Be Chris Wolstenholme...
Just kidding
In all seriousness, his tone comes from his hands and an incredibly complex and expensive rig. To answer your other questions, he uses Electro Harmonix black russian muffs to get alot most of his overdriven sound, along with what is called a Human Gear animato(which is VERY rare) for his "clean" tone.
The human Gear Animato is nothing close to "clean". It is a very Nasal sounding distortion, which is too extreme to be used without a clean blend, as it drops all the low end.
He also uses an Akai Deep impact, which is similar to a synth pedal. The only Boss pedals that I know of him using are the OC-2 (octave) and the ODB-3 (overdrive on earlier work, since been replaced by the animato). The two Big Muffs are in the same signal chain and are layered on top of one another to create a more aggressive overdriven sound.
The Akai SB-1 (Deep Impact) is a synth pedal. It uses 9 presets to allow storing sounds. He uses the pedal in Time Is Running Out, Apocalypse Please, I Belong To You, Space Dementia and others.
The Boss ODB-3 has not been used since the first album, and honestly is not really needed.
The two big muffs were only used ONCE when recording "Absolution" for "Ruled By Secrecy". You DO NOT NEED TWO BIG MUFF PEDALS!!!!
My suggestions for getting a similar sound are the following.
Chris plays with a light touch, which increases stamina for songs like Hysteria and New Born, and also contributes to his overall sound. Black Russian Big Muffs are becoming increasingly rare, but are still out there if you look. If you cant find one, a modern Bass Big Muff pi can be used as a substitute.
The Bass Big Muff will not work as a substitute.
For the Animato, a Boss odb-3 or a Behringer BOD-100 set for mild overdrive.
The Animato settings he uses are anything but "mild". The closest thing I have heard to the Animato are an old Rat, and even then it is missing the character of the Animato.
In place of the Deep impact, I use a Digitech bass synth wah which, while not a master of any of the sounds it produces, gets the job done.
He also uses the Digitech BSW in his rig. This pedal is not going to copy any of the Deep Impact tones honestly.
If you have the money you can also try an EHX Enigma: Qballs for the synth sounds The OC-2 is easily acquirable, so no problems there.
Get an OC-2 or an EHX Octave Multiplexor. The Enigma: Qballs will cop the Q-Tron tones he has, but not the synth tones.
