The most important sonic issue, obviously, was Cantrell's guitar setup. “A lot of Jerry's sound comes from his G&L guitars — he's nicknamed them ‘Porno’ and ‘No War,’” says Fig. “He used this Bogner Fish preamp he's had for years and went out to a couple of his own 1412s, and then Nick has an awesome collection of vintage Marshall cabs. Then it was about getting the right mic and finding the sweet spot. I placed it right in front of the cone, and if it got too dark or too bright, I'd go out there and make sure it was feeling good. We didn't use any EQ; it was all mic and guitar amp. Jerry can be an intimidating guy, and when we got our sound up, he came in, grabbed his guitar, turned around, smiled, and said, ‘Yeah, man.’ We knew then we were on the right track.”
Cantrell switched between his G&Ls and Les Pauls on the main rhythm parts, and cherry-picked from Raskulinecz's collection for flavors, favoring a '57 Gold Top — a Les Paul Custom Raskulinecz describes as “fretless” because the frets are so worn down — and, on almost every track, a '63 SG with P-90 pickups. “Jerry has a staging amp that goes to two cabs,” Fig continues, “and we'd blend in a HiWatt, an Orange and sometimes Nick's favorite Marshall, a 2550, and we'd do a whole pass on four or five tracks on one guitar. We'd blend a couple of mics per cab, which kept it open-sounding and more flexible for Nick. On top of that, Jerry likes to double his parts, and thank God he's an awesome player who can hear himself great.” The rhythm parts were placed left and right, doubled left and right, and centered. “That took awhile,” says Fig, “because of tuning and making sure the tones really locked in together. We didn't want a big smearing of guitars; we wanted it to sound like one big hand.”
