Billie Joe Armstrong’s Marshall 1959SLP  “Pete” w/ Bradshaw Gain Mod

When Green Day began recording their third album, Dookie, producer Rob Cavallo brought a Marshall 1959 SLP Plexi head to the studio. Armstrong used this amp for the entire album. He later purchased it and had Martin Golub of Custom Audio Electronics modify it with the “Dookie mod” to increase gain and improve distortion. The amp became known by its nickname, Pete.

Sometime later, Armstrong acquired another Marshall 1959 SLP, nicknamed Meat, which featured an SE Lead mod. These modified Super Lead heads were his main live and studio amplifiers through the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Fan equipment lists also suggest the use of a Fender Bassman, a Hiwatt, and a Leslie speaker cabinet during the Nimrod sessions, but these claims appear only on fan sites and are not supported by verified sources.

What the Mod does

The Dookie Mod, also called the Bradshaw Gain Mod or Cascading Gain Mod, rewires a Marshall 1959 SLP so one preamp channel feeds into the other instead of running separately. This “cascades” the gain stages, giving the signal two rounds of amplification before it hits the power amp.

The result is much more distortion and sustain at lower volume, with a tighter, more aggressive tone than the stock amp.

Saviors

In a 2024 interview with Guitar World, Armstrong said that while recording Saviors, he used his Dookie amp for the first time since Nimrod, suggesting that the Pete-modded Super Lead was still his primary amplifier during the Nimrod sessions.

I have this one amp, a Dookie amp that I haven’t used in a while, since maybe [1997’s] Nimrod. That was the main one. It’s a Marshall 100-watt Super Lead [1959SLP] that was modified by Martin at CAE. I used that a lot for the bigger, crunchier parts of the songs.

Billie Joe Armstrong for guitarworld.com