Re: General Tone Tips
I have some contributions for more modern amps, particularly for metal.
Nearly all modern metal amps have extremely clean power amp sections with plenty of headroom so high gain, high wattage 6L6/EL34 etc. clipping properties are not used as much and most of the distortion comes from the preamp.
The original post is more appropriate for overdrive circuits such as a marshall plexi or the JCM800 etc. which did get a lot more gain from the power amp section of the circuit, but they originally had no master volume, so you only got hi-gain by cranking it and deafening yourself. Venues even requested that you faced the cab towards the BACK of the stage.
Compare a Mesa, an ENGL, a Splawn, a later marshall (like a JVM), an all tube Randall and run a CD player through the power amp and some hi-fi speakers... it will actually sound decent. Do the same with a vintage amp and it will distort. Quite a few people even go as far as to complain that they can't get any decent cleans out of their marshalls when cranked.
Anyway... my tips.
Throw your Metalzone in the trash
Tune to E standard (I'm pretty sure alot of people won't want to do this )
Back your gain off and play more precisely instead of trying to rely on heavy gain saturation to cover your mistakes, which will ultimately give you a fizzy, mushy tone.
Keep your mids up, in fact keep everything up on an amp with a passive EQ (which is most of them)
When you are playing live, turn down at the amp and hire a decent sound guy to mix everything properly.
To get a great studio tone you take 2 mics. Flip the phase on one of them and position them on the rims until they cancel each other out. Then return to the normal polarity on the mic which you flipped the phase of.
If you want a really tight sound with cutting pick attack, run an EQ BEFORE the amp and cut down on the bass frequencies. Restore these after the preamp. You can do this with an EQ in the fx loop or the bass knob on the amp if it is after the gain stages.
Change your strings regularly and make sure you keep a consistent guage which your guitar is set up for each time.
If your amp is not a fixed biased like a Peavey, check the bias and keep it running at an optimal level.
Spend some money on decent cables, especially the speaker cable between the amp and the cab. http://www.lavacable.com. Great value, service and ship just about anywhere
Throw your metalzone in the trash.
I have some contributions for more modern amps, particularly for metal.
Nearly all modern metal amps have extremely clean power amp sections with plenty of headroom so high gain, high wattage 6L6/EL34 etc. clipping properties are not used as much and most of the distortion comes from the preamp.
The original post is more appropriate for overdrive circuits such as a marshall plexi or the JCM800 etc. which did get a lot more gain from the power amp section of the circuit, but they originally had no master volume, so you only got hi-gain by cranking it and deafening yourself. Venues even requested that you faced the cab towards the BACK of the stage.
Compare a Mesa, an ENGL, a Splawn, a later marshall (like a JVM), an all tube Randall and run a CD player through the power amp and some hi-fi speakers... it will actually sound decent. Do the same with a vintage amp and it will distort. Quite a few people even go as far as to complain that they can't get any decent cleans out of their marshalls when cranked.
Anyway... my tips.
Throw your Metalzone in the trash
Tune to E standard (I'm pretty sure alot of people won't want to do this )
Back your gain off and play more precisely instead of trying to rely on heavy gain saturation to cover your mistakes, which will ultimately give you a fizzy, mushy tone.
Keep your mids up, in fact keep everything up on an amp with a passive EQ (which is most of them)
When you are playing live, turn down at the amp and hire a decent sound guy to mix everything properly.
To get a great studio tone you take 2 mics. Flip the phase on one of them and position them on the rims until they cancel each other out. Then return to the normal polarity on the mic which you flipped the phase of.
If you want a really tight sound with cutting pick attack, run an EQ BEFORE the amp and cut down on the bass frequencies. Restore these after the preamp. You can do this with an EQ in the fx loop or the bass knob on the amp if it is after the gain stages.
Change your strings regularly and make sure you keep a consistent guage which your guitar is set up for each time.
If your amp is not a fixed biased like a Peavey, check the bias and keep it running at an optimal level.
Spend some money on decent cables, especially the speaker cable between the amp and the cab. http://www.lavacable.com. Great value, service and ship just about anywhere
Throw your metalzone in the trash.
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