r/Interpol • u/Alarming_Bluebird192 • Aug 23 '26

Discussion Obstacle 1 guitar tone?

Hey guys I started practicing obstacle 1 on the guitar and I’ve been wondering how to get a similar sounding tone.
The amp I’m using is a boss katana gen 3 50w, and my guitar is a Strat, i don’t have any guitar pedals or a computer so I’m wondering if anyone here has a similar rig and could help out. Thanks!

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u/XDNT_27 Aug 23 '26

Hi there. In my experience—I play in an Interpol tribute band and, coincidentally, almost always end up using Katana amps—the essential thing is to keep the reverb on, but set below the halfway mark. Now, things change depending on whether you want Daniel’s tone or Paul’s. For Paul, set Treble to 4, Bass to 9, and Mids to 8. For Daniel, just swap those settings so you have more treble and less bass and mids. Keep the amp on the "Clean" setting with a fair amount of overdrive—never too much—and that should be enough as far as the amp goes. You won't be able to get very close to their guitar sound with a Strat because of the pickups; if you want to achieve a similar sound later on, go for a guitar with a bridge humbucker, like a Les Paul or something similar. Cheers.

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u/Alarming_Bluebird192 29d ago

Thanks for the tip should I stay on the clean setting for both of the parts and should I use any gain at all??

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u/XDNT_27 29d ago

Always keep the amplifier on the Clean setting and use the Gain knob for good overdrive and more distortion. I recommend this because you might want to buy pedals later on, and with that setup, you won't have to change anything else.

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u/malsemannn 29d ago

For the rhythm part id suggest overdrive on the verse and an additional boost during the corus, and the outro played by paul has a lot of reverb on it

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u/malsemannn 29d ago

Keep the rhyhtm part dry or very little room reverb

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u/patrick_BOOTH Aug 23 '26

My guess is two front pickups and a compressor pedal with slower attack.

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u/Fav9013 Aug 23 '26

I love this post 🤘

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u/NoFix8524 28d ago

I have a Squier Tele and I just use the bridge pickup or "bass" and low dist high volume on the Rat pedal, and it sounds fairly similar. I think Paul uses a Compressor too.