How to sound like Soundgarden
Downtune your guitar, play riffs with weird intervals and long bends, and run the whole thing through a fuzz that holds its low end. The key move is a thick, drowning distortion that stays tight, which is exactly what Drown does with two knobs.
People ask me how to get that Soundgarden guitar tone, the one that feels heavy and hypnotic at the same time. I have spent a lot of years chasing tones for records and placements, and I can tell you the short answer is not a single pedal. It is a way of tuning, a way of writing, and a distortion that stays solid when everything gets loud. Here is how I think about it.
A short history of the Soundgarden sound
Soundgarden came up in Seattle in the late 1980s, and by the time most of us heard them they already sounded like nobody else. Chris Cornell had one of the biggest voices in rock, and Kim Thayil played guitar in a way that leaned into drones and strange intervals instead of the usual blues moves. They were louder and stranger than a lot of their peers, and they wore the influence of heavy rock and psychedelia openly.
The two records most people point to are "Badmotorfinger" from 1991 and "Superunknown" from 1994. "Badmotorfinger" is the sludgy, off-kilter one, all odd meters and grinding riffs. "Superunknown" is bigger and more psychedelic, with hits like "Black Hole Sun" and "Fell on Black Days" that pushed them onto the radio without softening the weirdness. Together they map out what people mean when they say heavy psychedelic grunge. There is drop tuning, there are alternate tunings, and there is a thick, sludgy riff sound that sits somewhere between metal and something more dreamlike.
The players and their gear
The thing that jumps out first is the tuning. Soundgarden did not stay in standard. They dropped strings and used alternate tunings that gave the riffs a slack, ringing quality you cannot get any other way. From what is documented publicly, Thayil and Cornell leaned on things like drop D and other lowered tunings across the catalog, and some songs use tunings that are downright unusual. I would not swear to the exact tuning on any given track without a chart in front of me, so treat these as starting points and trust your ears.
On top of that you get thick, distorted guitars, psychedelic bends, and long droning notes that hang in the air. The playing is as much about sustain and space as it is about speed. Big amps pushed hard are part of the picture too. I am not going to pretend I know the exact heads and cabinets they used on a given session, because those details shift from tour to tour and record to record, and a lot of what gets repeated online is guesswork. What matters for you is the recipe: low tuning, heavy fuzz or distortion, and notes that ring out.
How to get it: the Siesta plugin chain
You do not need a wall of amps to get in the neighborhood. Most of the character lives in the tuning and the distortion, and both of those travel fine into a plugin chain. Here is the order I would work in.
The Soundgarden chain, in the box
- Tune down first. Before you touch a plugin, retune. Try drop D, or drop the whole guitar a step or two. Downtuning changes how the strings feel and how the fuzz reacts, so this has to come first. If you are working with a DI or a re-amp, this is where you commit to the low end you want.
- Drown for the distortion. Put Drown on the guitar and start with Murk low, then push it up until the tone thickens from a snarl into a full, drowning fuzz. Use Depth to keep the low strings tight so the riff stays clear instead of turning to mush. This is the core of the sound.
- Write the psychedelic riff. Now play like Thayil might. Use the open low strings as drones, add long bends that lean into the note, and let chords ring out instead of chugging every beat. The tuning and the fuzz do half the work; the space you leave does the rest.
Drown keeps the floor under your heaviest riff
Murk pushes it from a Big-Muff snarl toward a full drowning fuzz, and Depth holds the low end together so the bottom never turns to mud. Drop it on a downtuned guitar or a bass and it stays crushing at volume. Mac, Windows and Linux, offline license.
Get Drown · $39 →Dialing it in
- Chase thickness, not just gain. It is tempting to crank Murk all the way, but the sludgy Soundgarden feel comes from a fat midrange, not from maxed-out fizz. Back it off until the note has body and you can still hear the pitch.
- Let Depth do the heavy lifting on low tunings. The lower you tune, the more the low end wants to flap and smear. Nudge Depth up until the bottom feels solid and the palm mutes hit like a fist instead of a pillow.
- Double-track, do not layer forever. Two tracks of the same riff panned left and right will get you a wide, heavy wall faster than stacking five takes in the middle. Keep the parts simple so the doubles line up.
- Leave headroom for the voice. The Soundgarden sound is guitar and vocal in a duel. If your guitar tone eats the whole midrange, the vocal has nowhere to sit. Carve a little space and the riff will actually feel bigger.
If you like this heavy grunge lane, a lot of the same ideas carry straight over to the Alice in Chains guide, where the tuning tricks and the vocal harmony approach take the fuzz somewhere darker and slower. Same sea, different tide.