I always say chasing a tone you heard on record or on You Tube is like a dog chasing his tail. Close? Not too difficult, but you'll always think your one ingredient away from 100%
nailing it, and you'll spend more time and money chasing that one ingredient then you do playing! But who knows how it was recorded, what mic, and if it had EQ or compression. The guitar player may have heard 'scarlet red' playing it live and we hear 'cardinal red' later on record.
It's a tube amplifier, for sure, and likely turned up to give some breakup when you dig in. I hear a compressor. Maybe some kind of light overdrive, or it's the amp turned up. Maybe both. I don't hear that single coil twang or buzz so maybe stacked single coils, humbuckers, or it's gated. No, I go back and listen, and it's more like a stacked middle Strat pickup. I have that same set up, and it's close to what I have. There's not a lot of top end, especially on the low note riffs. So it ain't a bridge pickup. The other guitar player's tone is more buzzy and compressed, and it's a Strat. Hey, Tommy is playing P90's. There ya' go. More output to drive a good tube amp cranked up, but more buzz as well. When is it so clean? Maybe a Duncan P90 stack? The Gibson ones were discontinued because nobody liked them. But this is 1988, so what was around then? Put on your Magnum, PI mustache and find out what was available and hot in 1988. Certainly not a Hot Rod Deluxe, and no stacked pickups. Likely gated to minimize the noise. My first guess? P90's into a cranked Deluxe Reverb with a Dan Armstrong
Orange Squeezer. Or at least recorded with compression/gating at the board.
