General Tone Tips

[greendy123]

Re: General Tone Tips

tune while your tubes are warming up

It's actually better to tune after you played after a couple minutes because the strings warm up while you play. This allows the strings to be tuned up while playing, but doing it while the tubes are warming up are also a good idea. Some people probably can't even tell the difference between before and after playing tuning, so its all good.

 

[tfb1990]

Re: General Tone Tips

amps are 80% of your tone, so the new guys tryin to get some killer guitar thru a peavey blazer 158... its gonna sound the same as your old one, well almost, so buy a nice amp first, then pickups or a new guitar

 

[Breogan]

Re: General Tone Tips

- Never overlook the effect of a pedal in your tone. Ussually little ingredients make huge improovement. Just a subtle phaser with a short delay can make a great difference.

- True bypass it isn't allways the best thing. When your effect it isn't activated most pedals set on a buffer to avoid too much signal loss. This it is not so usefull when you have a few pedal but if your chain gets a bit long this may be a godsend.

- We all want to get that guitar hero tone so much but sometimes gear it isn't as important as fingers. Playing songs with the same vibe and style and a minimun set can take you closer to your hero than a bunch of pickups, pedals, amps and guitars.

- Every amp has it's own aplication. In the past 100W were necesary to get the people on the audience since PA system weren't so effective. Now days this can be done with the PA so you can use less powered amps to get your tone. It's much easier to get power amp overdrive from a 10W tube amp than a 100W at reasonable volumes. In fact it's hard to survive from a 100w cranked amp.

 

[TeleJr24]

Re: General Tone Tips

Cheap ways to change your tone:

- use different strings (guages, manufacturers, types)
- use different volume and tone pot values (250 vs 500)

Know your equipment. Don't buy a different amp or effects unit until you have fully experimented with what you have.

 

[Davey]

Re: General Tone Tips

yesterday i found out that a godly amp and good fingers make all the tone you will ever need

 

[schecterplayer]

Re: General Tone Tips

Or use an acoustic.

But if you're gonna bend notes don't use too thick a guage of string, you'll hurt yourself

I always practice on acoustic, after a long time of doing half note or larger bends and pinch harmonics on medium acoustic strings electric is so effortless.

 

[dani]

Re: General Tone Tips

raise your action. way harder to play but way better tone.

 

[glacius]

Re: General Tone Tips

True bypass is not needed if you use a simple tube booster on the begin of your pedal chane , turn it on and never turn it of, it wil put more signal tru your pedals, it wil sound bigger at the end !!

 

[theboatcandream]

Re: General Tone Tips

True bypass is not needed if you use a simple tube booster on the begin of your pedal chane , turn it on and never turn it of, it wil put more signal tru your pedals, it wil sound bigger at the end !!

Be careful with this, because you might actually clip the signal within one of the effects boxes.

 

[B2D]

Re: General Tone Tips

Things that have worked well for me:

- Use action that is as high as possible without hindering your playing or making it uncomfortable. I find slightly higher action allows the string to sing and sustain a little more than super low action and thus allows for better tone.

- Use as few effects as possible. Each one in the signal chain means a tad more tone loss, and one more thing to screw up in a problem with the rig. Only use effects if you absolutely need them for what you are doing or for the sound you want.

- If you're not using a floyded guitar, get tuning machines that will hold their tune for a while. Schallers and Serzels are GREAT. If you're not using those and dont want to change them, make sure to properly secure the string to the post.

- Pay attention to your picking hand! The way you hold the pick and how it contacts/strikes the string, where your hand is placed and how it affects your tone, the smaller motions your pick-holding fingers make and how that affects dynamics, etc. It's important to make sure as much energy as possible is transferred from your picking motions to the string to set it in motion in order to get a strong sound. If you're too weak and play liek you're afraid of the strings, you're tone's gonna suck no matter WHAT you're using gearwise.

- Intonation is not important enough! Proper finger pressure on the fretboard (especially on scalloped boards) and bending to specific target pitches will make your playing sound that much better. Hit that note dead on. Every time. There's nothing worse than out-of-tune bends.

- Use a little less distortion or gain than you think you need. Often times too much saturation will kill your dynamics and definition. It's better to crank the power amp to get the drive you want. If you have a tube amp thats too loud for the situation or gets too loud when you have that cranked tone you want, get an attenuator. And do NOT skimp on the attenuator. You get what you pay for with those things.

- Wearing your guitar just a wee bit higher and being able to play more comfortably is, in the long run, better than looking cool and having mad carpal tunnel.

 

[dixiechicken]

Re: General Tone Tips

Generally when when you roll back on your volume control
you will also experience a slight loss of your highs.
Your tone will change.

To compensate for this, solder a small capacitor i series with
your hot wire on your volume control. Correctly choosen
value on the capacitor will make the volume lessen without
affecting tone.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

 

[Headbanger_Bob]

Re: General Tone Tips

one of the best ways to improve the guitars tone is to, yes, get duncans. they have a very transparent tone, so they bring out different tonal qualities in your guitar. also, remember, high outout it different from high resonant peak, and getting both is hard to do with a PAF-style humbucker. the best way to do that is to get a blade humbucker (currently the only ones offered are the dimebucker, and the rarer scott ian el diablo, unless you REALLY want to go with dimarzio or ken lawrence.) but these have a nasty habit of not cleaning up very well, so do your homework befor you go out and buy the most powerful thing out there. trust me, it is sooo much more satisfying than just throwing in some EMGs cuz you feel like youre getting a more personalized tone (besides you cant coil tap active pickups anyway)

 

[Marinblues]

Re: General Tone Tips

One general tip: don't overuse effects or distortion.

 

[C-Town Mike]

Re: General Tone Tips

I agree with the previous posts regaring the mids, when you scoop them the tone goes places that never seem to work for me. I prefer that buttery, on the edge of breakup tone, so I almost never use a bridge pickup by itself. My primary electric is a Fender HM strat, with a TB-11 Custom Custom in the bribge instead of the "brand x" it came with. The TB-11 modernized the bridge pickup tone, and ADDED mids to warm up the sound in bridge position only. To get the tone I like, I mix in the stock single coil in the middle to the TB-11 and stress my tubes a bit (Peavey Delta Blues 210). I also sometimes play just the neck pickup for a super warm sound.

Tone is individual, and you're tone will depend on what type of music you play, what appeals to your ear, and sometimes by necessity what cuts best in your band, taking into consideration the styles and gear of your band mates.

 

[ES350]

Re: General Tone Tips

Play your guitar without an amp---learn to make it sustain with your hands. When you do plug it in, you will need less gain/pedals/magic buttons to get a decent sound and some expression in your playing.

 

[Minty]

Re: General Tone Tips

• Marshalls give you British tones with it's EL-34 tubes, Mesa gives you American tones with it's 6l6 tubes

What's the difference of British tone and AMerican tone?

 

[ShredFetus]

Re: General Tone Tips

I know you didn't ask me, but I'll give it a shot! It's hard to describe, but IMO I would say 'American' tones have a harder edge to them, with a more refined distortion. British to me is that classic raw crunch, but still has a certain warmth to it.

Am I close?

 

[Kommerzbassist]

Re: General Tone Tips

yes.

 

[Rainmaker]

Re: General Tone Tips

Pardon my bad grammar!

 

[papersoul]

Re: General Tone Tips

Lower your gain, you *******!

In a full band situation:

Kick and Bass take care of the very lows and low mids.
Guitars take up the middle and the low end of the highs.
Cymbals take up the very top end.

Don't overload on bass. That's what a bassist is for. Keep your highs tamed.

EQ your amp from 20 feet away, and standing a bit to the side, as to avoid the harsh frequencies. Then, put a patch of duct tape on the gril in line with the cone of the speaker, to avoid those harsh frequencies.

EQ from ear level to the audience! Remember that the stage is higher than the crowd 9/10, and that they don't want to get blasted with all of your highs!

Maybe that is why the JB is the number one selling pickup for professional guitarists worldwide for all styles of music! Mids, upper mids and the lower highs. The Custom would be another actually. I know WCR makes the Shredder that takes care of the JB high mids since it is designed after the JB but is that a good thing? Although the Shredder sounds amazing.