I am someone who has been a very ardent reader of the posts on this forum for a very long time, yet today is when I've managed to get my account. The matter I have come across on this venerable site has challenged me, expanded my knowledge and auditory perception, and provided me with many viewpoints on tone.
With regard to my quest for tone, I started getting a sort of idealized guitar sound in my head at the tender age of ten, having freshly gotten into music and encountering 'Hotel California' for the first time. I was someone very bent on total innovation musically, and had the compositions in my head stand out from the (high-quality) rock I had newly gotten from the beginning. My music is very avant-garde, and just as hard to describe. But anyway, to get to the point, I wanted my tone to complement my music, and I thought (and still think) of it as the ultimate tone. As I got more into guitaring I learnt what a Les Paul was, and realized my tone would be the idealized Les Paul tone, like it was never heard before.
A little more than a year ago, after some research on the internet, I decided to go in for an Epi LP100 for the affordability, and because of my intuition. I also bought a Zoom G1 Processor, but abandoned it later for it's unpleasant digital overtones. I also bought a Chinese 15-watt Bass Amp for around $65, and my quest for tone officially started.
Over the next few months I wrestled with all the knobs on my rig, researching tone very in-depth on the internet, till I could point out the defining characteristics of the tone of the Dimarzio Brand in general, the EMG 85 and almost every humbucker in the Duncan lineup, as well as most other guitar-related items you could think of without having actually played them (except for the 85, even then only briefly). I kept thinking I needed some other pieces of gear to complete my rig and quest for tone with every new configuration on my rig, but also kept getting closer and closer, till one day this year, with ridiculously simple amp settings, I got VERY close to the tone I wanted, as far as I could with this rig. This really surprised me. Now to describe my tone; I cannot even get halfway with words, and have literally no recording material to upload sound samples on here, but it is, first of all, completely clean (as in no distortion. My idea for this tone was to have all the clarity of a clean tone, but all the punchiness and expanded dynamics of a distorted tone), emphasizing all the strong points of a Les Paul, while eliminating the weaknesses, extremely dark and smooth, having a loose, sweet high-end, an open, clear but aggressive midrange, and a tight, very clear, bell-like, boomy-in-a-pleasant way but subdued low end.
Now on to the problem. Thanks to those who have taken the trouble to read this far, and please bear with me till the end, where I will make a request for those of you keenly interested enough in my tonal prospects. The pickups in my Epi, the 650R and 700T (probably a relation to the Gibson series) have held up surprisingly well, but they do fall short. They're ceramic, and hot, but seem to have a lot of headroom and do cleans quite nicely, but here's the weird thing; even with the low-end focused settings I have on my amp, with the tone knob over around three, an unpleasant brightness overwhelms and thins out the tone, to the extent of rendering it unusable to me. In fact, by just changing my picking style, tweaking the amp dials a little (B:2 M:4 T:5 P4), and setting the tone knobs completely open, I can get my LP to sound exactly like a tele. I usually have my tone knobs all the way down. (I know how ironic that is) The pickups aren't very dynamic, and I was thinking of going in for a lower output pickup to de-compress the tone a little. I have considered the various extremely appealing offerings from Duncan as replacements, and I will state what I like about specific pickups and what I want in my dream pickup later, but have come up with some very interesting CS order ideas. Here they are;
The catch is, however, I have zero dough I can blow on this, so if anyone is interested enough in my pickup suggestions to try them out, or is experienced enough to tell me about what I might expect, please let me know.
Thank you again for your time.
With regard to my quest for tone, I started getting a sort of idealized guitar sound in my head at the tender age of ten, having freshly gotten into music and encountering 'Hotel California' for the first time. I was someone very bent on total innovation musically, and had the compositions in my head stand out from the (high-quality) rock I had newly gotten from the beginning. My music is very avant-garde, and just as hard to describe. But anyway, to get to the point, I wanted my tone to complement my music, and I thought (and still think) of it as the ultimate tone. As I got more into guitaring I learnt what a Les Paul was, and realized my tone would be the idealized Les Paul tone, like it was never heard before.
A little more than a year ago, after some research on the internet, I decided to go in for an Epi LP100 for the affordability, and because of my intuition. I also bought a Zoom G1 Processor, but abandoned it later for it's unpleasant digital overtones. I also bought a Chinese 15-watt Bass Amp for around $65, and my quest for tone officially started.
Over the next few months I wrestled with all the knobs on my rig, researching tone very in-depth on the internet, till I could point out the defining characteristics of the tone of the Dimarzio Brand in general, the EMG 85 and almost every humbucker in the Duncan lineup, as well as most other guitar-related items you could think of without having actually played them (except for the 85, even then only briefly). I kept thinking I needed some other pieces of gear to complete my rig and quest for tone with every new configuration on my rig, but also kept getting closer and closer, till one day this year, with ridiculously simple amp settings, I got VERY close to the tone I wanted, as far as I could with this rig. This really surprised me. Now to describe my tone; I cannot even get halfway with words, and have literally no recording material to upload sound samples on here, but it is, first of all, completely clean (as in no distortion. My idea for this tone was to have all the clarity of a clean tone, but all the punchiness and expanded dynamics of a distorted tone), emphasizing all the strong points of a Les Paul, while eliminating the weaknesses, extremely dark and smooth, having a loose, sweet high-end, an open, clear but aggressive midrange, and a tight, very clear, bell-like, boomy-in-a-pleasant way but subdued low end.
Now on to the problem. Thanks to those who have taken the trouble to read this far, and please bear with me till the end, where I will make a request for those of you keenly interested enough in my tonal prospects. The pickups in my Epi, the 650R and 700T (probably a relation to the Gibson series) have held up surprisingly well, but they do fall short. They're ceramic, and hot, but seem to have a lot of headroom and do cleans quite nicely, but here's the weird thing; even with the low-end focused settings I have on my amp, with the tone knob over around three, an unpleasant brightness overwhelms and thins out the tone, to the extent of rendering it unusable to me. In fact, by just changing my picking style, tweaking the amp dials a little (B:2 M:4 T:5 P4), and setting the tone knobs completely open, I can get my LP to sound exactly like a tele. I usually have my tone knobs all the way down. (I know how ironic that is) The pickups aren't very dynamic, and I was thinking of going in for a lower output pickup to de-compress the tone a little. I have considered the various extremely appealing offerings from Duncan as replacements, and I will state what I like about specific pickups and what I want in my dream pickup later, but have come up with some very interesting CS order ideas. Here they are;
- A lower output Screamin' Demon/ Nazgul A4 hybrid with balanced coils in the bridge, an A4 Sentient/Demon hybrid in the neck
- An A4 Custom/A2P Bridge Hybrid and A4P Neck
- And Finally, my personal favourite of them all, the one that makes the cut;
- A Black Winter/ A2P Hybrid Set, maybe with A4 mags
The catch is, however, I have zero dough I can blow on this, so if anyone is interested enough in my pickup suggestions to try them out, or is experienced enough to tell me about what I might expect, please let me know.
Thank you again for your time.
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