All you need for Jonny’s sound on My Iron Lung:
- Electric guitar with humbuckers.
- Distortion pedal with a Marshall-type sound and the EQ set for lots of mids.
- Whammy pedal or other pitch shifter with an expression input.
- Solid-state or digital amp set for a clean Fender-type sound.
Jonny’s guitar setup has never been “boutique”. If anything, the secret to his 90s distortion sound was to keep using the inexpensive gear he had when the band were signed: a solid-state practice amp and a distortion pedal.
If you already have a guitar with single coils instead of humbuckers, don’t rush out to drill holes in your guitar. Just turn down the tone knob about halfway and turn up the gain on the pedal.
Jonny stomping on his beat-up volume pedal at a show in the 90s. The volume pedal isn’t necessary for My Iron Lung, but it can be helpful for dealing with noise: when he wasn’t playing, Jonny used the volume pedal to mute his distortion pedal, acting like a noise gate. The footswitch to Jonny’s old Digitech Whammy WH1 pedal can be seen at the right edge of the photo.