The Cure’s Robert Smith might be better known for his fashion sense than his guitar playing, influencing, as he did, virtually the entire goth subculture. However, beneath the makeup, lipstick and hairspray, Smith is a terrific, if underrated guitar player.
Throughout his incredible career, Robert Smith has endured as a pop culture icon, penning classic songs like “Boys Don’t Cry” and unleashing instantly recognizable riffs.
A huge part of The Cure’s sound was Smith’s distinctive guitar tone. Fortunately for fans of The Cure and Robert Smith, nailing his classic sound is a fairly straightforward affair, once you have the right equipment. It’s a simple matter of matching guitar, amp, and effects.
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Robert Smith Guitars
At his core, Robert Smith is an old-school punk. He played guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees! Accordingly, he is rarely seen with an elaborate or expensive instrument. Unlike some of his peers, Smith rarely strays from affordable, great-sounding guitars as the main foundation of his tone.
Smith’s first guitar was an ultra-cheap Woolworths guitar from a British discount department store. Upon showing up in the studio to record the first Cure album, the producer, Chris Parry, hated it so much he insisted on buying Smith his main guitar throughout the 80s: a Fender Jazzmaster.
Smith made a key alteration to this guitar, adding the pickup from his Woolworths guitar, giving his Jazzmaster a very distinctive sound. While finding these pickups is hard to do, you could always go for the classic Cure look of a Jazzmaster in Olympic White.
The Jazzmaster is a key component of that classic 80s Cure tone, and it’s hard to really nail the sound without one. Jazzmaster single-coil pickups are throatier and warmer than standard Fender single-coil pickups, so I’d recommend a Jazzmaster over a Telecaster or Strat for this tone.
Another key feature of Smith’s lineup, used heavily in the studio, is the Bass VI. This six-string bass is more like a baritone guitar. It’s most prominent on “Pictures of You” but can be heard on many of their recordings, often used as an additional texture in the mix.
Because the Bass VI isn’t a standard guitar that can be used in a range of gigs, I’d recommend going with the more affordable Squier Bass VI for this sound. It’s more in keeping with Smith’s DIY punk ethos, too.
Later, Smith played humbucker-equipped Gretsch guitars and even wound up with a signature model Schecter guitar in the early 21st century. These guitars, to me, don’t evoke the classic Cure sound, and if I was trying to get the chiming, heartstring-tugging sound of “Boys Don’t Cry,” I’d turn to a single-coil Fender guitar.
The Cure Amps
Robert Smith famously runs his amplifiers as clean as possible, using them as a platform for his choice of effects. Smith has used a wide variety of amps over the years, including combo amps and head-and-cab setups, and often switches between solid-state amplifiers and tube amps on one recording session or gig.
Smith has played, variously, Vox, Orange, Fender, and Peavey amplifiers, all run very clean with minimal amp drive or poweramp saturation.
However, in my view, the best amp for the classic Cure tone is the Roland Jazz Chorus. Don’t use the onboard effects: just run the amp nice and clean. The best thing about the Jazz Chorus for this tone is how well it takes pedals.
It’s a portable combo amp for taking to rehearsals or gigs, and perhaps best of all, the big-brother model (a 120-watt dual-speaker monster) comes with built-in wheels to make loading in and out as easy as possible.
Robert Smith Amp Settings
You want to run your amp nice and neutral for this sound. Robert Smith famously declared that he only ever runs his amplifiers at 0, 5, or 10. Everything else, he says, is simply “mucking about.”
Volume: 5
Running a solid state amp like the Jazz Chorus means you can set the volume to your preference, because there’s no poweramp sag to dial in. Start at 5 in keeping with Smith’s philosophy.
Bass: 5
This isn’t a very warm sound. Keep the bass nice and low.
Mids: 7
Robert Smith might not believe in running a knob at 7, but this gives your sound more shape.
Treble: 10
Let your guitar’s naturally trebly sound take most of the responsibility for your high end in this tone, then add more with your amp.
The Cure Pedals
Most of Robert Smith’s atmospheric, ethereal guitar tone comes from his use of a few key guitar pedals. Because Smith was a poor punk musician in the 80s before The Cure rose to stardom, he could only afford simple Boss effects pedals. The good news for modern Cure fans is that it’s pretty easy to capture this tone using widely available pedals.
The three key pedals for this sound are:
You’ll want to set these pedals as below for the Cure sound:
Set your Manual knob just past 12 o’clock, your Depth knob to about three o’clock, your Rate knob to 12 o’clock, and Res to 9 o’clock.
Set all the knobs on your Digital Delay to 12 o’clock, or, as Smith would say, 5. No “mucking about.”
Run your Reverb pedal with balance and tone at nine o’clock, time just after nine o’clock and mode all the way up.
For extra flavor and color, Smith also used a chorus pedal, the Boss Chorus Ensemble, as heard in the riff from “Friday I’m In Love.”
These pedals, at these settings, are all you really need for the classic Cure sound. It’s important to run them in the right order: flanger goes first into the chorus, which goes into delay, which goes into reverb, then into your amp.
Final Word
Most of Robert Smith’s tone is in his fingers and note choices, but with a simple setup consisting of Fender guitar, Roland amp and a few choice Boss effects pedals, you can get very close to the classic Cure sound. It doesn’t have to be Friday for you to be in love with this excellent 80s guitar tone.
