Green Day Dookie mod tone?

I was playing around tonight with what everyone suggested and got it pretty close. It's eq'd for my LP with a seymour duncan custom so you will probably have to mess with it a little.
 

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I found this, which sounds exactly like Dookie,

.

This was stated in the comments section, "it’s literally the CAE 3+ Crunch channel, just no cap on the v2a cathode and no 475k resistor after the second coupling cap."

I assume it's not possible to "virtually" change cap and resistor values in Fractal-land?

I’ll hop in on this conversation since that’s my video linked.

So pretty much, the crunch mod is channel 2 of the 3+, and channel 3 is the “se lead mod”. Originally Suhr didn’t use depth controls on the amps, so make sure you zero those out on the fractal models.

If you’re going purely for a dookie tone, start with channel 2 of the 3+. You will need 2 amps, as they tracked the left and right sides of the mix with different tones, but they used the same “crunch mod” amp. I like to run the gain around 3-4 on the left side and 5.5-7 on the right side. I then run the eq roughly as follows for the left, bass 6-7, mid 4-6, treble 4-5 and presence around 4. This gives the cleaner and clearer side of the tone. The right side I run similar but scoop the mids down to 2-3 and knock off some presence to get the thicker/woolier side of the tone. I usually run the mull el34’s with 70% bias, and I really don’t touch anything else in the extra settings.

Speaker wise, Dookie was tracked with a 1960av with the 70 watt Marshall labeled vintage 30’s. They used a md421 and a sm57 as the two close mics, and captured the room with a U87. I tend to use York audio IR’s and as mentioned earlier, the Marshall BV pack is killer. I usually pick my favorite individual capture of the 57 and 421, then blend them to my liking.

You have to remember, although it is a punk album and they tend to be “dry” , there was a fair bit of post production on the album. Jerry Finn used a pultec, and eq’d the albums even fuzzier and warmer. This can be added in a daw with a pultec plug in, or you can use the tube preamp in the cab section. I usually set it to the edge of breakup right where a touch of harmonic distortion gets blended into the tone. Pickups also have a bit to play into the tone as well. I have a tele with a slanted JB in the bridge, and I have a strat with a Wilde 500xl(which is the accurate modern version of the Bill Lawrence 500xl that was used on the majority of the record). Pickups make a load of difference with the amp, the JB and the 500xl don’t even sound the same even though they are both 13k+ winds. To really nail the tone you would want a 500xl, but a JB will get close as well.


If you dig through my channel I do have a comparison of the fractal model and the actual head itself. I ran the amp straight to the cab and then bypassed the preamp and used the fractal profile as the “preamp” and matched all knobs on the amp and profile, then ran the fractal into the “clean” poweramp on the Marshall then ran them into my BV Marshall cab. To my ears they’re virtually identical, with a slight edge to the real amp as it is just a hair cleaner and clearer.


Hope this helps you get closer to the tone man. Been chasing all of GD’s tones for quite a few years and really love them. Feel free to ask any questions as well! I may get some free time tonight to put new strings on the strat and record some quick clips of my dookie preset and have em posted.
 
I’ll hop in on this conversation since that’s my video linked.

So pretty much, the crunch mod is channel 2 of the 3+, and channel 3 is the “se lead mod”. Originally Suhr didn’t use depth controls on the amps, so make sure you zero those out on the fractal models.

If you’re going purely for a dookie tone, start with channel 2 of the 3+. You will need 2 amps, as they tracked the left and right sides of the mix with different tones, but they used the same “crunch mod” amp. I like to run the gain around 3-4 on the left side and 5.5-7 on the right side. I then run the eq roughly as follows for the left, bass 6-7, mid 4-6, treble 4-5 and presence around 4. This gives the cleaner and clearer side of the tone. The right side I run similar but scoop the mids down to 2-3 and knock off some presence to get the thicker/woolier side of the tone. I usually run the mull el34’s with 70% bias, and I really don’t touch anything else in the extra settings.

Speaker wise, Dookie was tracked with a 1960av with the 70 watt Marshall labeled vintage 30’s. They used a md421 and a sm57 as the two close mics, and captured the room with a U87. I tend to use York audio IR’s and as mentioned earlier, the Marshall BV pack is killer. I usually pick my favorite individual capture of the 57 and 421, then blend them to my liking.

You have to remember, although it is a punk album and they tend to be “dry” , there was a fair bit of post production on the album. Jerry Finn used a pultec, and eq’d the albums even fuzzier and warmer. This can be added in a daw with a pultec plug in, or you can use the tube preamp in the cab section. I usually set it to the edge of breakup right where a touch of harmonic distortion gets blended into the tone. Pickups also have a bit to play into the tone as well. I have a tele with a slanted JB in the bridge, and I have a strat with a Wilde 500xl(which is the accurate modern version of the Bill Lawrence 500xl that was used on the majority of the record). Pickups make a load of difference with the amp, the JB and the 500xl don’t even sound the same even though they are both 13k+ winds. To really nail the tone you would want a 500xl, but a JB will get close as well.


If you dig through my channel I do have a comparison of the fractal model and the actual head itself. I ran the amp straight to the cab and then bypassed the preamp and used the fractal profile as the “preamp” and matched all knobs on the amp and profile, then ran the fractal into the “clean” poweramp on the Marshall then ran them into my BV Marshall cab. To my ears they’re virtually identical, with a slight edge to the real amp as it is just a hair cleaner and clearer.


Hope this helps you get closer to the tone man. Been chasing all of GD’s tones for quite a few years and really love them. Feel free to ask any questions as well! I may get some free time tonight to put new strings on the strat and record some quick clips of my dookie preset and have em posted.

Please kindly share the preset 👀

Thank you for the wealth of info regardless btw
 
Can someone give me a hint about what happens in this modification? In simple terms for people who know absolutely nothing about electronics, please.
Jumping into an old thread here, but based on my googling, the "Dookie" mod primarily does 3 things:

  1. Cascades the 2 Plexi channels into each other (in stock configuration they run parallel), which gets you more preamp distortion
  2. Adds a master volume, allowing you to run the preamp hotter (more distortion) without needing to run the amp super-loud
  3. Adds an effects loop
This is a pretty standard "hot rod" Plexi configuration. So popular that Marshall would incorporate these mods into the "Master Volume Lead" amp from the 70's, which would then be re-branded as the JCM 800.

The biggest difference between this mod and a JCM800 is that the JCM uses a "cold clipper" in part of the 2nd gain stage, which biases that tube "cold", causing it to distort earlier (based on the Ceriatone schematic above, it doesn't look like this is included in the Dookie Mod). So you could say that the Dookie mod is kind of halfway between a Plexi and a JCM800, in terms of total potential preamp distortion.
 
Jumping into an old thread here, but based on my googling, the "Dookie" mod primarily does 3 things:

  1. Cascades the 2 Plexi channels into each other (in stock configuration they run parallel), which gets you more preamp distortion
  2. Adds a master volume, allowing you to run the preamp hotter (more distortion) without needing to run the amp super-loud
  3. Adds an effects loop
This is a pretty standard "hot rod" Plexi configuration. So popular that Marshall would incorporate these mods into the "Master Volume Lead" amp from the 70's, which would then be re-branded as the JCM 800.

The biggest difference between this mod and a JCM800 is that the JCM uses a "cold clipper" in part of the 2nd gain stage, which biases that tube "cold", causing it to distort earlier (based on the Ceriatone schematic above, it doesn't look like this is included in the Dookie Mod). So you could say that the Dookie mod is kind of halfway between a Plexi and a JCM800, in terms of total potential preamp distortion.
The “crunch/dookie” mod cascades the preamp, but also revoices the eq section, and this is the main ingredient of the mod. The mod adds more gain than the 2203/04, 4 on the gain on my Golub modded 2203 is around where 10 is on the 2 70’s stock 2203 Marshall’s I had.

The loop was its own mod, and that was incorporated for rack fx users as it was a line level loop. GD uses the loop to run the CAE 3+ as the preamp, and then they use the Marshall power section for certain tones.
 
+1 on dookie modded 1959 slp to be Added to the amp wishlist
Use the CAE 3+ rhythm amp. If you want the “crunch mod”, use the stock 470pf bright cap, and if you want the “dookie” mod, change that bright cap to 220pf. Also make sure you change the bias to 70% in the poweramp. A cold bias on the real amps vs a hot bias makes a world of difference with the circuits. I have done a head to head with my Crunch and dookie modded amps from Golub compared to the 3+ model on the fractal and it is a 1 to 1 to both versions of the mod.
 
Use the CAE 3+ rhythm amp. If you want the “crunch mod”, use the stock 470pf bright cap, and if you want the “dookie” mod, change that bright cap to 220pf. Also make sure you change the bias to 70% in the poweramp. A cold bias on the real amps vs a hot bias makes a world of difference with the circuits. I have done a head to head with my Crunch and dookie modded amps from Golub compared to the 3+ model on the fractal and it is a 1 to 1 to both versions of the mod.
Thanks for this , do you push the power amp none at all/small/hard amount would you say when going for dookie tones?

I know we can measure this with the fractal via headroom meter but i’ve no access to my ax3 atm to test out tones.
 
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