Duff McKagans Equipment

Appetite for Distortion Duff McKagan’s main bass is an inexpensive mid-‘80s Fender Jazz Special with Seymour Duncan Hot Stack pickups and Rotosound strings. “Before we started recording I was playing a Music Man bass instead, to get more of a growl,” he says. “It was great live, but when we made the Velvet Revolver record I went back to playing my Fenders.” A longtime devotee of Gallien-Krueger amps, Duff’s current tone is based on the classic G-K sound but with a bit more aggressive rasp and bite. In the studio and on the road, he’s using a 2001RB head into two G-K RBH 4x10s, an 800RB head into a G-K wx15 for distortion (G-K is designing an 8x10 for touring), and for extra bite, a Marshall JMP guitar head, THD Hot Plate power soak, and a Marshall 1x12 guitar cabinet. “The combination of the Gallien-Krueger bottom and the Marshall growl is perfect for me,” says Duff. “I still own and us the G-K rigs from the Guns N’ Roses days. They&rsq ...