(more) Guitar Tone Help......PJ related

Caught a bolt of lightning

Hello,
Just hoping to get some tone help....again.
So I have been enjoying getting more into effects lately here is what I currently have on my board.

Gibson Les Paul OR American Telecaster > Crybaby > Blues Driver > Boss Turbo Distortion > Boss Super Chorus > Boss DD-3 Delay > Fender Princeton 112 plus (not tube)

I really love the tone I am getting with my telecaster.... suprinsingly the blues driver is sounding great even though a lot of reviews said it wasnt great for single coil pickups but I am not really getting a good tone for my les paul.

I really love Stone's tone from the AOL sessions on his Les Paul during "hard to imagine" and "sad"

Any suggestions on something that would sound similar, or anything that would go really well with a Les Paul??

Thanks in advance.....

gimmesometruth27

Caught a bolt of lightning wrote:

Hello,
Just hoping to get some tone help....again.
So I have been enjoying getting more into effects lately here is what I currently have on my board.

Gibson Les Paul OR American Telecaster > Crybaby > Blues Driver > Boss Turbo Distortion > Boss Super Chorus > Boss DD-3 Delay > Fender Princeton 112 plus (not tube)

I really love the tone I am getting with my telecaster.... suprinsingly the blues driver is sounding great even though a lot of reviews said it wasnt great for single coil pickups but I am not really getting a good tone for my les paul.

I really love Stone's tone from the AOL sessions on his Les Paul during "hard to imagine" and "sad"

Any suggestions on something that would sound similar, or anything that would go really well with a Les Paul??

Thanks in advance.....

i am convinced that you need to get yourself a good, solid, single channel vintage tube amp. you have all the rest of the pieces of the puzzle, just not a good tube amp. the new tube amps they make nowadays have way too much tone sucking circuitry. i could never ever get the tones i wanted out of my solid state combos. once i learned how to dial in a tube amp, achieving the tones i wanted was easy. it is much easier to dial things in on a single channel amp, because you can find the tone you want on that, control clean and dirty with your pickup switch and guitar volume, and use your pedals to color that amp tone. and once you get your pedals how you like them to sound, you would rarely have to adjust them at all. it is just so much SIMPLER. that is how stone got his tone, marshall jcm 800s and whatever else he uses are all tube driven.

i do not view pedals as the main source of my tone. the main source of my tone is my guitar and amp, and the pedals just slightly modify that tone to fit what each song needs. i never rely on just the pedal's effect alone, because then it is the pedal doing it and not the amp, if you know what i mean?

i have 3 les pauls, mainly using a LP custom and sg primarily, and a strat secondary, and i can easily get my amp to sound great with any guitar. but i run a 1974 marshall jmp and a 1994 matchless clubman. you just need to learn what your amp is capable of and dial in from there.

Caught a bolt of lightning

you are good!!! I had a feeling about the amp......didnt make sense that I could have these peices and not feel good about the tone!
Thanks man!

gimmesometruth27

Caught a bolt of lightning wrote:

you are good!!! I had a feeling about the amp......didnt make sense that I could have these peices and not feel good about the tone!
Thanks man!

you are welcome. just remember that the guitar, the amp, and the player are the keys to great tone.

i have shitty technique and a heavy pickhand, so i need amps with a lot of headroom so they don't break up when i am supposed to be playing clean.

to find a great amp, just do what i and many others did. i looked at what my guitar heros were playing both guitar and amp wise, and went on a quest to find those things. and you know what? i did not like the exact things they were playing once i finally found it, so i got a different variation of that amp that i did like. sure it is expensive, but when my band was forming my crate solid state amp was not going to cut it for me. i have been gigging 4-5 times a month, except for the last 3 months, for just over 7 years now, and these are just things i have learned along the way. to me doing research is boring, so that is why i talk to people and ask a lot of questions. and do not take a friend with you when you try to go find an amp. do not let their opinion sway you. chances are their opinion of great tone does not jive with yours. when you find something that "does it" for you, you will know.

when i got my matchless 5 years ago i was blown away by it, until i found my marshall 3 years ago, and that killed my love for the boutique amps. simplicity is beautiful, especially when you gig a lot. AND it makes it easy to trouble shoot if something craps out.

my advice is don't go in with any bias as far as what you think is good and what you think sucks. the only way you will know is if you play them all.

mccreadyisgod

Yeah, I totally agree that the missing link is a tube amp. You'd be amazed at what a difference that will make in your overall tone. There are some SS amps worth playing (see: Roland Jazz Chorus), and there are some artists who play amazing things on SS amps (see: Johnny Greenwood), but when you think of great guitar tones, 99.5% of them are via tube amps. Ask people to name great guitar amps, and tube amps will be mentioned 10,000 times more often than any SS amp.

Vintage amps are definitely cool, and the amps I own are all vintage or vintage-ish (my Sovtek amps are from the early 90's, not exactly old, but the tone is very vintage, and one has been hand-re-wired). But I'm also not afraid of some of the newer, cheaper, printed-circuit tube amps on the market right now. The Fender Hot Rod and Blues amps, and Peavey's Classic and Delta Blues amps, are both great. Even the Crate and Epiphone tube amps get decent reviews from good players (many of them with modifications, but still). Even Stone has been known to tour with Peavey Delta Blues 210 amps (stock amps, stock speakers and JJ tubes, I've seen inside them).

It's also important to keep this in mind: tone is the result of your gear coupled with your playing style and dynamics. I believe that's what GST27 was alluding to earlier; it's why you can't buy the exact same gear as some famous guitar player and sound exactly like them. Playing dynamics has a HUGE impact on your overall tone. For instance, I love the way amps with EL-84 power tubes sound when other people play them, but I've never been able to make them work for me. I have even stood next to another guitar player who sounded really great to my ears, and then he'll hand his guitar to me, and I'll try to play the exact same rig (guitar, pedals, amp... same cables, same pick... just 5 seconds later) and it'll sound like ass.

Many guitar players chase those "holy grail" tone boxes, be it an amp, guitar, pickup, stompbox, etc. that will give them the magic tone they seek. And the problem so many people fall into is picking gear that someone else sounds good with. You need to find gear that sounds good with the way you play. Sometimes that search takes a LONG time. There are a thousand guys out there with more money than talent, who own the exact same gear as Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughn, down to serial numbers just a few off, same production run, same builder. But you can't sound like them just because you have their gear. You can get their sound, IF you find the gear that complements your playing in the right way.