Hello,
One thing I wish Justin did was to share the amp settings for the songs and perhaps the guitar settings.
I’m learning Knocking on heavens door and it’s going well but I can’t get my Custom Slash Les Paul to sound like Justin or Slash. I have a Boss Katana MKII. I don’t know what settings I need for it to sound properly
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Welcome to the forum Michael
There is a very simple reason why amp setting are not shared. It wouldn’t do you any good unless you had the exact guitar and and peddles as Justin.
Boss Katana have patches for Tone studio you can buy to make you Katana sound close to what Slash is playing.
Maybe this will help
Hi Michael,
Which version? GnR or Bob Dylan? Dylan is acoustic, and I prefer the GnR one myself, so I’ll answer for that one. 
I’m generally dissatisfied with the common response that “you don’t have the same stuff, so we omit the settings since it won’t matter”.
It certainly does help to know the settings used. As a new player, I wouldn’t identify a sound as being from a specific amp, pedal, etc. so a starting point is what I would hope to get.
For your question, there are two guitar parts, one is clean and the other dirty. Knowing that Slash uses a Les Paul with a Marshall should at least get you close. You might consider some reverb. Set the tone controls to about mid, gain very low for clean, just above mid for dirty. You can nudge the sound from there, and this is what I would hope to get in a lesson.
You can search online as well. There is a site that lists settings, but I recommend you take these as a rough starting point because the statement that you don’t have the same gear and fingers does have merit. That link is quirky, so the search is what I chose there. what you want should come up as top search result.
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You’ll never sound exactly like anyone else. Do your own thing, create your own version.
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Plenty of sites on the web for ballpark amp settings for songs. Experiment from there.
I will add another perspective: it’s really worth understanding how your amp works so you can work out how to dial in tones on your own.
In my view, it’s a fairly fundamental part of electric guitar playing.
It’s a little similar to transcription (although not as important): you should be able to listen to a song and work out how to approximately dial in a similar tone using your gear.
It’s a skill, like any other, which needs to be worked on, but it’s important and worthwhile.
Slash’s baseline tone is not complex and should be fairly easy to approximate if you understand the basics of how to use an amp. With more complex tones which have a lot of effects, you may need to do more research into how they achieved that sound.
Also, bear in mind that the original record has been recorded, mixed, and tweaked by an Engineer. Don’t expect to replicate that exactly, especially if you are playing in your room without a backing track.
Cheers,
Keith
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Find your tone and then start knock-knockin’.
Totally agree with that.
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I believe the G&R song is recorded with the tuning a half step down…typical of Slash.
D# G# C# F# A# D# (E-flat, A-flat, D-Flat, G-flat, B-flat, E-flat)
And, yeah…unless you have the Marshall Silver Jubilee cranked up all the way, mic’d and in a sound Box you won’t get anywhere near the sound.
Try a Wah Pedal half cocked through a low-wattage amp turned all the way up. Forget the Tone controls on the amp…try to by-pass those, or use an amp without any treble-mid-bass controls.
Having just had a quick listen, the intro is fairly clean with a fair amount of reverb, possibly verging into short delay territory.
Then the reverb/delay switches out and is replace with more a (over)drive sound, although that could be achieved by simply killing the reverb, and using a more dynamic drive (aka one where the harder you hit the strings, the more driven it becomes - all drives do this to some extent, but some more than others).
However, before playing with the effects too much, experiment with a nice clean amp tone.
Try both pickups. Play with the tone. Play with guitar and amp volumes (generally low volume on the guitar and high volume on the amp will soften/muffle the tone, whereas high guitar volume and low amp volume will sharpen/harshen the tone).
Try the extremes, and learn how the basic guitar/amp adjustments effect the basic tone.
Once you can get a suitable basic tone, then start experimenting with other effects.