Joe Perry

• Les Paul bridge pickup for the main Aerosmith crunch — the warm humbucker into a driven Marshall is the entire recipe
• The Marshall runs at medium-to-high gain, not maximum — Perry's sound has headroom that allows pick dynamics to change the amount of breakup
• "Walk This Way" is all in the right hand — the choppy, funky right-hand strumming is more important than the notes themselves
• Slides are a major component of his lead work — use a glass slide on the ring finger over the standard Eb or open G tuning
• The tone is never trebly or bright — cut the treble to 5-6 and let the midrange do the work. A bright tone sounds nothing like Aerosmith
• Bending is expressive rather than precise — Perry bends to pitch but the time taken to reach pitch varies, creating a loose, blues-influenced feel
• Volume knob at 10 at all times for Aerosmith tones — the dynamics come from pick attack, not volume control
• Open G tuning appears in some slide parts — "Milk Cow Blues" and similar tracks use the open G approach from Keith Richards / slide blues tradition
• The basic I-IV-V blues structure underlies almost all of Perry's compositional approach — Aerosmith is a blues band dressed in hard rock clothes

Joe Perry of Aerosmith is the archetype of American hard rock guitar — bluesy feel over technical ability, a thick Les Paul into a cranked Marshall, and the ability to make a two-bar riff memorable for fifty years.