Basses

The Gear Used by Slash on Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction

July 11, 2023

Back in 1987, Guns N’ Roses entered the studio to record their major label debut. The resulting album, Appetite For Destruction, would go on to be one of the best-selling and widely celebrated albums of all time. In a single stroke the album thrust old-school guitars and amps back into the conversation after a decade of rackmounts and digital expansion, and made Slash a global sensation. In this article, we will explore the gear used by Slash to record some of the most iconic tracks in music history.

READ MORE: Guns N’ Roses’ 10 greatest guitar moments, ranked

The Guitars
Slash, playing his iconic Gibson Les Paul during the Appetite For Destruction Tour, on May 7, 1988. Image: Ross Marino/Getty Images
Prior to the recording of AFD, Slash was broke. He was playing B.C. Rich Warlocks and Mockingbirds and had even borrowed a black Stratocaster from someone for a show or two. Some accounts of the guitars used on the album are conflicting but as Slash stated in an interview in 2010 with Noisecreep, “I was really broke and I hocked all my decent guitars before we went into the studio to make Appetite for Destruction, all I had left were a B.C. Rich Warlock and two Jackson guitars, a Firebird, and a prototype archtop Strat-style guitar. I brought them all into the recording studio for the Appetite session and they all sounded horrible. I was like, ‘Fuck, what do I do?’” Slash goes on to say that his manager brought him a Les Paul the next morning – that guitar would come to be known as the iconic AFD Les Paul. The AFD Les Paul was actually a beautifully crafted Les Paul copy made by a guy named Kris Derrig.
Kris’ guitars were not exact replicas, although they did have the Gibson logo on the headstock. Slash’s was fitted with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Zebra pickups and had a thinner neck profile than a Gibson. Kris’ son, Dale, estimates that his dad made “about 20, maybe more” of these Les Paul replicas. Slash later tracked one down and now owns two of them. Many of the replicas were possibly passed off as Gibsons and lost to the world. Lenny Kravitz and Charlie Daniels have both claimed to own one as well. We all know that Gibson has a major distaste for forgeries and replicas, the irony here is that one of their most iconic signature series guitars is actually a replica of a replica. Tragically, Kris passed away due to throat cancer in 1987, a few months prior to the release of AFD, never getting the credit he truly deserved. Derrig’s Les Paul copy was the guitar heard throughout the Appetite For Destruction album and is still used to this day alongside the many Gibson versions inspired by the instrument.
Duff McKagan, Axl Rose and Slash of Guns N’ Roses at The Limelight on January 31, 1988. Image: Larry Marano/Getty Images
The Amp
For their major label debut, the band was given a budget of $370,000 including advances and according to Slash’s autobiography, rather than shopping for gear, he spent his advance on heroin. As a result, Slash ended up renting gear for the recording. Slash went into S.I.R. (Studio Instrument Rentals) to test out amplifiers to use on the album and landed on a Marshall Model 1959T Super Lead Tremolo – pre-master volume but post-Plexi (it had a metal faceplate) that had been modded by S.I.R. employee Tim Caswell. This amp was known as “Stock #39”. Slash specifically requested Stock #39 from S.I.R. but unfortunately, George Lynch had rented the amp to use on Dokken’s 1986 Tour and it wasn’t available. The company had an obligation to deliver a comparable amp, and this is where the story gets a bit convoluted.
Contrary to the misleading stencil, Tim modded Stock #39 by taking the amp’s unused tremolo circuit which had an additional tube and turning it into an extra preamp stage. The amp sported EL34 power tubes (they were typically shipped to the US with 6550s in those days). He also added a master volume. The amp that was actually delivered to the band was Stock #36, which had been modded by Frank Levi after Tim Caswell had left the company, but S.I.R. never told anyone, including Slash, that he was getting a different amp than requested. They were very similar but not exactly the same. Stock #36 did not have tremolo circuit to convert so they had to place the extra pre-amp stage elsewhere in the amp.
Slash with his guitars and a Marshall halfstack amplifier in 1983. Image: Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images
Slash never seemed to notice and was very happy with #36. So much so, that he began to scheme on how to keep the amp after the sessions. He offered to buy it and the company refused. So he ducked their calls for a while and finally lied to them and told them it had been stolen. S.I.R. supervisor Glenn Buckley suspected that Slash still had the amp and had his people looking everywhere for it.
Eventually one of Glenn’s employees called him up and said they had seen the amp at Stage 6 (a rehearsal space owned by S.I.R.) where the band was rehearsing for their 1987 tour with The Cult. Glenn personally went down to Stage 6, with some extra muscle of course, to get his amp back. In what turned out to be a rather anti-climactic end, the band wasn’t there when he arrived, and he simply grabbed the amp and walked out with it.
According to Glenn, Slash never said anything to him about the amp after that. But Slash has publicly decried his “idiot” tech at the time for bringing it to the rehearsal space, telling Guitar Magazine in 1992, “I had [a perfect amp] when I did Appetite, which was great. I stole it from S.I.R., and when we were rehearsing at S.I.R. after the record came out, my idiot roadie at the time brought that amp down by mistake, and they took it back. When we went back into the studio a couple years later, I had to find the ultimate amp again…”
Of course, these days Slash has a couple versions of his signature amp available through Marshall.
Marshall AFD100 Slash Signature amplifier head unit. Image: Joseph Branston/Guitarist Magazine/Future via Getty Images
The amp was played through a Marshall 4×12 cabinet with Celestion 30s. As for effects, Slash used an MXR Analog Chorus, a Dunlop Crybaby Wah, and a Roland SRV-2000 Digital Reverb. The Roland was set to the “secret” delay mode, which can be found by holding down the Reverb/Non Linear, Write and Room Simulate buttons while powering on. That was the tone on Welcome To The Jungle while the more conventional settings were used elsewhere on the album.
A lot is made of Slash’s tone on the album, but I would be remised if we didn’t mention anything about Izzy Stradlin’s setup. The unsung hero of AFD used several different guitars on the record but most notably, a 1987 Gibson ES-175D which was recently auctioned off. As for amps, he reportedly used a Fender Bassman 60s Blackface head with Mesa Boogie 4×12 cabinet with EV speakers in the bottom and Celestions on top.
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