The Best of Times guitar tone

The rig Dream Theater used

Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.

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.

1. Ernie Ball Music Man JP6 (John Petrucci signature)

   1

   Source. Crunch Lab bridge for the gain sections, LiquiFire neck for the clean intro and the lead.

   guitar
2. Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer (Keeley mod)

   2

   Filter and boost in front of the amp for the gain sections and the solo. Off for the clean intro.

   overdrive
3. Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+

   3

   The one amp: clean intro in Rhythm mode, everything else in Lead mode.

   amp
4. Mesa/Boogie Rectifier 4x12 (Celestion Vintage 30)

   4

   Cab.

   cab
5. Shure SM57

   5

   Close mic. Always on - a microphone is not a switchable effect.

   mic
6. Neumann U87

   6

   Room capture blended under the close mic, mostly audible on the ballad sections. Always on.

   mic
7. TC Electronic 1210 Spatial Expander

   7

   The wide stereo chorus on the clean intro. Off for every gain section.

   chorus
8. TC Electronic TC 2290 Dynamic Digital Delay

   8

   Quarter-note repeats under the clean intro and the lead solo. Off for the heavy rhythm sections.

   delay
9. TC Electronic M3000 (hall program)

   9

   Hall ambience under the whole track. Always on - it runs throughout the song and is never switched off.

   reverb

Why we think this is right

The ticketed defect was unbound effects, and it was real: the stored record had seven blocks, no controls on any of them, three sections, and two of those sections referenced block ids that did not exist in the chain at all - 'keeley_modded_ibanez_ts9_tube_screamer' and 'rack_stereo_chorus__tc_electronic_1210_2' - so those bindings were silently discarded on ingest and the third section bound nothing. Everything is rebuilt around explicit ids: nine blocks, five sections, every effect accounted for in every section, and the Tube Screamer that the chain notes described but never shipped is now a real block. Three naming defects were fixed: the guitar carried a slash inside its name, the chorus was typed 'mod' rather than chorus, and the reverb was called 'Hall reverb', which is a description and not a unit - it resolves to the TC Electronic M3000 that is in his documented rack. One substantive change: the amp. The stored record named a Mesa/Boogie Mark V at confidence 84, but Petrucci said in a 2009 Guitar World interview that the album was tracked mostly on his vintage Mark IIC+ heads, and the Mark V had not reached players when this album was tracked between October 2008 and February 2009. The block is now a Mark IIC+. The published knob positions survive that change intact, because they come from Petrucci's own Mesa video for the Mark V's CH3 in Mark IIC+ mode - a channel voiced expressly to reproduce this amp.

Sources

• Guitar World interview with John Petrucci (2009) - Mark IIC+ used for most of Black Clouds & Silver Linings
• John Petrucci / Mesa Boogie official Mark V settings video, as transcribed by Sweetwater InSync 'Classic Settings on Seven Classic Amps' (Gain 2:00, Bass 9:30, Mid 10:30, Treble 1:30, Presence 11:30)
• Premier Guitar Dream Theater rig rundown and TC Electronic's Petrucci rig feature - rack contents (TC 2290, TC 1210, TC M3000, Eventide)
• Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ documentation - two-mode shared tone stack, five-band graphic EQ
• DiMarzio Crunch Lab / LiquiFire release dates for the era check

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