The Kids Aren't Alright
The Offspring · Americana · 1998
This is a Dave Jerden production tracked by Bryan Carlstrom at Eldorado, and the guitar sound is a stack of amps rather than one: Noodles names the Mesa/Boogie Mark IV as the main amp on Americana, while the band also credits Jerden with putting them on Bogner for rhythm tracks. Dial a mid-gain-to-hot rhythm channel with the bass pulled back, treble and upper mids up, and no effects — the aggression comes from the picking hand, not the gain knob. The guitars listed are the band's documented studio and era guitars (Noodles' Ibanez Talmans and the '64 SG Junior they call "Number One"); nobody has confirmed which one is on this specific take, so bridge humbucker or bridge P-90 both get you there.
Where these numbers come from: worked out from the documented rig and the sound of the record
Tuning
Standard tuning, no capo
Hal Leonard's official Americana transcription lists every song on the album in standard tuning (only the title track drops the low E to D), so this one is standard — the key is Bb minor, meaning barre shapes; a lot of players instead tune down a half step to play it with open Bm-G-D-A shapes.
Guitar
- Ibanez Talman TC620 · Kent Armstrong Sky humbuckers · bridge pickup
- Gibson SG Junior (1964, "Number One") · single P-90 · bridge pickup
Amp
Mesa/Boogie Mark IV
Noodles says the band tried lots of amps on Americana but "the Mesa/Boogie" did the heavy lifting and "the Mark IV was the one that we used most"; knob values here are inferred from the record — rhythm-crunch channel, low bass, treble up, graphic EQ close to flat with a small upper-mid push.
Amp
Bogner Ecstasy
Competing account: in Guitar World the band credits Dave Jerden with getting them into Bogner and calls it "the amp for the record," with many rhythm tracks cut on it, while Noodles elsewhere names the Mark IV as the main amp — Jerden layered several amps per part, so both are probably on the track. Only "Bogner" is documented; the Ecstasy is the Bogner head Jerden is documented using in this period.
Tone character
tight palm-muted attack · forward upper mids · bright, cutting treble · controlled high-gain crunch · layered wall of rhythm · almost no reverb
The shapes are simple power chords and barres, but the intro riff runs fast palm-muted downstrokes at roughly 200 bpm with muted-string strums between the stabs, so right-hand stamina and clean muting are the whole job.
Want this on your own amp?
These are the record's settings. Tell us what you play through and we'll translate every knob to the amp you actually own — free.
Adapt it to my gearSources
No published source — the settings below are estimated by ear.