I'm a big fan of Satch too but I admit that the the tone on 'Surfing With The Alien' was pretty horrible, ground breaking for the time but dated and overly 80's when you compare to what technology can produce today. The one thing about Satch is that his tones have improved immensly over the past few albums starting with 'The Extremist' - my favourite selection can be found on 'Strange Beautiful Music'. The earlier stuff was a combo of the Boss distortion pedal and overdrive pedal, throw in a little too much chorus and the odd bit of reverb and there you have it. The newer stuff is a different kettle of fish all together, generated by a rig the size of a large freezer that costs about the same as the GDP of a small country.