Amps, Settings, Tone & Other Stuff

[László]

I third it - this is a great behind the scenes doc. And I love the in-studio stuff - always have.

Sticking w/the Foos, there's another doc about them recording Wasting Light and Grohl buying the desk - shows the installation and everything. There's a history, too. The coolest moment, at least for me, was Grohl recording a solo, and his daughter comes in and grabs his arm while he's playing, and he doesn't miss a note. She said, "You said we could go swimming!!!" And he said, "I have to finish this first." Still playing, as I remember it. Just a gorgeous moment.

There are tons of these things that I just love. Metallica's "Year And A Half In The Life Of", Queen's "Magic Years". And so on. The Classic Album series is a gold mine to me.

If you like studio movies, there's the 30 Seconds to Mars movie, Artifact, that my son Jamie (on the right on the sofa watching the movie) was both in, and served as music supervisor for...I won't say more, but it's a good movie...and did win some awards.

Yeah, I know, I'm braggin' on my son again, but how many dads can say their kid was both in a movie and was music supervisor for it? And then played with the band that opened the US leg of the tour for the album they made during the making of the movie, and afterward toured with the band itself on the European leg of the tour?

Seems fairly special to me...

 

[alantig]

Another one to check out - thanks, Les!

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Edit: Then again, I don't think he gets his guitar tone from the console. Whether one likes, or dislikes (like Serg) the tone is not important. But the board doesn't have much to do with it, you can only do so much with EQ and a mic preamp.

Yeah, kind of hard to argue with that, but if we're talking recorded tones that someone is citing as reference, it's hard to remove its influence.

 

[Blues Trucker]

For the most part I dont worry to much about my tone. As the british would put it, I mostly just wank around on my guitar anyway. I would love to be a player, but if Im honest with myself, I probably never will be and I started to old.
But I have recorded myself on my iphone and when I played it back I was surprised, my tone was not that bad.
I think that might be how you find out. I dont think what you hear while playing is actually what you sound like.

 

[László]

when I played it back I was surprised, my tone was not that bad.
I think that might be how you find out. I dont think what you hear while playing is actually what you sound like.

That's a really interesting and valid point! Doing a little recording is a great way to hear not only your tone, but your playing.

 

[aristotle]

As is often the case for me, I'm not even sure what is meant by the expression "difficult to dial in". I get that an amp might not be delivering what you as an individual may want. But are people really saying that they are getting confused by trying out various knob settings?

My MDT is one of my favorite amps. For what I'm looking for though, I need to run the volume (gain) control near 2, with the master either dimed, or backed off to whatever the gig can stand. Looks a little weird, but I wouldn't describe that as "hard" to turn the volume knob down. It's pretty obvious when I plug in with the volume at 5 that the amp won't have the clean headroom that I need, so you just run it down until it does. And how hard is it to run the eq through their ranges to see what you like best?

I've yet to run into the amp where it sounds great with the mids at, say, 1:00, but garbage with the mids at 2:00, so it's not like you have to get it exact anyway.

I'm guessing that what people really mean by "hard to dial in" is that the amp doesn't produce the tones that they want, regardless of the dial settings.

 

[GTinSpanishFort]

Amen brother! I went to two guitar shops saturday and this is what I found. The first store had zero Paul reed smith, not even an SE anywhere. The majority of guitars I picked up were made in PRC(people's republic of chi@#, if you don't know what I mean). This store is very popular but, most everything in there is pure junk IMHO. The second store had some SE's and had a used original sewell head. I played it for a good long while through lots of guitars( tried an EVH red stripe signature and hated it, ditto for sterling ernie ball axis, one - a fender american standard strat with shawbucker was great, of course SE's were great). That amp sounded great. It had a lot of gain and leads just sounded awesome. My local area used to have a store with paul reed smiths and boutique amps and pedals,guitars. I miss that so much, now there is nowhere close by to try any good guitars!! Woe is me.

 

[László]

I'm guessing that what people really mean by "hard to dial in" is that the amp doesn't produce the tones that they want, regardless of the dial settings.

Very perceptive observation, IMHO.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

...I'm not even sure what is meant by the expression "difficult to dial in".

I don't know about anyone else, but when I say I'm finding it hard to dial an amp in, I mean ->_ME_<- find it hard, me no know how dial in amp, me not blame amp.
You should be hearing this in Cookie Monster's voice.

I may want to pick your brain about the MDT -- any recommendations on the best setting to get the most headroom for clean tones?

 

[Screamingdaisy]

So it's subjective, it's personal, it's everyone's individual ears. And yet, many of us find certain recordings stellar examples of what makes up good tone, and we can often agree on how good they sound. Which leads me to wonder, if they're hearing the same thing I'm hearing on those recordings, how can they possibly want to dial in their amps to sound like One Billion Buzzing Bees?

Sometimes it's less about the sound of the amp and more about how it reacts to your playing.

In an effort to be more unique I spent a number of years trying to mix modern tastes with old school tones, I switched amps and swapped to PAFs while the results were cool I felt I was constantly fighting the amplifier. I generally had a sound that was thick and sludgy, but lacked the punch and percussiveness of a modern high gain amplifier.

What sealed the deal was hearing a recording of me playing the same song a few years apart... The first was through a Dual Rectifier and the latter was through an Orange OD-120. I sounded more or less the same in both. Then in dawned on me how effortless it was for me to sound like me through a Recto and how much time and money I spent trying to get the OR-120 to produce the same sound. I traded for a Recto a week later and haven't regretted it once.

Hendrix and Duane sound great for their respective era, but I'm neither Hendrix nor Duane and their tones aren't my holy grail.

 

[Boogie]

Hendrix and Duane sound great for their respective era, but I'm neither Hendrix nor Duane and their tones aren't my holy grail.

I get that, completely. It's also become apparent, to me, that those pioneers set a foundation for me to hone my own tonal identity. Not necessarily their iconic tone, either, but the gear they used has been refined so many times and ways over the years that I can use pedals and other gear choice to be me. I play nothing like those guys and sound nothing like them either, but I wouldn't be where I am today without their contribution. And that's coming from the Boogie camp, too.

 

[László]

Sometimes it's less about the sound of the amp and more about how it reacts to your playing.

In an effort to be more unique I spent a number of years trying to mix modern tastes with old school tones, I switched amps and swapped to PAFs while the results were cool I felt I was constantly fighting the amplifier. I generally had a sound that was thick and sludgy, but lacked the punch and percussiveness of a modern high gain amplifier.

What sealed the deal was hearing a recording of me playing the same song a few years apart... The first was through a Dual Rectifier and the latter was through an Orange OD-120. I sounded more or less the same in both. Then in dawned on me how effortless it was for me to sound like me through a Recto and how much time and money I spent trying to get the OR-120 to produce the same sound. I traded for a Recto a week later and haven't regretted it once.

Hendrix and Duane sound great for their respective era, but I'm neither Hendrix nor Duane and their tones aren't my holy grail.

Well, I totally agree with this, and remember, I was only using Hendrix and Duane as possible examples of tones two people could agree might be good ones. But like Boogie, I think we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and those two guys certainly qualify in my book.

Listening back to old recordings can be, as you say, very instructive!

In fact, I went all PRS because maybe 12 years or so ago, I decided to listen to the guitar playing on my recordings that I was most proud of, and while I sounded like me on them all, the best-playing me was on the recordings I made with the PRSes I had at the time.

Going all PRS was a no-brainer once I heard what was working so well.

The same thing happened with the HXDA. I find it so easy to get a good overdriven solo tone that I really don't want to screw around with anything else. I use the DG30 and the Mesa for other kinds of things I do, however.

No, I don't sound like Duane Allman or Hendrix, nor do I want to, but I sure like playing through their amps!

 

[Blues Trucker]

Sometimes it's less about the sound of the amp and more about how it reacts to your playing.

In an effort to be more unique I spent a number of years trying to mix modern tastes with old school tones, I switched amps and swapped to PAFs while the results were cool I felt I was constantly fighting the amplifier. I generally had a sound that was thick and sludgy, but lacked the punch and percussiveness of a modern high gain amplifier.

What sealed the deal was hearing a recording of me playing the same song a few years apart... The first was through a Dual Rectifier and the latter was through an Orange OD-120. I sounded more or less the same in both. Then in dawned on me how effortless it was for me to sound like me through a Recto and how much time and money I spent trying to get the OR-120 to produce the same sound. I traded for a Recto a week later and haven't regretted it once.

Hendrix and Duane sound great for their respective era, but I'm neither Hendrix nor Duane and their tones aren't my holy grail.

Brilliant.

 

[mcbprs]

I found this a few years ago and it seems to work with most amps I have come across, the aim (as far as I can see) is to detect the points where an amps responsiveness changes, this then make playing changes (volume touch etc) more responsive making expressive playing easier, each amp (I have found) has a few points at which things "happen" and depending which you pick decides the range of sounds you can get without messing with the amp, hope you find it useful ;-)


I came across the following on another forum and found it to be very interesting. If you're familiar with Steve Kimock, then you know he's pretty serious about amps and tone. He posted this a while back. His focus here is on a Dumble, but it seems like the technique should be easily generalized.

Myself, I use a Tech21 Trademark 60. Nothing glowing inside there, so I don't know if this procedure would work for me, but I thought it might be of interest to you tube-cooking tone hounds out there. If you try this, or have in the past, I'd love to hear about your experience.

hoby

==============

OK, how to dial up a Dumble? I do it the same way I dial up ANY amp, which begins by listening to just the amp, not the guitar through the amp.

1. Plug in your guitar, turn the guitar volume off.

2. Turn the amp control off, everything all the way down.

3. Get right down next to the speaker.

4. Open up your post effect master 50-75%. Listen to the amp blow through the speaker, anything?

5. Open up the front master a little bit, listen to the blow.

6. Open up the gain to 1

7. Open up the tone controls to 2 or 3

8. OK, now you should hear something. Hissshhhhpopshhh etc.

9. Rotate the input volume. Listen, you'll hear when the control starts to respond. At different places around the rotation of the pot, you'll hear the amp come on.

Most volume controls exhibit similar behavior, but the exact place they start to become active varies with the individual pot, taper, value, and circuit.

The first sweet spot is where the amp goes from nothing at all happening, to a little blow that normally starts at a pretty high frequency and then begins to pick up a little volume and low end. Take note of that orientation of the pot and remind yourself that that setting is a threshold setting, on one side one behavior, on the other side a different behavior. With whatever voltage you get from the output of your guitar, backing off on your right hand touch or digging in should give you a little change in the way the amp responds. See where this is going? We're looking for settings that exhibit this threshold or touch-sensitive behavior. That first mark on your input volume is going to be almost ridiculously low, but don't discount it yet. If something is happening there, and the amp is telling you that it is, you can exploit it in combination with the other controls.

So anyway, you get a mark around 1 or 2, or between 8 and 9 o'clock chicken head time if that's your knob. Keep going. You should hear another change in the blow coming through the speaker at around 10 o'clock chicken head. This is a real sweet spot on the Dumble, and in a very narrow range around this spot are the only good overdrive tones when you stack the gain. Much past that is just fuzz box.

Keep going!

Up around 1 or 2 o'clock will be another location on the pot where if you sweep back and forth a little you will hear the characteristic oooh-waaa of one behavior of the amp above the spot and another below. This is the territory I do the majority of me clean playing in. I can back off with my right hand and be using a wonderful clean sound or dig in and get the amp to sing, not high gain mind you, but two different sounds.

Keep going!

Past 3 o'clock on my amp the sound doesn't change much but does pick up in volume. Some amps or maybe preamp tubes will actually go into oscillation at this point, and the volume will go down, so pay attention when you get to the higher gain stuff, to check to make sure the control is doing what you think it should.

Now pick anyone of these "threshold" locations and go through the same process with the tone controls. Listen carefully for the blow to change as you work each control through its rotation by itself and in combination with the other controls. You might be surprised what you learn.

This approach will let you know when the amp is "doing something". Regardless of tube type or guitar, etc... the amp can't hide from this kind of scrutiny, and it can't lie to you either, so do it, and center your efforts in those areas where a little voltage swing from your guitar will move the amp around a little.

OK, that having been said, remember that the controls don't always do what they say they do. Volume adds bass when you turn it up, adds treble when you turn it down, with the bright switch on. Treble adds gain, mids don't work without bass, deep switches lose gain. Check your bass control! For a lot of stuff, you can just turn it off. Whack your low E and advance the bass control to its first threshold and leave it. That should be plenty. For what it's worth, Garcia used NO bass, bass zero on his Fender amps. Pointing to the mid-range control, he told me "That's your bass control". He was right...

 

[László]

I found this a few years ago and it seems to work with most amps I have come across, the aim (as far as I can see) is to detect the points where an amps responsiveness changes, this then make playing changes (volume touch etc) more responsive making expressive playing easier, each amp (I have found) has a few points at which things "happen" and depending which you pick decides the range of sounds you can get without messing with the amp, hope you find it useful ;-)


I came across the following on another forum and found it to be very interesting. If you're familiar with Steve Kimock, then you know he's pretty serious about amps and tone. He posted this a while back. His focus here is on a Dumble, but it seems like the technique should be easily generalized.

Myself, I use a Tech21 Trademark 60. Nothing glowing inside there, so I don't know if this procedure would work for me, but I thought it might be of interest to you tube-cooking tone hounds out there. If you try this, or have in the past, I'd love to hear about your experience.

hoby

==============

OK, how to dial up a Dumble? I do it the same way I dial up ANY amp, which begins by listening to just the amp, not the guitar through the amp.

1. Plug in your guitar, turn the guitar volume off.

2. Turn the amp control off, everything all the way down.

3. Get right down next to the speaker.

4. Open up your post effect master 50-75%. Listen to the amp blow through the speaker, anything?

5. Open up the front master a little bit, listen to the blow.

6. Open up the gain to 1

7. Open up the tone controls to 2 or 3

8. OK, now you should hear something. Hissshhhhpopshhh etc.

9. Rotate the input volume. Listen, you'll hear when the control starts to respond. At different places around the rotation of the pot, you'll hear the amp come on.

Most volume controls exhibit similar behavior, but the exact place they start to become active varies with the individual pot, taper, value, and circuit.

The first sweet spot is where the amp goes from nothing at all happening, to a little blow that normally starts at a pretty high frequency and then begins to pick up a little volume and low end. Take note of that orientation of the pot and remind yourself that that setting is a threshold setting, on one side one behavior, on the other side a different behavior. With whatever voltage you get from the output of your guitar, backing off on your right hand touch or digging in should give you a little change in the way the amp responds. See where this is going? We're looking for settings that exhibit this threshold or touch-sensitive behavior. That first mark on your input volume is going to be almost ridiculously low, but don't discount it yet. If something is happening there, and the amp is telling you that it is, you can exploit it in combination with the other controls.

So anyway, you get a mark around 1 or 2, or between 8 and 9 o'clock chicken head time if that's your knob. Keep going. You should hear another change in the blow coming through the speaker at around 10 o'clock chicken head. This is a real sweet spot on the Dumble, and in a very narrow range around this spot are the only good overdrive tones when you stack the gain. Much past that is just fuzz box.

Keep going!

Up around 1 or 2 o'clock will be another location on the pot where if you sweep back and forth a little you will hear the characteristic oooh-waaa of one behavior of the amp above the spot and another below. This is the territory I do the majority of me clean playing in. I can back off with my right hand and be using a wonderful clean sound or dig in and get the amp to sing, not high gain mind you, but two different sounds.

Keep going!

Past 3 o'clock on my amp the sound doesn't change much but does pick up in volume. Some amps or maybe preamp tubes will actually go into oscillation at this point, and the volume will go down, so pay attention when you get to the higher gain stuff, to check to make sure the control is doing what you think it should.

Now pick anyone of these "threshold" locations and go through the same process with the tone controls. Listen carefully for the blow to change as you work each control through its rotation by itself and in combination with the other controls. You might be surprised what you learn.

This approach will let you know when the amp is "doing something". Regardless of tube type or guitar, etc... the amp can't hide from this kind of scrutiny, and it can't lie to you either, so do it, and center your efforts in those areas where a little voltage swing from your guitar will move the amp around a little.

OK, that having been said, remember that the controls don't always do what they say they do. Volume adds bass when you turn it up, adds treble when you turn it down, with the bright switch on. Treble adds gain, mids don't work without bass, deep switches lose gain. Check your bass control! For a lot of stuff, you can just turn it off. Whack your low E and advance the bass control to its first threshold and leave it. That should be plenty. For what it's worth, Garcia used NO bass, bass zero on his Fender amps. Pointing to the mid-range control, he told me "That's your bass control". He was right...

Someone else posted this, but I actually think it's a dangerous way to set up an amp. Plenty of accidents happen with amps that are turned up. A reverb tank clangs. A Tube goes bad. There's a pop. You forget and accidentally hit the guitar.

Meantime, your ears are down by a speaker where a transient burst like a loud pop or even an accidental hit to the guitar can cause a hearing loss or notch.

So...danger, Will Robinson!

What I do instead, is work each control one by one throughout its full range to see what it does. But do it at a reasonable volume, with my head at a normal distance from the speaker.

Don't take a chance with your hearing. It's not repairable if something goes amiss.

 

[rugerpc]

I have hearing loss from crash cymbals from playing drums for 50 years, 35 without hearing protection.

Listen to Les. Once it's gone, it's too late.

 

[alantig]

Huh?

Worst live performance experience I've had with loudness in the last few years? Of all things - Louis CK. Our seats ended up being right near a speaker, and it was LOUD. I never even considered taking my ear plugs.

Protect yourselves.