Angry Chair guitar tone
Alice In Chains · Jerry Cantrell
Dirt (1992)
dark down-tuned grunge-metal; watery flanged clean/edge verses into a thick 'brown' high-gain chorus
The rig Alice In Chains used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
1984 G&L Rampage 'Blue Dress' (Seymour Duncan JB bridge humbucker, Kahler tremolo)
Amplifier
Bogner Fish rack preamp ('brown'-voiced) and a Bogner/Mike-Moran-modified 100W Marshall, driving a Marshall 1960 4x12 — the layered Dirt-era rig
Cabinet
Marshall 1960B 4x12
Microphone
Shure SM57
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
Get this tone on your rig
Pick your amp or modeller and we’ll build Angry Chair for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
'Angry Chair' (written/sung by Cantrell) is from Dirt (1992, prod. Dave Jerden). Guitar is his 1984 G&L Rampage 'Blue Dress' (Duncan JB) [Ground Guitar; guitar.com]. In a 2022 Gearspace Q&A (quoted by guitar.com) Jerden details Dirt's layered rhythm rig — Bogner Fish preamp (lows), Bogner Ecstasy (mids), Rockman (highs), split via a Lucas Deceiver and miked with SM57 — plus a Mike-Moran-modified 1988 100/50W convertible Marshall Super Lead (6L6, extra preamp stage) for leads; Ground Guitar names the Facelift/Dirt Marshall as Bogner-modified. This chain condenses that into two documented, recognizable amp voices: the Bogner Fish 'brown' preamp for the heavy chorus and a Bogner/Mike-Moran hot-rodded 100W Marshall (edge-of-breakup) for the flanged clean/edge verses; both mods are GAIN mods (extra cascaded stage) so the stock JCM800/2203 model must NOT be used — map to a hot-rodded Marshall (Placater Dirty / Friedman-BE / Bogner 'brown'). The watery verse swirl is a flanger (MXR family). NOTE: there is NO talk box on 'Angry Chair' — the Heil talk box is on 'Man in the Box' only; it is deliberately excluded. Guitars are down-tuned (~half-step-down / ~Drop Db per common transcriptions). Cab = Marshall 1960B 4x12 (Greenbacks primary; G12T-75 / Vox bulldog cited on some layers), SM57 close. Amp EQ values are community-consensus 'match' settings, not factory-documented, hence modest confidence.
Sources
- https://www.groundguitar.com/jerry-cantrell-gear/
- https://guitar.com/features/artist-rigs/the-gear-used-by-jerry-cantrell-on-alice-in-chains-dirt/
- https://musicstrive.com/jerry-cantrell-amp-settings/
- https://guitarlessons365.com/angry-chair-guitar-lesson-alice-in-chains/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogner_Amplification