looking for the dookie mod

[brodie65708]

Hi everyone. I just joined and this is my first post. Long time viewer here so I decided to finally sign up.
I was wondering if anyone knew how to mod an amp to sound like Green Day's Dookie mod? The amp I want to mod is a Peavey Special 130. I'm pretty new to electronic "tweaking" so any help would be appreciated. Also, if anyone has any really nice sounding mods I could do to this amp, I would be super grateful.
Thanks for reading and hopefully replying.
-BRODIE

[Enzo]

Hi, welcome to the forum.


I have no idea what a Dookie Mod might be. Is this something written about? Do you have a link to it published somewhere? But more important, have you heard an amp with this change in person, or only on recordings?

For that matter is this something that was originally done to a Special 130? No point in trying to stuff a mod for a Bandit into a Special 130.


Nice mods is in the ear of the beholder, a good question is what do you want to change abut your amp, then we go about trying to accomplish that.

[Mick Bailey]

A gain mod made to a Marshall tube amp will not work in a solid-state amp. I would honestly leave the amp as it is and investigate pedals to get the sound you're after. The circuit topology, gain structure, components, layout, speaker interaction are all completely different in a solid-state amp compared to a tube amp. Even if you had Bob Bradshaw's exact schematic this wouldn't translate into your particular amp.

[brodie65708]

Thanks for the reply. The dookie modded amp used on the albums was a modded Marshall head from the 60's or 70's I believe. Too tired to chase that rabbit down it's hole right now but will find it later and post it. I'm really just looking for a sound that kicks you right in the gut but not too "metalish". Every overdive/distortion mod or pedal I come across sounds like a shitty, cheap, wannabe metal sound. I want a smooth distortion or overdive sound that is bright, punchy and also able to make out every note played at once, unlike most that drown out the "toneier" notes. Hope that clears it up a bit.

[brodie65708]

I knew it wouldn't transfer to solid state, that's why I'm looking for a mod that comes close to the sound. What kind of pedal do you think would help me achieve my desired sound? Just don't want that dark, metal sound that most pedals for distortion/overdrive seem to have. Thanks for the reply.

[J M Fahey]

1) welcome to the Forum

2) Sorry, wrong amp

Green Day uses what´s basically a tube Marshall Plexi modded for a little extra gain, and from what I hear in the recordings, a moderate bass cut (pre distortion) to keep sound smooth even with the typical Punk chords.

Again by ear, sound is neither treble boosted or cut, nor mids boosted or cut, just the raw, slightly buzzy sound of a microphone (think SM57 and such) almost touching the cabinet grill cloth, and pointed straight at the dustcone.

As you see, what you hear and recognize in a recording is not *just* something you did to an amp but the full combination of guitar (pickups) , amp, speaker, microphone, placement and later Studio EQ, bothy when recording and later applied when mixing.

With the elements mentioned above, you can clone that sound very well.

If you want to keep your budget down, I bet a SS Marshall Lead 12 into a 4 x 12" would basically nail it.

From a dedicated Green Day Fan site, they describe this, which says about the same.
Notice they mention "the Dookie Mod" which they also call by another name, a couple others (showing that they are not *brutally* important but part of the great scheme of things) and the amp needed amounts to "a Marshall" with some tweaking.

You might even use an unmodded Plexi with a clean boost or *light* distortion pedal supplying the extra gain (and usually cutting some bass):

This is how to sound exactly like Billie Joe Armstrong for under $500 or even less! By the end of this tutorial, you will be rocking to your favorite songs, old or new!
StepsEdit

1
Buy a guitar with a P90 pickup. P90 pickups are used for everything after Nimrod (American Idiot, 21CB, Uno, Dos, Tre) Humbuckers for the early stuff like Dookie, 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, Kerplunk, Insomniac, and Nimrod, but Billie Joe uses P90's for those too sometimes, depending on his guitars. I recommend the Epiphone Les Paul Special I P90.
2
Buy a good Solid State Marshall Amp. You should use a Solid State amp because this is a budget tutorial. Marshall's have that unique sound that has a natural mid boost in it. Billie Joe uses Modded 1959 Super Lead Plexi 100w heads with various mods like the SE Lead Mod, Pete/Dookie Mod, and the Meat mod. The Marshall MG15CFX is a great small amp that will provide great Green Day tone on the budget.
3
Use a Blues Driver. They also use a Boss BD-2 Blues Driver pedal. It is recommended that you buy one used so you can save some of your dough.
4
Amp Settings. Crunch Channel Gain: 3 Bass: 10 Middle: 3 Treble: 4 Reverb: 0 PEDAL Tone: 10 Level: 7 Gain: 5 I'm 100% sure that the amp settings are the same but I am not exactly sure with the pedal. Experiment with that.
5
Use half-step down tuning for Dookie/Insomniac/Kerplunk and Standard for the rest

[brodie65708]

Thanks for the reply and info. Do you have the link to the info you posted. I would love to read the complete article or forum.

[Mick Bailey]

I have a regular customer who's a Green Day fan and plays their numbers live. He's been on a quest for some time to nail a definitive sound. He also wanted the sound that Steve Jones gets on the Pistol's 'Did you no wrong'.

In the end he bought a new (Far-Eastern) Vox AC50CPH and sets this up for his clean sound - just slightly coloured, though not distinctively driven. He then uses a T-Rex 'Mudhoney II' to get his crunch and lead sounds. I've seen him live and his sound has bite, with clear note separation and no fizz or flabby intermodulation.

A little more or less saturation is just a tweak away.

[Justin Thomas]

I see another trend in this "mod":

Gain: Low.
Volume: High.

A common misconception with most trying to capture a great sound... No matter where the "gain" May be, Volume is somewhere up there. So,UN l ess the neighbors are passed, no mod will get the tone...
No Fear. No Compromise.

Justin

[J M Fahey]

Yes, a common problem is that **MANY** try to get their favorite Band´s (or Artist) sound , () so far so good, I would myself BUT the original sound was created by a *large* amplifier, played *full blast* in a *large* stage.
No problem for the famous Band, in fact it´s necessary for them, because they usually play to *thousands* .
Not a problem at the Recording Studio either, bacause it´s fully padded, fully isolated from the Outside World, they can play as loud as they wish (and usually do).

That the amp they use has some kind of Mod or another is just the cherry on the cake .... first you need to have "the cake" or the cherry by itself is irrelevant,

That said, and having "found sounds" for thousands, please trust me that a Marshall Lead 12 driving if possible a Marshall 4 x 12" or at least a single "good" 12" Celestion in a 50cm x 50cm x 35/40cm deep closed box will be **VERY** close.
In this particular case, that SS Marshall has the exact same biting but not fizzy distortion, and the required bass cut to keep distortion clear.
The combination is not dirt cheap because those heads are (justly) sought after and the speaker is usually around U$90 , you build the cabinet yourself out of some plywood or MDF, but not *expensive* either.

Your Peavey is an excellent amp but voiced and built very different; the speaker is also different.

I would Mod nothing but straight get what I suggest above.

As of the article I copied and posted, it´s in a closed Wikipage, you need to open a Google account to register so you can *read* it, but in any case, I cut and pasted *all* of the text there, there´s nothing else, and the page is closed for comments, so no worth trying to get there and ask, you can´t.
https://m.wikihow.com/Sound-Exactly-Like-Green-Day-for-Under-$500
plus:
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threa...ie-tone.68280/
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/in...ookie.1153237/
Green Power Billie Joe Armstrong Drives Green Day in New Directions on 21st Century Breakdown | GuitarPlayer
Marshall Super Lead Plexi

[g1]

He also wanted the sound that Steve Jones gets on the Pistol's 'Did you no wrong'.

I'd always heard rumours that he had used a silver-face Twin for that early stuff? Then again, I heard Matlock may have played much of the guitar anyway.

[Mick Bailey]

I always though Silverface Twin as well, with replaced speakers (Gauss, I think).

I've gone to great lengths to research and align a particular guitar/pedal/amp to what a particular artist uses. It rarely works out well for the customer. An amp modified to Jimi's 'Isle of Wight' spec was unplayable at anything other than a stadium gig - it ended up coming back. A Strat I put together to closely match Jeff Beck's also came back to have a stock neck installed and the trem set back up to standard. Another guitar - a 335 - had a John Herrington conversion. I thought it strange and not something I'd want myself. When the customer bought it back to revert to stock he told me that it was too inflexible and in any case JH no longer used that setup.

One studio that I do work for often records the guitar with the amp set up in the studio at maximum volume to get the dynamics, and patched through to the control room where the guitarist is located, listening through the monitors. That's not something that translates well to pub/club playing levels.

I read a really interesting account of a music journalist who interviewed EVH in the late 70's. He got to try his rig at a soundcheck and noted how little distortion Eddie used, but the volume turned the guitar into an uncontrollable screaming banshee that only stopped when he damped the strings. The other thing he noted that the trem didn't pull up. He asked Eddie how he did the pull-ups and he said he pre-dipped the trem before playing the note, picked it and let the trem come up to pitch. So, you could buy Eddie's exact rig - pedals, guitar, pick, amp, Variac, strings and everything else. The question is, how much use would it be for the average player?

[J M Fahey]

Hi Brodie: FWIW klooon is gutting and junking a Marshall Lead 12, maybe you can buy or get his Lead 12 guts: PCB, transformer and pots (he might keep the cool Marshall knobs though) and mount them in some chassis of your own
Even a Tupperware type or a wooden box would do, if you glue some aluminum paper inside to provide some shielding ... it will work properly even sitting naked on a table, no enclosure.
Just sayin`
http://music-electronics-forum.com/t43984/

[John G]

Hi,
Found these.
Original site said Dookie Mod ???
John

[John G]

Hi,
Found this if any help.

https://www.musiker-board.de/threads...ltplan.494180/