Need some help - Distortion without effects

nukeboot

Hi.

I need some help with the following explanation I found regarding how Ed gets a distorted sound without using effects pedals:

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First of all, most of the time Ed plays his guitars using only the front (neck) pickup. This pickup typically has a thicker, muddier tone due to its position along the length of the string. And so with the positioning of that pickup, it's a little easier to "overdrive" your amp with your strumming/picking technique. Second, Ed sets his amp tone by first dialing in a loud, clean, full tone. (Clean being the important word there.) He adjusts his input gain right to the point where the "clean" tone is on the verge of distorting slightly. Once this is set, his sound (clean or dirty) is controlled purely with his hands, changing with the intensity he chooses to strum the strings with. If he picks more delicately, he can achieve a cleaner tone. If he picks harder and more aggressively, he can achieve a distorted tone. Cool, huh?

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I play though a Fender Blues Deluxe tube amp and normally use a Boss Heavy Metal box. I'm tired of bad connections and want to play around with the above approach, but to be honest I've never really messed much with my amp settings - my Boss effect has EQ, Distortion and Volume. Besides volume/lo/mid/hi, I have have drive, master, presence and reverb settings on the amp.

What am I adjusting when I'm setting "input gain"?

Thanks for any help.

pahoehoe13

ok i can help you out here... i have the same amp

basically you'll see two knobs of importance on youre amp... one is labeled master and the other is labeled volume (note that they both go up to 12 - spinal tap ain't got nothin on you!)... think of master as the actual volume of the amp and think of volume as the gain... set youre master on like 2.5-3 (this amp may look small but its loud as shit)... then adjust the volume knob to get youre desired amount of distortion... to keep a clean tone, keep volume around 4 or 5 at the highest... a little more will give you a bluesy edge.. and crank it to 10-12 to get a solid rock sound... then use your guitar volume knob and picking intensity to change the dynamics just as it says in the article

basically what's going on here, is in your amp there are two types of tubes, power tubes and preamp tubes... the master knob controls the output of the power tubes and therefore how loud the amp will be... the volume know controls the output of the preamp tubes which will give you the distortion

once you have acheived youre desired distortion by adjusting the volume knob, readjust the master knob to make the amp at the actual volume you want (avoid going below the 2 or you'll lose the thicker sound of the amp)... i also suggest making sure the "fat" switch is engaged as it gives your preamp a boost making ur tone sound thicker and in my opinion better

just mess around with those two knobs to get the sound you're looking for and then go bananas! enjoy!

pahoehoe13

ok after relooking at your post, i see now you have the hot rod deluxe amp... the instructions i gave you were for the blues jr amp...

but alas, youre in luck, because i happen to have BOTH of those amps...

anyway, basically the same thing, just keep you're amp on the clean channel... not on the drive channel... then just crank the volume knob to get distortion... u will be unable to do this except for at extremley hight volumes... for soemthing for manageable, engage the drive channel (either with the footswitch or the small button on the amp)... the more drive channel is obvioiusly heavier than the drive channel... the master knob will be your volume knob in this channel and the drive knob will control the amount of gain or distortion... so just think of it this way...

clean channel: use the volume knob

drive/more drive channels: use master and drive knobs

then, just follow some of the directions above

nukeboot

Thanks much for the info. That should get me started.

I've played around with the drive and gotten the more distorted sound before, but I've never played on the edge between clean and heavy. This should help me dial in.

enharmonic

The info about the neck pickup creating the overdrive is not entirely true. It's possible, but quite misleading.

Pickup output is dependent on the number of winds it has, as well as its proximity to the strings. More winds = hotter output. Generally, a neck pickup will NOT be hotter than a bridge pickup. The neck is also picking up different harmonic nodes than the bridge, which is why there's such a significant different between the two.

As for distortion without effects...there are two types of distortion that one can obtain from an amp. Preamp distortion, and power amp distortion (saturation). One sounds really buzzy and unmusical as you crush the gain (preamp distortion), the other sounds bold and huge as you crank the master (power section).

It is not practical for most of us to seek power tube distortion, because you have to run your amp at very high volumes to enjoy any benefit of power tube saturation. gain from the preamp can only get you so far in this equation. The best balance for mere mortals playing small clubs (less than 1000-person capacity) is to blend preamp gain with a more open power section. I run all of my preamps between 9 and 10 o'clock, with the power amp between noon and 2 depending on the room, and use my pick attack to push the amp into distortion...but that's just me.

there's no rules for how to do this, only good results and bad results. Most modern rock music has shitty guitar tone because today's guitarists get their yah-yah's off on preamp gain, which to me sounds like ass.