Sound Like Dimebag Darrel

Pantera “Walk” with the Metal Amp Sim – Creme

If you ever heard “Pantera”, you probably know what a great metal tone they had and what a great band Pantera was. I was a teenager when I got my first audio cassette of Pantera in 1994 and all I know is that it was a Randall Amp and it was a solid state amp.
Since then the metal scene evolved, but the tone of Dimebag Darrell is still one of the best heavy guitar tones ever. Using a solid-state Randall amplifier still blows my mind! But as he said: It’s tight! He loved the fast attack and the heavy saturation of the transistors!

Darrell Lance Abbott (August 20, 1966 – December 8, 2004),aka Dimebag Darrel, is one of the most influential guitarists of all time. His distinctive and unique guitar tone inspired generations of guitar players during his years of playing with Pantera and after his death in 2004, his legacy continues to drive many youngsters to pick up the guitar as their main instrument.

Recreating the guitar tone is not so complicated task, but first let’s write down a simplified list of his rig:

1. Dean Guitars and later Washburn guitars

Bill Lawrence pickups
Randall Century 100 Head.
An old Furman EQ to shape the tone further or MXR 6 EQ.

Note: The EQ’s are used as boost and major tone alteration!

List of actual hardware effects and amps:

Guitar Effects:

Dunlop Crybaby DCR-1SR

A remote pedal of the rack unit.

Dunlop Crybaby From Hell

Signature model

MXR ZW-44 Overdrive Pedal
DigiTech Whammy
Furman PQ 3 parametric EQ, used in front of the amp to “shape” and “voice” the distortion.
MXR 6 band EQ Pedal: used in the later years as the PQ3 or combined together.
MXR Flanger/Doubler
Rocktron HUSH Gate

Amplifiers:

RANDALL RG100 HEAD
Solid-state
Cowboys From Hell and The Great Southern Trendkill.
RANDALL CENTURY 200 HEAD
Completely solid-state with a 120w power amp
Vulgar Display of Power era

Creating the tone with Amplifikation Creme in A360

The tone of “ Walk” with our guitar amp software Amplifikation 360

We will use our well established Metal Amp Sim: Amplifikation Creme amp simulator. The Creme has the right character and the amount of the gain is what we are looking for. The Crème De La Crème of guitar amp sims; features a digitally engineered head and matching cabinet giving you full control of intense, dynamic, harmonically-rich distortion.
Also, Amplifikation Creme has the right tightness for the palm muted chugs.

The Amp
We will use Amp 1: “Sharp and Biting” ; channel 2, which is the distortion channel.
The tone is with “scooped mids” or in short: “scooped” Doing that, the lows and the highs are getting more pronounced and in “your face”. So, we cut them almost to zero.
The gain is around 2 o’clock and it’s already enough. The lows will be untouched because the amp character is quite heavy on the bottom side. We will add a touch of highs, just to give a tad more bite. Then the master is lowered a little, to balance the output that goes into the cabinet.

The Cab
The 4×12 Vintage cabinet is a classic that delivers the full bodied and rich tone that completes the amp well. The first mic of choice is the classic 57. The second cab is just an addition with a Ribbon mic to give us more low end response, more depth. Because we are cutting the mids with EQ’s and the Amp, we are looking for some restoration of the signal and keep in mind we want it: Tight!