tone!! aahhh!!!

daveb1

I am a music major at school, not on guitar, but oboe, so if this question gets hairy, I apologize. Ok, here's my deal. I have been playing for about 2 years now and have gotten to be what I would consider "OK" at guitar. I am not a virtuoso by any means, but I can play PJ stuff and solo to some extent. I play alot of acoustic, and I have gotten to be pretty good at chordwork too. My ongoing problem however is consistently sucky electric tone. I am playing a Les Paul through a Peavey Heritage amp (tube combo amp), I also have a ts-9 and a cs-3 compressor. The amp has two channels, and I can get a decent clean/semi-clean SRV type sound, but I have really had problems getting a good distorted PJ type sound. I can get tones that are clean and sound SRVish or I can get really heavy metallica type crap. I have noticed that in songs like black or I am Mine Mr. McCready has a somewhat clean sound, and in songs like Save You he has a very distorted sound. How is he changing from one sound to another? Another thing I have noticed is that he can get a great distorted sound when playing chords yet his tone when soloing is nearly clean, yet he still has tons of sustain. How is he doing this? Any help as to what my tone settings should be on my guitar, or what my hi-mid-lo settings on my amp should be would be great, any ideas on reverb settings would help, and any help as to how much preamp level and saturation level would help too. I am already fearing the standard guitarist answer of "what sounds good to you is the way to go!", but you guys have been super helpful and I am looking forward to reading your responses. Thanks a bunch,
Dave

casper leblanc

I'm guessing pedals.... which ones I cannot tell you since I've never gotten further than a wah, which I sold after a year

Pacomc79

Good question Dave. You're normal. We're all looking for a little more or a little less here and there always. Many pro's including Mr. McCready use more than one amp for cleans and distortions. Though I'm not sure exactly what they did this tour since both Mike and Stone both used Trentino custom combos. I'm not familiar with the Peavy Heritage or what tube compliment it uses sorry. My recomendation is to find a second overdrive distortion. There are so many to choose from I don't want to pigeon hole you into one group but Tubescreamers have this nice warm mid boost many people like to chain them toegther and use 2 at a time when they want a beefier sound. You could also use a more transparent overdrive like a Boss Blues Driver along with the Tubescreamer, or if you want more distortion a Boss DS-1 is a good one as well as the Pro Co Rat. You might even try out a EH Big Muff while you're at it or some kind of fuzz. Though finding the right fuzz gets expensive.

Good luck on your quest. I'm thinking a distortion pedal combined with the rig you have might help you get that inbetween tone.

To get the mild clip that Mike and SRV and others like turn the TS gain all the way down and the volume all the way up adj the tone to taste. I'd have it wide open with the darker humbuckers. EQ is so subjective but when you want more clean I'd turn the mids and bass down a bit and use the TS as a clean boost to warm up the mids. You still need treble for the presence boost and reducing the bass a bit will help the low end on your speaker. Of course there are a billion other things you can do but we'll talk about that later. You might also think about finding a cheap strat to play with too but I'm just spending your money here.

who's_pearljam?

I looked up the peavey heritage. That is a big tube amp. A lot of the tone in a 100 watt tube amp come from cranking it up to drive the tubes. If you know anybody that has a "power brake" from Marshall, or something similar, ( an attenuator ) try borrowing it to experiment. It goes between the amp output and the speakers to allow you to crank the amp up, drive the tubes , but not to be so loud.

Sometimes you can rent one from a musicians rental service if you have one nearby. Then play with your settings. When driving the amp that hard, there are very subtle "sweet spots" where the amp will sound it's best. It can take hours or days to find it. Even 3 exact same models of the same amp will be different.

When you play in big venues, you have the opportunity to turn your Marshall, Soldano, Hiwatt, Trentino, to 10. But otherwise, it takes a lot of finessing to get good sound out of a 100 watt amp!That's part of where Hendrix , Page, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend were innovators. Blasting that shit at 10!


Sometimes changing the tubes will change the tone. ( Get an amp tech for that ) . If you can drive the tubes, then read paco's dissertation above on the settings for the ts-9. At least that's the cheap way to start.
Even cheaper would be to warn everybody in the local square mile area that you are looking for your tone, please don't call the cops!

Then you can start the lifelong search for the ultimate overdrive pedal!

Pacomc79

other great and cheaper than the PB anyway attenuators include the THD hotplate and the Dr. Z. Powerbrake. Both are around $279 new as apposed to the $339 of the Powerbrake.

You can find them used a lot cheaper.

who's_pearljam?

Originally posted by Pacomc79
other great and cheaper than the PB anyway attenuators include the THD hotplate and the Dr. Z. Powerbrake. Both are around $279 new as apposed to the $339 of the Powerbrake.

You can find them used a lot cheaper.

True,,, any of them would do, as long as you can borrow it first!

Beach is nice today, Paco!

Pacomc79

Originally posted by who's_pearljam?
True,,, any of them would do, as long as you can borrow it first!

Beach is nice today, Paco!

Indeed. I think I'm going to invest in some solar panels and install a hot tub in the gazebo.