What am I doin?

[Doug]

Many of you are equipment savvy, and I'm lo-tech three years new to electric guitar. Mastering my amp & guitar settings. Not ready for peripherals. So I wonder if you'd care to teach me just a bit about what I'm doin at this point in my tonequest?

That is, I never used "Reverb" (Peavey Classic 30) because I've associated reverb with a cleaner tone than I prefer. And it usually stands out, sorta dominates the tone. But what I did last night was:

Set reverb to 6, gain 6, volume 3; treble 8, mid 5, bass 3;

neck P90 only, guitar tone 5, guitar volume 10. ('98 LPSpecial)

What I heard was round, dirty, dense, with lots of sustan and remarkably distinct highs. A new Bluesy tone to me and the Reverb does not dominate the tone, but seems to interact nicely with the gain...so can you help me gain a bit of technical insight, what the hell am I doin here?

Thanks,

[robert(original)]

its called experimenting with your sound. its healthy to do so. I would suggest this to anyone and everyone.
in reality, whatever sounds good to you, is good. unless you like the sound of 80's hair metal, super condensed no low, all highs guitar. then you are crap.
i would actually make one recommendation. always keep your guitar volume and tone wide open or turned up to "10" and use your amp controls for your "tone"
thats just my opinion tho, and it worked for me, but it doesn't mean it will work for you.

[Doug]

... keep your guitar volume and tone wide open or turned up to "10" and use your amp controls for your "tone"
thats just my opinion tho, and it worked for me, but it doesn't mean it will work for you.

Thanks, Robert. Yeah, I'm with you on this. I learned to get the most from my guitar by keeping that volume at 10, and tone usually at 10. I like old Blues and sometimes use my neck pup with guitar tone down to 6 or so, because that setting seems to get more dirty tone, interacting with gain at about 6...ha, sounding like I really know this shit! But I never cut off the tone.

Cheers,

[Bacchus]

sounding like I really know this shit!

Well, you do know this shit. You know what sound comes out of your amp and you know whether or not you like it. That's as much as you need to know, and anyone who says they know more about their tone is talking shite.

Generally, with reverb, I would try to be kind of careful. If you're playing by yourself in your room then mess around until it sounds awesome, but when you go to play with a band (or when I do, rather), that sound can often sound awful and messy and undefined and it loses that presence and balls that it has in your room.

The thing I do is take off the reverb almost completely and see if the natural ballsiness and presence of playing with a band is enough (for me it often is). And then add it back in bit by bit, until it's just too much, then roll it back a notch. Then play for fifteen minutes or so. Then roll it back a notch more and decide if that sounds better again. Keep going until it's right.

I find this a useful approach for the amount of gain too, as well as EQ. So I'll start off low gain, then add it bit my bit, then back it off again. I'll start off with a fairly flat EQ, with maybe a wee bit more mids than anything else, then really listen to what's needed and try it bit by bit. For me, this usually means adding a bit more bass.

[Doug]

Okay, Bacchus! Thanks for your support and for the very practical advice. One thing I like is a useful method.

And experimentation. So I'm sure I'll develop my own method after a while...(shit, it drives my wife mad but I've got my own method for driving the car and playing drums along with Cream's "Wheels of Fire" double album )..., but for now yours is just what I need.

Cheers,

[Gabriel]

I like to set up a base tone and work from there. It depends on the gig really. When I'm doing mainly clean jazz stuff I'll use my polytone ran pretty flat which gives me the perfect jazz tone, for everything else I use my Rivera. I never really use a high gain tone, but I can reach a fairly overdriven tone if I boost the overdrive channel, if I want I can also boost the clean channel to get some overdrive, but I don't normally do that as it eats into my headroom.

I use the controls on my guitar constantly, when doing clean stuff I normally put the volume control at 7-8 as it cuts the highs just a little and seems to hollow out the midrange just a tad too which I like. For jazz then the tone goes down to 4-5. When I'm playing blues or rock I just mess with the tone control as and when I feel like it and I set the overdrive more than I'd usually want and control that with the volume control.