when guitar players go FULL FRUSCIANTE

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[gypsydoodles]

Hey, Mike i’m the guy who saw you outside of whole foods. It was cool meeting you. Sorry if i wasn’t talkative I had a migraine going on. Keep up the great vids.

[oscarkez]

Okay but actually going full frusciante is buying : another DS2, Big Muff, Super Badass Variac Fuzz, SD1, Micro Amp, Ibanez Wah (ideally v1), Line 6 DL4, Digitech PDS-1002, Line 6 FM4, Electric Mistress, Phase 90, the full Moog Moogerfooger series (especially the 12-stage phaser and Low-pass filter) and a vintage Boss CE-1, splitting the signal to a vintage marshall major and to a ehx holy grail going to a marshall silver jubilee. Play a 1962 fender strat.
Also, if you want to replicate his Niandra Lades era tone, you may want to purchase some heroin.

[netyn]

Hey, here are some things I would like to say:

1. When it comes to the Micro Amp, it isn't really an always on pedal for John. He engages it on songs and parts where he wants to get a little bit more punch and gain for instance Charlie, Can't Stop, Californication Solo, Hey (those little solo parts after choruses) and probably many more. As far as I know he got it sometime before By The Way tour. His main source of breakup are his amps and on top of that there's the preamp of the Boss ce1 as well as the preamps of the moog moogerfooger pedals. HOWEVER that's how John himself gets(or used to get) his sound. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do it that way. Many people stick with the micro amp as the source of the breakupy gain and it works for them and at the end of the day - that's what matters the most.

2. John really only used a compressor pedal on Blood Sugar Sex Magik and it was MXR Dyna Comp. Later on it was only his amps and in studio probably some professional studio compression. In the current days he has it on his live board(the dyna comp) but I have no idea how or when he uses it.

3. The settings on the ds2 are kind of controversial among the frusciante community. One thing I can say is they are inclined to change as John tends to tweak settings quite often(I think). However in the old days (Californication-Stadium Arcadium so 1998-2007) he had it close to max for every knob. Sometimes you could see that the volume is rolled back a little bit and during another show the distortion might have been rolled back. It would constantly change. The gist is that they were always close to being maxed out.

In the current era (2019-present) both of his ds2's are set a little bit less agressive. That's because there have been some changes to his rig(new additional amp head jmp2203, new pedals etc.) and he had to adjust the settings.

It's so cool that you are getting into the Frusciante world! As far as I know you also have some telecasters so you could experiment with those as John also likes to play them (well he uses one but still). Great work!

p.s. It's not my intention to be rude or anything like that. I am also in the John Frusciante rabbit hole and I just wanted to share some things I have learned over the years.

[mclyde]

Dave Simpson does a good job of getting the Frusciante tone on his channel.

[wassbot]

hey mike - frusciante nut here. actually a common misconception that he uses a lot of treble - he doesn’t! a lot of the perceived treble comes from his amps just being cranked with the gain low. try and find a silver jubilee capture (ideally without the push pull pots pulled) on tonex, and crank the bass, mids at 6-7, treble at 2-3. you’ll want the gain lower, but the overall volume high. micro amp helps push the signal to distort it, and another big part of his “crunchy” sound is from the pre amp of the BOSS CE-1 that’s always on. the original boss ce-1 units have an always on volume boost that helps saturate/compress the signal, and help with the treble loss. so much of the frusciante sound is his pedals in the order they’re in, and making sure they balance each other out. DS-2 and WH10 create a huge volume boost (because he does like to max out DS-2) and you need to compress the amp with the CE-1 to prevent it! highly suggest watching Dave Simpson’s channel.

[voodoodeyoel]

the micro amp is the biggest phenomenon in the frusciante tone world. people hear about it and think they’ll get the tone straight out the pedal but don’t consider that it’s A GAIN PEDAL. the reason john uses this is because any guitarist knows that when you solo on a broken up amp, it’s sounds godly but then you hit a chord and boom a crunchy mess. John combats this by naturally setting the amp to a barely braking up level for when his playing rhythm stuff, then to combat the weakness in tone that comes from single notes he’ll kick the micro amp into play to send the signal right up there. So think 02-07 Can’t stop, Scar tissue, Emit Remmus. They are thick single notes BECAUSE they are driven, THEN the chords in those songs ARE NOT driven. John has the control with the MICRO AMP

[artistlovepeace]

You are self aware. Honest. Good. Honesty is always good. Thank you for producing and sharing.

[FoxerLen]

without a jubillee or a jcm100 you go like that:
-Jackhammer as amp
-CE-1 Preamp Crunch
-WH10
-DS-2
-SD-1

[BerryPitje]

Wet sand isn't on blood sugar... :)

[timgermanyjr]

Listening through my car speakers and I swear I could get that tone out of my Katana 50 in about 2 minutes.

[KenithCopeland]

one of the things about frusciante's tone is you can get a very close tone to it with just a couple pieces of gear like te ds2, like the micro amp, but whats really good is when you get and stack some of these pedals

you can get away without having the microamp by having a wh10, because it has a slight boost in the wh10 it works well. that is also why the ds2 is before the wah so the ds2 cant massivly increase the sound, it hits a sonic roof so you just get the tone of the ds2 without the spike in volume

[leestanford]

Boss Metal Zone is the only pedal you need. If you think you need more, just chain another Metal Zone to the first one.

You’re welcome

[TheUltimateJimbob]

I’m a simple man, I see frusciante and click

[brandonthompson]

You are in the ballpark but the secret to frusciante's tone besides his speaker cabinets are that his amps are HOT. His clean tone isn't really that clean at all. It sounds clean because he is just that freakin' good. It's not a distorted amp but it's a very very loud very pushed amp, and the micro amp pushes it even harder. The DS-2 dimed almost acts like a fuzz pedal, and it really only gets that sound when all the knobs are dimed. If you really listen to the solo in "Dani California" or some of his other famous solos you can hear it. The solo of Californication is a great example of the Micro Amp pushing his amps, its compressed and almost distorting. 100 watt jubilee or JCM 800 heads and his famous Majors that are 200 W are going to naturally have way more bottom end than what a modeler is going to be able to replicate that, and you also need to get an IR with the appropriate speakers. The G12-75 on his JCM 800 and Majors and the G12 Vintage (closest readily available speaker being the Vintage 30) being fed from his Jubilee. I have a DSL40CR Combo loaded with a G12 Vintage and I can get close to Frusciante's tone with a Micro Amp and a Rat. The Rat is very similar to the DS-2 despite what the weirdos on the internet say. Wait, am I one of those weirdos? Probably. Anyways. Most important thing is to experiment, play loud, and have fun. Cheers.

[mRahman]

This video gives me a new found appreciation for the music of the early 2000s that I took for granted on MTV and the radio.

[pantaloneshexagonales]

Great Vid! Little side note though; it is believed by some members of the community that frusciante used both a ds2 & Big Muff in unison for the Can't Stop Solo, try it yourself! It gives a really nice texture that completes the almost roaring sound of the solo.

[blake]

bro you are the only person on the whole youtube that has the vintage white/gold s7 .. finally i can see it in all its glory with moving pictures lmao i gotta get one too

[Tony-zpxn]

It's not always about maxing out the knobs to push things, but for the effect that can have on the frequencies. I like to refer to it as "HM-2 syndrome" because the original Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal pedal was notorious for sounding like crap until you dimed all the knobs, and then something magical would happen and it would produce what's known as the "Swedish chainsaw" tone that was very characteristic of Swedish death metal in the 90's. I'm not debating what settings Frusciante did or didn't use, but what seems like it would be "too much" sometimes turns out to be the magic formula.

[Hammonds]

Love my DS2 on mode 2 and use it mainly for chilli peppers and nirvana songs. It is pretty versatile turning the gain down to play guns n roses and play a lot of punk rock with the pedal like bad religion etc

[jacobseraphin]

I saw RHCP in Tampa 2 months ago and I still can’t believe I saw them in person. John was my guitar hero fs 🤞🏿