Mark Tremonti remains one of the foremost proponents of post-grunge lead guitar playing. His work with Creed and Alter Bridge has earned Tremonti countless hits and critical acclaim from his guitar-wielding peers.
One of the defining features of Tremonti’s playing style is his eerie ability to switch between clean, arpeggiated sections and crushing distortion. This development of the soft-hard contrast pioneered by the Pixies and Nirvana is one of the hallmarks of Tremonti’s playing.
In this article, I’ll run through the key pieces of gear and amplifier settings necessary to achieve this tone.
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Mark Tremonti Guitars
Although Mark Tremonti played Gibson Les Pauls early in his career, he signed an endorsement deal with Paul Reed Smith guitars just before Creed exploded and took his career into the stratosphere. Accordingly, the cornerstone of the Tremonti sound is his near-exclusive use of PRS guitars.
Tremonti’s favored PRS model over the years – and the guitar his high-end signature model is based on – has long been the singlecut PRS Custom. This Les Paul-like guitar features a mahogany body with a maple cap, mahogany neck, and two high-output humbucking pickups.
For the Mark Tremonti tone, it’s best to use a PRS singlecut. In fact, PRS recently issued an SE Series Tremonti signature guitar. It even comes with Tremonti’s signature humbuckers, a rare addition to a guitar in this price range.
If you’d prefer the upper-fret access afforded by a double-cutaway guitar, the SE Custom 24 is a similar guitar, albeit without the excellent Tremonti pickups. The key tonal features for this sound are humbuckers and a mahogany body, which the Custom 24 has, although its pickups aren’t quite as hot or articulate as those of the Tremonti model.
Mark Tremonti Amps
Mark Tremonti himself has conceded that 80% of his signature guitar tone comes from his near-exclusive use of Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier amplifiers. These high-powered amps were built in the 90s specifically to offer the kind of powerful, high-gain saturation you hear all over the classic Creed records.
Unfortunately for most guitar players, the Triple rec can be a little too expensive and much too loud for our needs. I certainly don’t need to rattle the windows and annoy the neighbors with a full-powered 150-watt amplifier.
The Mesa/Boogie Mini Rectifier is about half the price and offers 25 watts (switchable down to 10) of power. Amp technology has improved a lot since Creed was taking over the world and you can achieve the Tremonti tone at a less ear-ravaging volume.
The Mesa Mini, in my experience, has a similar high-saturation “scooped” tone to the full-power Triple Rectifier, although you’ll still need a decent speaker cabinet like the matched 1×12 from Mesa/Boogie to play it.
The other alternative, in my opinion, is a high-gain combo amp like the EVH 5150 combo. Its distortion pattern isn’t identical to that of the Mesa, but it has plenty of gain on tap and with a PRS guitar will get you in the ballpark of the classic Mark Tremonti tone.
Creed Amp Settings
There are two main sounds that Mark Tremonti uses with Creed. One is the clean, dry tone he uses for arpeggios (such as the intro to “One Last Breath”) and the distorted rhythm tone for which he is best known.
I’ve based the below amp settings on “One Last Breath” but they will work well for just about any Creed song, or as a reliable basis for any 90s rock or nu-metal tone.
Switching between the two, if you’re using the Mesa Mini, is a simple matter of switching channels on the amp from clean to dirty with the amp’s included footswitch.
Use the below settings across both channels and allow the natural additional gain in the drive channel to boost your signal appropriately.
Volume: 5
You can start with your volume at 5 and move up or down according to your needs. The master volume control on your Mesa Mini ought not to affect your output tone apart from the overall loudness.
Gain: 6
This might seem a little low, but it’s important to remember how high-gain Mesa/Boogie amps are. If you’re finding that you don’t get enough bite, turn up to 7 or 8.
Bass: 4
Mark Tremonti’s tone is warm, but not overly so. It doesn’t have a lot of loose, flabby low end.
Mids: 7-8
You want lots of midrange definition for this tone, partially because of the naturally scooped sound of the Mesa/Boogie. Mids are the secret sauce for this guitar sound.
Treble: 6
You want some treble, but not too much, so your clean sound has articulation. If you listen to “One Last Breath,” it is not an overly sparkly sound.
Mark Tremonti Pedals
A huge piece of Mark Tremonti’s distorted tone is his use of the Ibanez Tube Screamer in front of his cranked Mesa/Boogie to send the amp into even further distortion. Tremonti uses the hand-wired TS808HW, but a regular TS808 will get you close enough to his sound.
Tremonti uses an EHX Micro POG to add a subtle octave for solos.
Although most of his Creed tones are relatively dry, Tremonti has been known to use the T-Rex Replica live as his main source of echo.
For wah, Mark Tremonti uses the classic shredder’s favorite, the Morley Wah.
Although he rarely uses a phaser effect, Tremonti has featured various phaser models on his live pedalboard over the years. He has favored the EVH Phase 90 as his main phaser, with its switching option for going between vintage and modern phaser sounds as a useful feature.
Mark Tremonti Tube Screamer Settings
Curiously, simply setting up a PRS, rectifier, and Tube Screamer up isn’t enough to quite nail the Mark Tremonti tone.
This is particularly true if, like me, you’d normally run a Tube Screamer for a high-gain amp with the level up, drive off, and the tone knob set around 7. This way you don’t have as much Tube Screamer clipping interfering with the amp’s natural tone.
It’s important to note that the Ibanez Tube Screamer’s “tone” knob is somewhat misleading. It doesn’t add or remove “tone” per se. The knob is designed to act as a hi-pass filter, cutting out lower frequencies as you turn it up.
Some high-gain amps are naturally bassy or boomy, and players will use the Tube Screamer to tighten up their tone.
Mark Tremonti, on the other hand, sets his Tube Screamer very differently to get his guitar sound. Tremonti runs his TS808 with the drive knob all the way up, adding extra gain to his tone, and the level knob all the way up. His tone knob is all the way down, so the Tube Screamer colors his sound as little as possible.
The idea here is that Tremonti’s Tube Screamer acts as a clean boost, at least as much as a Tube Screamer can.
Final Word
Mark Tremonti’s tone is as thick and glorious as any nu-metal or post-grunge guitar player could dream of. When I think of Creed, I think of powerful distortion and immediately identifiable riffs.
Armed with the right PRS model, a rectifier amp, and a Tube Screamer set the way Mark Tremonti likes it, you, too, can channel some of the power and passion of the Creed and Alter Bridge axeman’s signature tone.
While the right gear won’t give you Tremonti’s playing ability, it will get you six feet from the edge of his sound.
