Ok i don't usually ever ask a question like this but I'm completely fucking baffled with tones that are outside of distortion or pure cleans.

The song Zombie Inc. by In flames is one of the tones that i'm attempting to get. The clean part of the song thats like 3/4th the song has probably one of the most kick ass broken up clean tones i've heard.

How does one get this kind of tone?
Clean channel with added gain? Bridge pick up or neck?
Distortion channel with rolled back volume?

Also everytime i attempt to come up with a non one or the other type of sound (pure distortion or pure clean) the meatiness of the tone is so disqustingly weak. Is other bands the same and I'm just not noticing it because of it being a finished and completed song?

Obviously this question is alot easier asked in person with me describing the tone by playing.

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A lot of studio magic goes into In Flames recordings....Other than that, it's probably a 5150 on the Rhythm channel w/ the pre-gain about half way up. Depends how bright your pickups are, but middle or bridge position should do it.

The song is pretttttty old ha. Not sure if they were using much studio magic back then. I think its on their 2nd cd. (edit: Nm i'm about duumb it slike their 5th cd. Well they have like 12 cds haha)

So you're basically saying i should use the distortion channel and just half the gain?

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Actually i'm playign to the song with my 2nd channel (blue voodoos yellow channel) with the distortion only up maybe just under a third of full volume. It doens't sound bad.

But i dunno i can't help but shake the weak tone sound. Maybe i've just never really played guitar with such little distortion, that maybe this is what it sounds like.

Edit. Found an even better sound. Distortion about... i dunno 3/4th the way up on clean and just pumping up the volume a bit. Putting it on rhythm on my les paul sounds appropriate.

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Well I'm not sure on this Colony record, but I know for sure, the Clayman record after that, there's a lot of studio tricks that have made all the instruments on that sound incredible. Eitherways, it's been recorded in a studio so obviously there's been extensive eqing and mixing, etc. so the sound won't come out perfectly just on an amp. However, I don't think it's even that hard of a tone to attain, just one minor reason for the thick tone, is that they're playing in C standard. It's almost like a blues crunch, but with less gain and a bit less mids and more bass.

For what difference it makes, I know they were using Marshall 8100's and Boss Heavy Metal pedals for the early records. Probably try and keep any warmth out of the tone. In Flames clean tone always sounds slighly sterile to me (not a criticism- I love In Flames-just stating it!)

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EMG's are part of their sterile tone...

True, but do they use EMG's to record the clean/semi-clean parts as well??

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I would think a majority of their stuff is w/ EMG's. Again, I'm not exactly sure as to their gear back in the day, but as of Clayman, most of their guitars were EMG equipped. Regardless, it's not really hard to get that tone, it's just a either a clean channel dirtied up a bit, or a light gain channel cleaned up, that's why there's only a slight breakup. Listen to the end of "Touch of Red"....I think that's the same type of tone you're talking about.