AmpRecipe

Roxanne guitar tone

The Police. Built for this recording. Nobody has played this one yet; it comes from a documented rig, not from ears.

Play it in
AmpliTube 5Guitar Rig 7
Download the presetOpen the tab(opens in a new tab)

Loads in AmpliTube 5, using only gear the standard edition includes: no MAX upgrade or extra collections.

An amp modelled on a Fender Super Reverb, through a Fender Super Reverb 4x10 cab.

  1. AmpAmerican Tube Clean 1
  2. Cab4x10 Open Vintage

Knobs, in signal order

  1. Amp American Tube Clean 1

    • Gain, 3 of 10
    • Bass, 4 of 10
    • Mid, 5 of 10
    • Treble, 7 of 10
    • Presence, 5 of 10
    • Volume, 6 of 10
    • Reverb, 2 of 10

  2. Cab 4x10 Open Vintage

    Nothing to set; the preset loads it.

Set your guitar

Pickups
an unusual pickup layout
Position
bridge
Tone knob
8-10
Channel
Clean

Where the rig comes from

  • The guitar on Roxanne was Summers' heavily modified early-1960s Fender Telecaster (variously dated 1961 or 1963), bought for $200 from a student in California; The Telecaster also has a built-in preamp/overdrive unit (third knob, on/off mini-toggle) and an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch guitarplayer.com
  • The Telecaster's neck pickup had been replaced with a 1959 Gibson PAF humbucker; the bridge single-coil is mounted into the body rather than the bridge plate, and the bridge is brass; The guitar track on Roxanne was recorded through a Fender Twin Reverb, giving the icy treble tone; the bridge pickup sound is what is heard on the track guitarworld.com
  • The onboard preamp is switched on/off and has a knob that adds or subtracts gain; the out-of-phase switch reverses pickup polarity groundguitar.com
  • Roxanne's opening staccato chords were played on the Telecaster's bridge (back) pickup with no distortion, i.e. a clean setting with the preamp/overdrive off andysummers.com
  • Summers' early Police setup was just the Telecaster into a Fender Twin with a little reverb and careful treble/middle/bass balancing, before he had a pedalboard; After the bare Twin setup, the next effects he added were an MXR Phase 90 and then the Echoplex guitarworld.com
  • Fan equipment wiki lists Summers' Outlandos d'Amour studio gear as the 1963 Telecaster custom, a Fender Twin Reverb and an unidentified Ampeg amp, plus an MXR Phase 90; Fan equipment wiki says guitars at Surrey Sound were close-miked with a Beyer Soundstar X1 or Shure SM58, with a Neumann U87 about 3 ft away for ambience thepoliceequipmentwiki.miraheze.org
  • Summers says he started with a Twin Reverb and later moved to old Marshalls; his live colour came from the Echoplex, a chorus and envelope filters vintageguitar.com
  • The Maestro Echoplex EP-2 was acquired around autumn 1978 (bought from Pete Cornish), i.e. after Roxanne was recorded in January 1978, and first used on the late-1978 North American tour the-police-equipment.fandom.com
  • Conflicting community claim: one gear blog states Roxanne was recorded in one evening after the Echoplex was discovered in the studio guitargangsters.net
  • Live on the 1978–79 Outlandos d'Amour tour Summers used a Marshall 1959 100W head into Marshall 1960A 4x12 angled cabs with Celestion speakers (rented in the US); The Pete Cornish pedalboard (Phase 90, compressor, fuzz, Electric Mistress, Mu-Tron, volume pedal) only entered the live rig from February 1979, along with the Echoplex thepolicewiki.org
  • The Outlandos tour effects were a DeArmond 610 volume/tone pedal, Maestro Echoplex EP-2 and the Pete Cornish custom board, with Marshall 100W heads and 4x12s the-police-equipment.fandom.com
  • Summers used Dean Markley 10-46 strings in the past (undated) and D'Addario EXL115 more recently uberproaudio.com
  • Tone-recreation reference (not Summers' own rig): zZounds matched the Roxanne tone with a Telecaster into a Marshall 1987X low input plus only an MXR Dyna Comp blog.zzounds.com