Four ways into a cranked, feral tone that still lets Rose sleep. Ordered from purest to filthiest.
The purity rule
At low Power Scaling the amp has less raw voltage to build harmonic complexity on its own — every extra buffer, every unnecessary gain stage between guitar and input jack eats into that thin headroom and flattens the wild-ness you're chasing. One pedal at a time, true bypass, nothing else touching the signal.
The loop (Mobius / TimeLine / BigSky) sits after the preamp, so it's free — reverb and delay back there don't compromise front-end purity. Modulation is the one thing to leave off entirely for these tones: it smears the pick-attack character that's doing the "wild" work.
01 Bare Wire
02 Single Stone
03 Cracked Glass
04 Feral Whisper
Bare Wire
Zero pedals
Guitar straight into the amp. Nothing to hide behind — the Badger's own sag and your pick hand generate everything. This is the truest test of whether the amp settings themselves are actually wild, and it's the setting to woodshed dynamics on before you add colour.
Signal path
GUITAR
BADGER 18 MK2
CAB
Power
3
Drive
4.5
Gain
7.5
Bass
3
Mid
7
Treble
5.5
Notes
Drive sits a full 1.5 above Power — deliberately unbalanced, since with nothing pushing the front end the amp has to generate all the sag itself. MOSFET Boost: off for rhythm, foot-switched on for anything that needs to snarl. Guitar volume is doing the real work here — sit at 7 for comping, all the way up for the wild stuff. This is the Henderson end of the spectrum: touch-sensitive, articulate, breaking up right at the edge of your pick attack rather than sitting in constant distortion.
Signal purity
Single Stone
One pedal · SD9
The SD9 doesn't add its own character so much as it shoves the Badger's front end harder than your hands alone can at this volume — a push, not a distortion box. Amp Gain comes down to compensate, so you're trading preamp saturation for pedal push without stacking two gain sources.
Signal path
GUITAR
SD9
BADGER 18 MK2
CAB
Power
2.5
Drive
3.5
Gain
5.5
Bass
3
Mid
6.5
Treble
5
SD9 — the only stage
Set as an always-on push, not a stompable distortion. Keep it low and let it disappear into the amp's own breakup.
Drive: 9 o'clock · Tone: 12 o'clock · Level: unity (matched to bypass, not louder)
Notes
This is your everyday quiet-hours tone — tighter and more defined than Bare Wire, with a bit more front-end shove for sustain on bends. Still fully dynamic off the guitar volume knob. Good middle ground between Henderson clarity and something a bit more sung-out.
Signal purity
Cracked Glass
One pedal · Butter Machine
Swap the SD9's mid-push for the Butter Machine's darker, more harmonically dense character. This is the one that leans toward Landau — thicker, more compressed, more "amp that's been on all night" than SD9's tighter poke.
Signal path
GUITAR
BUTTER MACHINE
BADGER 18 MK2
CAB
Power
2.5
Drive
3.5
Gain
5
Bass
2.5
Mid
7
Treble
5.5
Butter Machine — the only stage
Runs darker and more compressed than SD9 — pull Bass back an extra half-step on the amp to compensate, or it gets thick fast.
Gain: 10 o'clock · Tone: slightly dark of noon · Level: unity
Notes
Mid pushed to 7 to stop the extra low-mid density from Butter Machine + scaled-down Badger turning to mud. This is the setting for singing sustain and long bends — less percussive than Single Stone, more "vocal."
Signal purity
Feral Whisper
One pedal · Thornicus Fuzz
The wildest of the four, and the one that needs the amp cleaned up to make room for it — Thornicus is doing the chaos, the Badger just needs to get out of the way and let it breathe. This is your Hendrix-at-3am setting.
Signal path
GUITAR
THORNICUS FUZZ
BADGER 18 MK2
CAB
Power
2
Drive
3
Gain
4.5
Bass
2.5
Mid
6
Treble
6
Thornicus Fuzz — the only stage
Moderate, not maxed — full send at this Power Scaling turns to farty mush fast. Octave blend to taste, but keep it subtle for note definition at low volume.
Gain: 11 o'clock · Octave blend: light · Level: unity or a touch under
Notes
Note that Drive and Gain both come down from the other presets — the fuzz supplies the harmonic chaos, the amp just needs to stay out of its way rather than adding a second layer of saturation on top. Guitar volume rolled back even slightly cleans this up dramatically; it's the most touch-reactive of the four.
Signal purity
Keep it pure — what stays in, what stays out
Keep
One drive/fuzz stage, true bypass, unity level. The effects loop for reverb/delay only — it's post-preamp so it costs you nothing tonally. MOSFET boost via footswitch for lead moments — it's built into the amp, not an extra stage.
Cut
CTC Venus and AC+ for these tones — save the stacked-drive thing for full-volume sessions. Mobius modulation off entirely; it smears the pick attack the whole exercise depends on. Dual Fusion stays parked unless you're specifically reaching for its voice on a lead line.
Why Drive sits above Power
Suhr's own rule of thumb is to keep Drive within two of Power for a balanced, "well-behaved" tone. Every setting above breaks that rule on purpose — Drive sitting above Power is what pushes the power section into that squashed, slightly-too-much breakup instead of a tidy scaled-down clean. That imbalance is the wild-at-low-volume trick the Power Scaling circuit is built for. If any preset above feels too polite, that's the first knob to nudge.