What's the tone you chase?
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Graffiti62
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To me, the best tones are all about the classics...
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwjN1i77eQ4[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2-W20MBAM4[/youtube]
Musically, the sound that has always been kind of a personal nirvana for me was Rory Gallagher's sound--an early 60s Strat, an AC-30 (later a Fender Bassman or Marshall combo amp) set really clean, and a treble booster to dial in the tone. From doing research, the pickups that really crack the sound from the guitar end are DiMarzio's new Area '61 pickups, which, aside from hitting that early sixties single-coil tone, also will cancel the hum, so they can be cranked without buzz. Also, I've found a company out of the UK that had received the blessing from Rory's brother Donol to research Rory's original Hawk Booster box and recreate it:
http://www.flynnamps.co.uk/hawk.html
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51uRpErmorI[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwjN1i77eQ4[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2-W20MBAM4[/youtube]
Musically, the sound that has always been kind of a personal nirvana for me was Rory Gallagher's sound--an early 60s Strat, an AC-30 (later a Fender Bassman or Marshall combo amp) set really clean, and a treble booster to dial in the tone. From doing research, the pickups that really crack the sound from the guitar end are DiMarzio's new Area '61 pickups, which, aside from hitting that early sixties single-coil tone, also will cancel the hum, so they can be cranked without buzz. Also, I've found a company out of the UK that had received the blessing from Rory's brother Donol to research Rory's original Hawk Booster box and recreate it:
http://www.flynnamps.co.uk/hawk.html
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51uRpErmorI[/youtube]
jay4321
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That first GN'R record sounded like it was recorded in a garage, but everything was perfect. Seems like most of the records I like are like that, and most of the guitar sounds too.
Seems like the more you start dicking with the way a guitar sounds and put things in the chain, the worse it gets. Guitars sound pretty good naturally.
Seems like the more you start dicking with the way a guitar sounds and put things in the chain, the worse it gets. Guitars sound pretty good naturally.
Graffiti62
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jay4321 said:
I agree. I can see someone using like a booster or an overdrive pedal to achieve their sound, in addition to maybe some delay, or reverb/tremolo from your amp, but to me, pedals should be kind of fun rather than having a dozen of them to achieve your tone for a whole gig. I can understand adding in something like a phase pedal or a chorus pedal for a song or two, but when you have to run at least three pedals at once to get your tone, and you're never fully satisfied with it, it may be time to consider maybe another amp, or modifications to your guitar, like a change in pickups. Effects should be fun, like having a wah-wah or a talkbox or octave drop or something along the lines like that--something to keep their attention at a gig.
iamdavidmorris
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My theory is that if you're doing something guitar driven, it shouldn't take a lot of effects, but if you're creating ambiance in the context of a band, it's sometimes helpful to throw in a bunch of effects.
CrackedPepper
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[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONl9zBTCU-I&feature=fvwrel[/youtube]
I think he uses a Whammy Pedal but I can't figure out how he does it.
I think he uses a Whammy Pedal but I can't figure out how he does it.
S
swarfrat
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maybe it was because I'd just heard a bazillion youtube covers of Sweet Child of Mine while looking at amp demos, but .. I recently heard the original and I was kinda surprised by just how moderate the gain really is. I make it a practice to find my tone, then back the gain off where I 'think' it ought to be by 1 or 2, and it usually works quite well.
Superlizard
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ubershallman said:
True.
Then you look at all the crap that's out there for purchase and see the fancy bells & whistles rigs these
tone-chasing dudes are using; all the crap in their signal chains and all the mondo gain and
compression, and it's no wonder they're *still* chasing...
Superlizard
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WTFisaUberschall? (Aussie Pete) said:
So did I for a long time, until I stumbled upon that factoid recently - Goldtop LP with P90 neck for that one solo.
To play guitar in a bar band that covers the pantheon, there are three tones that go a long way.
1) The Strat neck pickup into a relatively clean tube head and good clean speakers, non-buzzy - call it the "Little Wing" tone, SRV and Eric Johnson learned it there anyway. It has to be a single coil Strat PU in the neck, tapped humbuckers won't do it - but you can put a Strat pickup into a tele... :evil4:
2) A good strong bridge humbucker, driving some power tubes more than preamp tubes, and again into clean hi-fi speakers like JBL, Altec Lansing, Black Widows etc. - call it the Duane Allman/early Santana tone;
3) a tone with more preamp drive, into Celestion 30's (or Webers), blatty and nasty, Stones/AC/DC.
It was way back in the '80s when Steve Morse and Eric Johnson began touring with two amps on all the time, a roaring Marshall into Celestions for midrange overdrive and a Fender(ish) amp into JBLs to pick up cleaner highs and lows. It's really hard to get that third, nasty tone without the exploding speakers, but you can approximate at least the EQ at with something like a Fulltone Fulldrive 2, tube screamer(ish) or something similar, a box that boosts midrange and cuts bass.
Of the three tones, this last one is least useful to me musically, and I don't want to carry two amps, so I just depend on a pedal. The one thing you can't do, in my experience, is get a loud clean tone out of a cheap rock 'n' roll speaker like the Celestion 30's, Vegas or Webers. Eminence makes both dirty and clean speakers, even Celestion makes some "60s" and "75s" that can take some juice.
ALL of these tones have some turned-down analogue... the problem with really good hi-fi speakers is that they're rated at 350 watts and a dinky little 18 watt amp into a JBL D120 will barely flap it. God, the troubles we have....
1) The Strat neck pickup into a relatively clean tube head and good clean speakers, non-buzzy - call it the "Little Wing" tone, SRV and Eric Johnson learned it there anyway. It has to be a single coil Strat PU in the neck, tapped humbuckers won't do it - but you can put a Strat pickup into a tele... :evil4:
2) A good strong bridge humbucker, driving some power tubes more than preamp tubes, and again into clean hi-fi speakers like JBL, Altec Lansing, Black Widows etc. - call it the Duane Allman/early Santana tone;
3) a tone with more preamp drive, into Celestion 30's (or Webers), blatty and nasty, Stones/AC/DC.
It was way back in the '80s when Steve Morse and Eric Johnson began touring with two amps on all the time, a roaring Marshall into Celestions for midrange overdrive and a Fender(ish) amp into JBLs to pick up cleaner highs and lows. It's really hard to get that third, nasty tone without the exploding speakers, but you can approximate at least the EQ at with something like a Fulltone Fulldrive 2, tube screamer(ish) or something similar, a box that boosts midrange and cuts bass.
Of the three tones, this last one is least useful to me musically, and I don't want to carry two amps, so I just depend on a pedal. The one thing you can't do, in my experience, is get a loud clean tone out of a cheap rock 'n' roll speaker like the Celestion 30's, Vegas or Webers. Eminence makes both dirty and clean speakers, even Celestion makes some "60s" and "75s" that can take some juice.
ALL of these tones have some turned-down analogue... the problem with really good hi-fi speakers is that they're rated at 350 watts and a dinky little 18 watt amp into a JBL D120 will barely flap it. God, the troubles we have....
S
swarfrat
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I wouldn't call AC/DC either blatty or mostly preamp based. It's a low gain non master volume Marshall fer cryin out loud. Even though the band works quite well for me, when I try listening to the guitar in isolation I find it a bit harsh, but what I'm hearing is suggestive of close micing on center. Once you throw out a word like 'blatty' you can just stop as its clear that it's not a tone you care for. Eons ago on uselessnet I remember hearing someone say "If you don't LIKE country, then might I suggest that you don't PLAY it all that well either?" Same deal. I won't comment on achieving the Anthrax tones in the earlier video simply because it's precisely the high gain thrash that I'm trying to avoid, feeling it actually robs impact rather than adds it. How hard you rock has very little to do with the position of any of your knobs in isolation. You can get the same level of headbanging gut level impact from a properly articulated and recorded acoustic. (Provided you have the bass player and drummer in similar lock step)
jay4321
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swarfrat said:
The better Anthrax sounds, more specifically Scott Ian's rhythm sound in it's prime (which I'd consider to be from 87-93) wasn't really all that high gain for it's genre. Most everything else was, and they sounded pretty dry and brittle. Ian's sound in isolation would sound a little weaker, but it came off pretty heavy with the low end and drums coming from their rhythm section. By itself it's typically just a mahogany Jackson with a JB in the bridge into an 800, not quite maxed out.
I find that when you back it off a little bit from that you can do a lot of grungy things and sound good, but it's not quite tight enough for Anthrax type stuff. There's a minimum of gain I think you can get away with before it doesn't work. There's a sweet spot in there where you can get that powerful heavy sound in the mix (where it counts), a good attack, and also hear individual notes in chords. He did a pretty good job of getting there. Part of it too was doubling and tripling his tracks which works well.
He's one of the best studies for why you don't need to overdo the gear. There's one album where they went back and re-recorded a bunch of songs with his newer sounds, and his tone was awful. Just muddy and plastic.
Every once in a while, I have to dig out Led Zepp 1-4, Exile on Main Street, Allman Br. Live at the Fillmore, and every time I'm impressed with just how clean most of the different tracks are - Zepp especially. If you've ever hear the Guitar Center Rendition of Jimmy Page's "Stairway to Heaven" solo, it's usually through a near-death amp cranked to the top - but Jimmy tricked everyone, the actual amount of drive on that solo would be too tame for a country song, nowadays.
It's just that the rest of the parts were so clean, the solo sounded killer. It's almost like drawing, where you can make something appear lighter than the paper just by making every other part darker. Hendrix's "Cry of Love" album was the same, 2/3 of the parts sound like a Twin Reverb on "3", but it makes the rest louder. Keith Richards loved the dry, scratchy sound on "Exile on Main Street"... No tone exists in isolation.
It's just that the rest of the parts were so clean, the solo sounded killer. It's almost like drawing, where you can make something appear lighter than the paper just by making every other part darker. Hendrix's "Cry of Love" album was the same, 2/3 of the parts sound like a Twin Reverb on "3", but it makes the rest louder. Keith Richards loved the dry, scratchy sound on "Exile on Main Street"... No tone exists in isolation.
I dearly love Robert Fripp's 70's guitar sound and the utterly ridiculous sustain he gets. The first thought on casual listen is often "yeah, heavy fuzz man" - but when you listen carefully it's actually pretty moderate, and he's constantly adjusting the gain with pick attack and volume pedal. The real source of the sustain comes from playing just a few metres away from a 100W Hiwatt fullstack at full, spanking clean blast and a high degree of mastery of the situation.
For example @ 5:40 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8zbPRvVIwA
For example @ 5:40 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8zbPRvVIwA
Superlizard
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Smoinkly Bam-Orbfritz said:
Denied!
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