A Forest by The Cure guitar tone is built on a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus, dialed in at gain 2/10, bass 5, mid 5, treble 6, presence 5 (community-researched baseline). Full breakdown below — then adapt every knob to your exact guitar and amp, free.
clean / chorus-soaked distortion. This shapes how hard the amp is pushed and where the EQ sits for the A Forest sound.
What makes the A Forest part tricky
effects setup matters more than playing, steady strumming/arpeggios. GuitarToneAdapt gets the tone right so you can focus on the playing.
Note: A Forest is the dark, hypnotic Cure — a clean Jazzmaster into the JC-120 with a Boss flanger swirling and lots of delay/reverb. Keep it clean and atmospheric, let the flanger and space do the work., The Cure’s guitar sound is built on a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus (sparkling clean with its famous built-in stereo chorus) and a Fender Jazzmaster, mostly clean with chorus, flanger, delay and reverb stacked in that order. Robert Smith famously only sets amp knobs to 0, 5 or 10 — "everything else is mucking about" — so these mid values are an interpretation of that clean, chorus-soaked voice., The magic is in the EFFECTS, not the amp gain: keep it clean (gain low), get a lush stereo chorus going, and add delay/reverb for the dark, dimensional Cure atmosphere. A flanger (Boss BF-2) is the key swirl on the darker, post-punk tracks., Settings are community-researched starting points, not official recall sheets.