Run Like Hell guitar tone
Pink Floyd · David Gilmour
The Wall (1979)
A hard, bright, drop-D sixteenth-note figure locked to two delay units running three sixteenths against four, over one clean 100W head that never changes setting - with a Big Muff switched in for the hard chord stabs and nothing else.
The rig Pink Floyd used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Fender 1955 Esquire on its bridge pickup in drop D for the riff and every electric part, with a Fender Bass VI doubling underneath. Corrected from the Black Strat, which the per-song documentation does not name for this song.
Amplifier
Hiwatt DR103 (Custom 100), clean - one head, one linked clean voice, the same settings in every section. It has no gain knob and no second channel, so it is never the gain source; the booster and the Big Muff are.
Cabinet
WEM/Fane 4x12 (Hiwatt SE4123)
Microphone
Shure SM57, close on the cone
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 Run Like Hell for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
gilmourish.com's 'The Wall settings and setups' page gives Run Like Hell as a Fender 1955 Esquire on the bridge pickup in drop D plus a Fender VI Baritone, with all four guitar tracks running 'Booster (mild OD), Electric Mistress and delay', and states that David ran two MXR digital delays in time with each other, one in 3/4 and the other in 4/4. Kit Rae's measured 'David Gilmour Delay Time Library' gives the studio setting as 380 ms with seven to eight repeats at 90 percent level on an MXR M113. Taking 380 ms as three sixteenths gives a 126.7 ms sixteenth and therefore about 118 BPM, which makes the four-sixteenth partner 507 ms; that second figure is arithmetic, not a citation, and carries a confidence of 50. Pedal dial positions are from the same site: Cornish ST-2 mild treble 9:00, bass 12:00, volume 12:00 with volume 3:00 for the heavy setting; Electric Mistress colour 10:00, range 10:00, rate 9:00; Dynacomp output 2:00, sensitivity 10:00. Amp settings are Pete Cornish's photographed Wall-era DR103 dial positions. The Big Muff is kept from the stored record but rated at 45 and bound to one section only, because the per-song list does not name it while the stored section mapping did.
Sources
- gilmourish.com - 'The Wall settings and setups' (Run Like Hell: 1955 Esquire drop D, Fender VI, booster + Electric Mistress + delay, two MXR DDLs in 3/4 and 4/4, pedal dial positions)
- gilmourish.com - The Wall gear rundown (Feb 1979 Pete Cornish studio board, Hiwatt DR103, WEM Super Starfinder, 'cabinets were mic'ed with Shure SM57 microphones')
- kitrae.net - 'David Gilmour Delay Time Library' (Run Like Hell studio, MXR M113, 380 ms, 7-8 repeats, 90 percent level)
- kitrae.net - 'David Gilmour Tone Building', Hiwatt settings page (Cornish's Wall-era DR103 dial photographs)
- Phil Taylor - 'The Black Strat' (Gilmour's studio guitar inventory)