Stone's Tone
cinredzfan47
Posts: 81
Hey everyone, I play lead in a band that plays much of the same style as PJ (big surprise), and I have a McCready-esque tone. But my rhythm player needs more a Stone-type tone, and for some reason, I haven't been able to find something that I like that can compliment my tone.
Tell me your ideas on how to achieve this tone (amp settings I mean, with Bass, Mid, Treble, and what not). I am interested to hear all of the different ideas. Any help is appreciated as we are starting from ground zero here reinventing my rhythm player's tone; hopefully we can really experiment with your ideas.
Thanks.
Tell me your ideas on how to achieve this tone (amp settings I mean, with Bass, Mid, Treble, and what not). I am interested to hear all of the different ideas. Any help is appreciated as we are starting from ground zero here reinventing my rhythm player's tone; hopefully we can really experiment with your ideas.
Thanks.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
What kinda guitar(s) do you and he play? FX for both of you? Amps?
For a good rhythm tone, you're looking for more bass and less treble than the lead player. This is commonly achieved by using the neck pickup of your guitar (actually called the "rhythm" pickup on Gibsons). I am typically a rhythm player, and I actually use the bridge pickup mostly, but I have a chunky-sounding pickup in the bridge, and I use chunky FX pedals and a chunky amp/speaker cab.
The best way to look at it is this: The bass guitar does the low stuff, the lead guitar does the high stuff, and the rhythm guitar fills in the space between the two.
try
bass - 6
treble - 3
mid - 4 or 6
or
bass 4
treble 5
mid 5
My rhythm player is a little more complicated. When we're gigging, he uses a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. He is not as up to date when it comes to FX, and he basically only ever uses overdrive/distortion when an FX is needed. For this, he uses the Hot Rod's drive channel.
As far as guitars go, I am using a Fender Strat, Fender Jag-stang, and a Gibson LP. He also uses a Strat, borrows the LP from time to time, and also tries to squeeze in his Fender Tornado (haha, it's an odd choice). But anyway, thats the basic setup.
I really appreciate the input about Stone having less treble, I guess I'd never really thought of it that way. But if the info I gave you makes it more specific and you can give some more ideas on a Stone-like tone, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for the help.
Yeah, well that's it right there. That drive channel sucks ass. It should never have been included on those amplifiers, They should be single channel, and they shouldn't be as bright. I like them a lot and they are solid gigging amps for us working people, I just find some fender design choices disconcerting. They should have shopped out the OD design to Paul Rivera who designed thier stuff in the early 80's before leaving to build Rivera amps..
Cheap and dirty fix. Swap the stock eminence speaker to a vintage 30.
get some THD yellow jackets, (or simicz TAD's whichever brand you prefere really, ruby tubes has them now too I think) so you'll have more of a british flavor as the converters allow you to run EL-84's. It will sacrifice a little volume and headroom, but those to simple modifications will considerably warm up the sound and give you a chimey british tone and you guys likely mic up anyway though I doubt with around 20 class A watts on hand you'll need much more volume. Changing the speaker and running outboard OD/Dist units would help greatly.
I suggest the first thing he does is change the eminence speaker to a vintage 30 celestion.
He should then look at purchasing some form of Overdrive/Distortion effects (of which we can mention thousands) A volume booster works well with those amps especially in the loop for leads, and an OD with a healthy gain stage and volume output. We can pretty much target his budget whatever he's got in mind. As much as I hate to pimp Mike Fullers stuff, The Fulltone Fulldrive 2 is absolutely phenominal with that amplifier. Also Telesonic on this board "Eric Shannon" if he has any left builds an excellent Tubescreamer 808 style overdrive and a distortion similar to what Stone used in the early years. But this is for another thread, we could go on for hours about overdrives.
The HRD is a solid amp, it just needs tweaking for what he's trying to do with it.
Before you ask, What the hell is a yellow jacket, and for that matter who is Andy Marshall and THD?
aqui senor.
http://www.thdamps.com/products/yellow_jacket.htm
Actually, your tone is very much an issue. Knowing what the lead guitar sounds like will really help find a good rhythm tone to compliment it. That's like asking for a girlfriend, but not telling us what your interests are.
It sounds like your rhythm player has a decent start on stuff. Those amps are pretty nice, but I agree with Paco, the overdrive/distortion channels on the Hot Rod amps are just horrible. He needs at least a TS-9 Tubescreamer, if not a fancy model like the Fulltone or Shannon or a mod by Keeley or Analog Man. A fatter distortion would be nice as well, like a Boss DS-1 or a ProCo Rat or SansAmp Classic.
I also agree that the stock speaker is pretty bad. If he can afford it (after a good drive pedal) then swap that crap with a Vintage 30 or a Weber California.
Is his Toronado a dual-HB guitar? If so, that could actually be a good rhythm guitar. Strats tend to have a great lead tone, and can have good rhythm tone if you know how to really dial in the tone, but humbuckers are rhythm-in-a-box. They have a fatter, chunkier sound that works well for rhythm work. When he uses his Strat, encourage him to use his neck pickup (position 5 on the selector switch, where the switch is closest to the strings).
I believe 1V 1T.
kind of a tweener for fender. It didn't sell all that well. In between thier offering the Big Apple strat and the very nice recently built 2HB set neck teles. They were priced about the same as the new teles, and frankly considering the quality differences were a rip off.
9 out of 10 out of the box were horrid. Among the same "innovations" fender threw at us in the first dreaded dyna touch era.
A friend of mine had one and loved it... I thought it was okay (humbuckers were a tad anemic).
yeah well, mothers love ugly kids too. There had to be some good ones out there. Everyone I unboxed up had a shitty setup didn't look all that good and the wood was on par with the crap they are selling at wal-mart.
I just call em like I see um. Not trying to put anyones guitars or children down or anything.
The looks are subjective...
This one was set up pretty nice, but it may have been set up by the previous owner, too.
asthetically speaking it's fine, I just meant the total package.
Well, we all know that even the crappiest factory can put together a decent guitar by mistake once in a while...