Raining Blood amp settings — Positive Grid Spark 40

The Slayer guitar tone for “Raining Blood”, dialed in for a Positive Grid Spark 40 with a Gibson Les Paul Standard 50s. Studio version, Reign in Blood (1986)

Original rig

Marshall JCM800 2203 with Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer boost, B.C. Rich guitars with EMG 81/85 active pickups

Scooped saturated thrash, tight and brutal, razor-sharp attack with sizzling highs

Amp settings — Positive Grid Spark 40

CHANNELMetal (Marshall-style high-gain model)BRIGHToffBOOSTon

Knob	Setting (0–10)
Gain	7
Bass	8
Mid	2
Treble	7
Presence	7
Reverb	0
Master	6

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Guitar

PICKUPbridge TONE10 VOLUME10

Signal chain

01Spark built-in Noise Gate

Essential for tight thrash—gate after the amp model to kill hiss between riffs

Threshold 6

Why these settings

Original used EMG actives which are hotter and tighter than your Les Paul's passive PAFs—compensated by dropping gain from 8-9 to 7 (PAFs saturate the Spark's high-gain models earlier) and pushing bass +1 to restore low-end thump. The Spark's Metal channel is voiced JCM800-ish with more gain on tap, so the TS9 boost is replaced by the built-in boost function for similar midrange tightening. Mids scooped to 2 per the original.

PRO TIPThe iconic Raining Blood tone is quad-tracked with extremely tight palm muting—pick directly over the bridge pickup with your palm anchored hard against the saddles, and use aggressive downstrokes at tempo to get that machine-gun chunk. Any looseness in your muting will turn the scooped mids to mud.

Get this tone on your amp

These settings are for a Positive Grid Spark 40. ToneAdapt matches any song to whatever amp, guitar and pedals you own — first match is free.

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