Am I Evil? Riff Guitar Tone Settings — Diamond Head

Tone Character

• tight and percussive
• aggressive attack
• saturated British crunch
• focused midrange punch
• articulate power chord definition
• minimal ambience
• classic NWOBHM rhythm tone
• raw and uncompressed
• slightly scooped but present mids
• percussive low end

Playing Technique

• 🎸Downpick the main pulse · difficulty 3/5Use firm, even downstrokes for the repeated power-chord hits. The attack should feel deliberate and slightly aggressive; adding gain cannot replace the physical punctuation of the picking hand.
• 🎸Palm-mute only the right strings · difficulty 3/5Mute the low strings enough to make the chugs compact, but let the fretted chord tones open up at the phrase accents. Over-muting makes the riff small and removes its NWOBHM lift.
• 🎸Keep the open-string transitions clean · difficulty 2/5Release and replant the fretting hand without dragging noise between shapes. A dry amp setting exposes sloppy transitions, while the controlled noise floor keeps the riff articulate.
• 🎸Push the pick through the string · difficulty 2/5Use a confident pick depth and attack rather than a soft brush. This brings out the British upper-mid bite and keeps the Flying V-style humbucker voice from sounding flat.

Sources

• 📎Am I Evil Intro Riff Attempt : r/Metallica - Reddit
• 📎Open string lick in am I evil : r/Metallica - Reddit

Tone Story / Why This Tone Works

• ⚡NWOBHM foundationThe song sits in Diamond Head's 1980 Lightning to the Nations era, a formative British heavy-metal moment that later became central to the genre's riff vocabulary.
• 🎸Brian Tatler’s voiceTatler is a riff-first guitarist: heavy, melodic, and economical, with a strong sense of how a single guitar figure can carry an entire arrangement.
• 🔥British gear evidenceThe page's Flying V and Marshall Super Lead-style evidence supports saturated British crunch with focused mids, not modern compressed metal gain.
• 🥁Why the riff landsDry space, percussive low end, and precise palm muting let the chromatic movement feel enormous without becoming blurry.

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