How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

O

Osensei

New member
I know a lot of ppl start out playing in cover bands. One question always arises. How do you go from one tune to another often switching between genres without constantly having to go back and forth fiddling with your amp settings and adjusting your tone.

One minute you're playing balls to the walls classic humbucker rock and the next you're putting out single coil tele funk! So what is a guitar player to do?

I know the answer is probably some kind of floor unit / pedal board. But how do you set up your amp in that situation? You know what I mean? The pedal board is responsible for most of the tone selection but the amp has to be set up to optimize all of the tone selections coming from all the switching!

What's the best way to accomplish this?
 
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Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

A good 4 channel amp. Or a clean amp like a fender and a ton o' pedals. A couple different guitars couldn't hurt either.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Mutli effects floor unit is probably your best bet.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Boss GT-10 into a Trademark 60 Power Engine
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Any Engl 4 channel will do what you want. You might want some eq adjustments and maybe engagin bright switch/low boost between songs but nothing more.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Loserchief said:
Any Engl 4 channel will do what you want. You might want some eq adjustments and maybe engagin bright switch/low boost between songs but nothing more.
Click to expand...

:werd:

My Screamer can go from funk to classic rock to metal and more.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Not that I am all that versatile ....

npedalboard.JPG
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Modeling amp like a Line6 Vetta

Might not be a master of any one thing but a real jack of all trades


At the press of a footswitch you can go for a blackface twin with a wah pedal playing funk, to a mesa rectro doing high gain metal to a vox ac15 with a trebel booster and more.


Add in one of those Variaxe guitars and you can really do it all. Different tunings, modeling everything from a dreadnaught to LP to a strat to a Sitar


Again, not the best of anything but definatly versatile and in a band situation sounds fine
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

For years I used a Carvin X100B head a Boss GT-6 and a TS9 and Boss DD3. I ran into the front of the map. I set the head for a neutral clean tone with the idea that that was my white canvas and the rest the colors on my palette. It certainly worked well enough.

It also gave me good control from room to room because I could tweek volume, EQ and reverb globaly at the amp. Once I got that dialed in during sound check I rarely had to touch the amp for the rest of the night save tweeking the reverb knob to suit a song. I found that half songs were served by the 4 basic patches in bank 1 of the GT-6. The other half were song specific patches. I kept bank and patch info notated on my set list until it just became second nature to remember them.

I also never got too obsessed with trying to nail the tones of covers too exactly.

Right now I'm going the 4 channel amp (JVM) route with a few more stomp boxes. Again I tune the amp to the room...usually its just to adjust the low end...and play on. The JVM is nice because it has two master volumes so you can boost/cut any sound you happen to be using at the time. So all I really need to tweek through the night are the master volumes and the reverb knobs.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Just because you're playing other people's songs doesn't mean you have to use other people's tones. I actually prefer using my own basic tones, as I feel that I can put my own spin on the songs easier if I sound like "me". As long as I have a good clean, mid-gain, and high-gain tone at my disposal (and a few delay/modulation effects of course) I think I could play just about anything.

Now, that doesn't mean I could go genre-hopping and play blues one song and a death metal song next on the same rig, but that's not too likely in a gig context anyways.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

You have a few options:

1.) POD or some other effects unit. This is generally best when you have a really diverse setlist.

2.) A cleanish amp with lots of pedals. Preferably a few different OD's to cover most territory. Most likely a few different types of guitars as well.

3.) As ImmortalSix suggested, the volume and tone knobs. My last cover bands was mostly 70's/80's hard rock, but it still covered a lot of different bands. When it's AC/DC time, roll back that volume knob.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

ImmortalSix said:
Question:


Answer:

Your guitar's volume and tone knobs.
Click to expand...

this especially, and what scottish said about a good clean amp.
i have got a couple of different distortions set for different levels of drive, an equalizer and really work my volume tone knobs. it's real easy for me to go from a chimey sound (scooped mids with coil tap both pickups and light overdrive)to a funk sound(phase switch with a bit less drive) to metal(full on humbuckers with high gain drive pedal) etc. it really helps to work you volume knob especially. it also doesn't hurt to have some basic time based effects like modulation and delay:D
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

1) Modeling amp

2) Multi channel tube amp (H&K Triamp, Mesa Road King, ENGL, Marshall JVM, etc.)

3) A clean amp with a lot of different overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedals.

You might as well have a versatile guitar to go with that... so get something like an alder body strat style guitar with maple/rosewood neck, 2 humbuckers and a single coil in the middle and a 5 way switch. Then you have your single coil chime and your fat humbucking tones for heavier material.
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

either a modeling unit or
your favorite distortion plus an EQ
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

Modeler is going to prove far easier to deal with than tap dancing a huge pedal board and switching amp channels etc between songs.

Not to mention if you need a few different delay settings per set, your also going to be bending over and tweaking knobs unless you have 2 or 3 delay pedals on your board etc.


All sounds like a nightmare to me personally


All the guys I know locally who play in some cover bands all using modeling amps so when they are doing a U2 song for example they just hit the "U2" patch and have the delays, amp settings etc all dialed in. Then if up next is some Van Morrison its just another press of a button.

Sure sounds easier than trying to change amp channels, click off a few pedals, change the setting on another and not muck up the start of the next song because you accidently left a rhythmic delay going etc
 
Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

If you are in a cover band you will never sound exactly like the record, so dont stress too much about nailing every tone. Just try to hit the right notes and you will sound pretty good.
Trying to get every sound will drive you nuts as every record is mixed differently so a tone that sounds huge on record may not work the same way with your band's rhythm section.
Keep it simple whatever you do. I played a lot of covers in the 80s and 90s. You need:
1. sparkling clean sound
2. a crunch sound
3. a balls to the wall dirty lead sound.
A 2 channel amp and a nice overdrive will get you pretty well everywhere you need to get close enough for rock and roll as they say.
Dont bother with modulation effects for live. Wahs and delays are optional if required by the song.
 
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Re: How do you turn an amp into a swiss army knife?

ImmortalSix said:
Question:


Answer:

Your guitar's volume and tone knobs.
Click to expand...

Ding ding ding.....we have a winner.

If you don't have a modeling amp, this is the answer. Dial in your tones and work them from there with your guitar's controls and your hands.

I play through a modeler live and I have 2 presets, clean and overdriven plus a volume boost, but the boost setting is the same as the overdriven. A couple pedals out front if necessary and that's it. Sure, I could fiddle with stuff in between songs and such but why? That just takes the air out of the balloon. The patrons more often than not don't care if you sound like the record or not. Play the songs, make them sound good and leave it at that.

This is one area where the kiss theory comes in to play for me.

keep
it
simple
stupid
 
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