Oh sure, there's lots of stuff on the Forum about pickups, tone, and so on, but there's been very little discussion about the impact of the rest of the signal chain that can make a very big difference on your your guitar sounds in the real world. So here goes.
Background: 47 years of playing guitars, 25 years of recording them professionally.
Disclaimer: This is a distillation of what I've learned. It ain't gospel. But some of these ideas might be worth trying to see if they work for you, and that's the reason for this post.
Step One. Getting the signal from your guitar to your pedalboard or amp.
If you're not using a wireless transmitter, that signal only gets there via cables. The inescapable fact about passive pickups (that are on most PRSes) is that they put out a tiny signal with no preampfification, and they are unbuffered. Due to the effects of capacitance and perhaps other more esoteric factors that I don't pretend to understand, the longer the cable, the more high frequency signal is lost. If you're the type that needs verification (I did try this) plug into your amp with a one foot patch cable, and then do the same thing with a ten foot cable. With the patch cable, you're going to hear transformer hum from the pickups being so close, but you are also likely to hear high frequency content you didn't know existed. The point is that a 10 foot cable is going to preserve more high frequency content than a 20 foot cable.
Sure, at first there won't seem like much difference between the 20' and the 10' with the guitar turned all the way up. But turn down the guitar volume. All things being equal, unless you have a magic cable of some kind, you're going to notice more of a difference as you roll off the guitar volume. That "highs roll off an unbalanced cable at 20 feet" rule of thumb that applies to electronic gear doesn't apply to guitar pickups when you roll down the volume. If you want to preserve your high frequency content at the first guitar>pedalboard/amp connection and still be able to roll off the volume a bit, try a shorter cable. It's really simple.
What if you don't like a bright sound? Well, that's all cool, and you have tone controls for that. But a certain amount of midrange and high frequency content also gives bass strings more articulation and that revered "piano-like" low end. It lifts the bottom strings from the mud. This is why it's standard practice for a lot of engineers to boost a bass guitar track at around 700 Hz with an EQ, and why most high end bass guitar rigs have a tweeter.
It's better to have high frequencies available, and be able to tailor them with tone controls and EQ, than it is to never have them in the first place!!
So my Rule #1 is:
Use the shortest cable that you can live with.
A corollary to that rule is: get a good cable. Try a few and see what you like. I love the PRS/VanDamme cables for their nice balance of tone, and they also have terrific flexibility but you may find something else more worthy. Bottom line, I don't care what you use, just get something that gives you tone you like and let's not quibble over what your preference is.
2. Step Two: Buffer Your Signal.
Buffers got a bad rap in the early True Bypass days because the crappy buffers in most pedals cost a few cents and don't sound very good. But what a buffer circuit does is preserve high frequency content. There are some very good buffers on the market that sound fantastic. I can recommend the Fulltone and Suhr buffers, but in any case if the first thing your guitar signal hits on your pedalboard is a high quality buffer, that is a very good thing! Then your signal is preserved as it goes to the true bypass pedals you have, and the true bypass prevents the integrity of that signal from being altered by a crappy non-T.B. buffer. If you have a wah that likes to interact with your pickups, put the buffer right after the wah. Then you can run a long cable from pedalboard to amp without any tone-suck. If your pedalboard is very large, and the distance to your amp is very long (like more than 20-30 feet, it doesn't hurt to have a second high quality buffer at the end of your pedalboard either.
3. Step Three: Set Your Amp Up Right.
This is the case whether or not you're using a multichannel amp, or a single channel amp -- If you crank your guitar volume to 10 to set up your amp, the volume and tone controls on your guitar become pretty useless. And most players who habitually set the guitars on "10" would agree. They say they never use their volume and tone controls. Well, I beg to differ. And so do players like Grissom, Bonamassa, Robben Ford, and many other players who are well known in the guitar world for their good tone.
If you set your amp up to sound the way you want with the guitar volume and tone controls rolled back a bit - I actually go to around 6 - you have the glorious ability to use only the guitar to add volume, tone, color, additional grit, girth, and emotion to your playing, that you can't get another way. Here is a non-technical explanation of why that's true.
Adding gain to the signal hitting the amp not only makes it louder; the way tubes work, it adds a bit of distortion to the signal, like a boost pedal. Only unlike a boost pedal, this is something you can control as you play without adjusting the pedal. Let's examine what happens with a tube getting a hotter signal:
Most guitar amps, whether tube or solid state, are designed to distort, and their base harmonic distortion level is at 10% or so before you even turn up the gain. This would sound horrible with a hi fi rig, but it's what makes tube amps so cool. As you add gain - that's just another word for volume - the distortion rises and the signal becomes fatter on the bottom, and crunchier on the top until you get into serious clipping, at which point the high frequency content starts to roll off.
It is this distortion, and how you control it, that gives a guitar amp color. When you throw away the ability to control the nuance of that color, grit, girth, etc., with your guitar volume, you are limiting what you can do with your guitar's signal.
The same is true for pedals. The good ones react differently to the volume level coming out of the guitar.
If you're using a shorter cable, and a buffer at the beginning of your pedalboard, a world of color and emotion are there to control just by turning the freaking knob on your guitar! Why give that up?
Moreover, if you are setting up your amp to sound good on 6, or 8, or 4, or whatever, you have given yourself room to control the color in two directions with a twist of that volume knob. Want to hear just a touch more top-end grit while playing a song? Just goose your volume a little. Too bright? Use that tone control on your guitar. Suddenly your pickups take on the dimension and color that they were created to deliver.
Different pickups will give you different colors, and that's the beauty of discovering what your guitar and amp combination can do. Sure, it takes a little experimentation. But when I hear some of the tone issues that have come into my studio over the years, even with good players, and the blank expressions when I ask how they set their amp up, it really amazes me that people seem to be ignorant of these techniques.
When you buy a PRS, you have a guitar built with some of the best ability to do these things, EVER. Don't be lazy. Try these suggestions, you might become happier with your tone.
4. Step Four: Do You Know What Your Rig Actually Sounds Like Tonight? Maybe This Should Be Step 1...
If your speaker cones are aimed at your shins, with their high frequencies absorbed by carpeting, in a bad sounding room, and if you are standing close to the amp, I guarantee that you can not hear what is coming out of that speaker cabinet. It's impossible. You're hearing room reflections, with their common mode issues, comb filtering, and other frequency anomalies.
Fact: Guitar speakers are highly directional, especially in the high frequencies. Put a simple SM57 in front of an amp, and move it around in the room and you will discover just how directional the high frequencies of a guitar speaker cone can be. The tone will change dramatically as you do this.
You are not hearing your amp unless that speaker cone is pointing toward your ears. What you're hearing is sound bouncing around the room. However, your audience is hearing more than you are because as the sound radiates out from that cone, the cone widens. So you're probably killing them either with too much low end, or too much high end.
Actually, I don't care about your audience, I just care about what's coming out of that speaker cone, because that's what I have a mic on. And you care about it because you're you, the player. You want to be happy with your tone. I get it.
So here are the rules: Get the cab off the floor so you can hear it. A few inches matter. This has the additional benefit of reducing the room mode called half-space reinforcement that artificially kicks up your bass (actually doubling it in some cases). Get it away from the rear and side walls, to avoid 1/4 or 1/8 space room modes. There's a reason engineers test speakers hanging away from walls and corners, away from the floor and ceiling, even in anechoic chambers!
Aim the cab at your ears as best you can. A slight angle really helps, especially if you can sit down closer to speaker level while you're setting up the amp. Then set up the amp while you can actually hear it. Don't worry, it'll still sound good when you stand up, but now it will also sound good to the microphone, and to the audience. Moreover, if you're recording it, the mic will pick up the tone the way you actually heard it! Everyone will be happier. Especially me, if I happen to walk in on your set, and won't have to cover my ears to avoid your crappy guitar sound!
Rant over. :star:
Background: 47 years of playing guitars, 25 years of recording them professionally.
Disclaimer: This is a distillation of what I've learned. It ain't gospel. But some of these ideas might be worth trying to see if they work for you, and that's the reason for this post.
Step One. Getting the signal from your guitar to your pedalboard or amp.
If you're not using a wireless transmitter, that signal only gets there via cables. The inescapable fact about passive pickups (that are on most PRSes) is that they put out a tiny signal with no preampfification, and they are unbuffered. Due to the effects of capacitance and perhaps other more esoteric factors that I don't pretend to understand, the longer the cable, the more high frequency signal is lost. If you're the type that needs verification (I did try this) plug into your amp with a one foot patch cable, and then do the same thing with a ten foot cable. With the patch cable, you're going to hear transformer hum from the pickups being so close, but you are also likely to hear high frequency content you didn't know existed. The point is that a 10 foot cable is going to preserve more high frequency content than a 20 foot cable.
Sure, at first there won't seem like much difference between the 20' and the 10' with the guitar turned all the way up. But turn down the guitar volume. All things being equal, unless you have a magic cable of some kind, you're going to notice more of a difference as you roll off the guitar volume. That "highs roll off an unbalanced cable at 20 feet" rule of thumb that applies to electronic gear doesn't apply to guitar pickups when you roll down the volume. If you want to preserve your high frequency content at the first guitar>pedalboard/amp connection and still be able to roll off the volume a bit, try a shorter cable. It's really simple.
What if you don't like a bright sound? Well, that's all cool, and you have tone controls for that. But a certain amount of midrange and high frequency content also gives bass strings more articulation and that revered "piano-like" low end. It lifts the bottom strings from the mud. This is why it's standard practice for a lot of engineers to boost a bass guitar track at around 700 Hz with an EQ, and why most high end bass guitar rigs have a tweeter.
It's better to have high frequencies available, and be able to tailor them with tone controls and EQ, than it is to never have them in the first place!!
So my Rule #1 is:
Use the shortest cable that you can live with.
A corollary to that rule is: get a good cable. Try a few and see what you like. I love the PRS/VanDamme cables for their nice balance of tone, and they also have terrific flexibility but you may find something else more worthy. Bottom line, I don't care what you use, just get something that gives you tone you like and let's not quibble over what your preference is.
2. Step Two: Buffer Your Signal.
Buffers got a bad rap in the early True Bypass days because the crappy buffers in most pedals cost a few cents and don't sound very good. But what a buffer circuit does is preserve high frequency content. There are some very good buffers on the market that sound fantastic. I can recommend the Fulltone and Suhr buffers, but in any case if the first thing your guitar signal hits on your pedalboard is a high quality buffer, that is a very good thing! Then your signal is preserved as it goes to the true bypass pedals you have, and the true bypass prevents the integrity of that signal from being altered by a crappy non-T.B. buffer. If you have a wah that likes to interact with your pickups, put the buffer right after the wah. Then you can run a long cable from pedalboard to amp without any tone-suck. If your pedalboard is very large, and the distance to your amp is very long (like more than 20-30 feet, it doesn't hurt to have a second high quality buffer at the end of your pedalboard either.
3. Step Three: Set Your Amp Up Right.
This is the case whether or not you're using a multichannel amp, or a single channel amp -- If you crank your guitar volume to 10 to set up your amp, the volume and tone controls on your guitar become pretty useless. And most players who habitually set the guitars on "10" would agree. They say they never use their volume and tone controls. Well, I beg to differ. And so do players like Grissom, Bonamassa, Robben Ford, and many other players who are well known in the guitar world for their good tone.
If you set your amp up to sound the way you want with the guitar volume and tone controls rolled back a bit - I actually go to around 6 - you have the glorious ability to use only the guitar to add volume, tone, color, additional grit, girth, and emotion to your playing, that you can't get another way. Here is a non-technical explanation of why that's true.
Adding gain to the signal hitting the amp not only makes it louder; the way tubes work, it adds a bit of distortion to the signal, like a boost pedal. Only unlike a boost pedal, this is something you can control as you play without adjusting the pedal. Let's examine what happens with a tube getting a hotter signal:
Most guitar amps, whether tube or solid state, are designed to distort, and their base harmonic distortion level is at 10% or so before you even turn up the gain. This would sound horrible with a hi fi rig, but it's what makes tube amps so cool. As you add gain - that's just another word for volume - the distortion rises and the signal becomes fatter on the bottom, and crunchier on the top until you get into serious clipping, at which point the high frequency content starts to roll off.
It is this distortion, and how you control it, that gives a guitar amp color. When you throw away the ability to control the nuance of that color, grit, girth, etc., with your guitar volume, you are limiting what you can do with your guitar's signal.
The same is true for pedals. The good ones react differently to the volume level coming out of the guitar.
If you're using a shorter cable, and a buffer at the beginning of your pedalboard, a world of color and emotion are there to control just by turning the freaking knob on your guitar! Why give that up?
Moreover, if you are setting up your amp to sound good on 6, or 8, or 4, or whatever, you have given yourself room to control the color in two directions with a twist of that volume knob. Want to hear just a touch more top-end grit while playing a song? Just goose your volume a little. Too bright? Use that tone control on your guitar. Suddenly your pickups take on the dimension and color that they were created to deliver.
Different pickups will give you different colors, and that's the beauty of discovering what your guitar and amp combination can do. Sure, it takes a little experimentation. But when I hear some of the tone issues that have come into my studio over the years, even with good players, and the blank expressions when I ask how they set their amp up, it really amazes me that people seem to be ignorant of these techniques.
When you buy a PRS, you have a guitar built with some of the best ability to do these things, EVER. Don't be lazy. Try these suggestions, you might become happier with your tone.
4. Step Four: Do You Know What Your Rig Actually Sounds Like Tonight? Maybe This Should Be Step 1...
If your speaker cones are aimed at your shins, with their high frequencies absorbed by carpeting, in a bad sounding room, and if you are standing close to the amp, I guarantee that you can not hear what is coming out of that speaker cabinet. It's impossible. You're hearing room reflections, with their common mode issues, comb filtering, and other frequency anomalies.
Fact: Guitar speakers are highly directional, especially in the high frequencies. Put a simple SM57 in front of an amp, and move it around in the room and you will discover just how directional the high frequencies of a guitar speaker cone can be. The tone will change dramatically as you do this.
You are not hearing your amp unless that speaker cone is pointing toward your ears. What you're hearing is sound bouncing around the room. However, your audience is hearing more than you are because as the sound radiates out from that cone, the cone widens. So you're probably killing them either with too much low end, or too much high end.
Actually, I don't care about your audience, I just care about what's coming out of that speaker cone, because that's what I have a mic on. And you care about it because you're you, the player. You want to be happy with your tone. I get it.
So here are the rules: Get the cab off the floor so you can hear it. A few inches matter. This has the additional benefit of reducing the room mode called half-space reinforcement that artificially kicks up your bass (actually doubling it in some cases). Get it away from the rear and side walls, to avoid 1/4 or 1/8 space room modes. There's a reason engineers test speakers hanging away from walls and corners, away from the floor and ceiling, even in anechoic chambers!
Aim the cab at your ears as best you can. A slight angle really helps, especially if you can sit down closer to speaker level while you're setting up the amp. Then set up the amp while you can actually hear it. Don't worry, it'll still sound good when you stand up, but now it will also sound good to the microphone, and to the audience. Moreover, if you're recording it, the mic will pick up the tone the way you actually heard it! Everyone will be happier. Especially me, if I happen to walk in on your set, and won't have to cover my ears to avoid your crappy guitar sound!
Rant over. :star:
Last edited:
Focusing on "hearing the real you", this is why the original angled 4x12 was developed. Those top two speakers, if you were the right distance away, were pointed straight at your head. Two for you, two for the audience. Problem solved, unless you're in a tiny club. Even my angled vert. 2x12 was too big for those places. The option of an amp stand with a compact 1x12 was the only solution and I still had to put the pedalboard halfway off the stage. Because, there's no worse feeling than not feeling confident in how you sound at a gig...mix-wise or tonally. It's a complete distraction and can ruin a performance.
