Tonemasters please guide me!

[Twitch]

My rig right now consists of an alder body/maple board MIM Strat with a Peavey Classic 30. IMO this is a pretty solid starting point for my ideal tone.

My desired overdriven tone is the intro to the Allman Brothers song Statesboro Blues (I know that's an LP), SRV on The Sky is Crying, or Led Zeppelin's The Ocean. So a very smooth (Boss's OD pedals seem too hissy to me), bright, lively OD.

For clean tones I want it to really clean up. I want chords to sound very complex, hearing all the strings ring through independantly. I prefer a brighter tone, so think SRV on Riviera Paradise.

Their are two pieces of equipment that I am looking to upgrade, pickups and OD pedal. Right now the pups I'm considering are in my signature.

The OD pedals are: Visual Sound Route 66, Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive, Fulltone OCD, Fulltone Fulldrive 2. I want to od pedal to be able to do 3 things: smooth out the drive channel on my Classic 30, push my clean channel, and give me a clean boost.

So what would you recomend?
Sorry for the long post :burnout:

 

[Quencho092]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

ok let me try to diagnose the issue....

Do you want a jimi hendrix'ish/sultans of swing'ish bright hollow quacky strat or a fatter sounding magnet? If so go with the surfers.

If you prefer the fatter strat tones, go for the texas hots-they'll get you an extremely nice SRV tone and also help you cop some allman brothers sounds since they're alnico II's and warmer sounding.

The surfers in my strat get a really nice characteristically stratty sounding tone that i love keeping in position 2. The mid position with the tone back a bit really wails, and the bridge pickup alone will give you a twangier teleish tone.

What's more important to you-your strat quack in positions 2 and 4, or the neck pickup wailing tone?

 

[Twitch]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

Can't I have both :argh: Well I'm going to be playing slide, but my guess would be that my TwangBanger in the bridge will cover that the best.

How does the lead tone sound out of the Surfers in the neck/middle?

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

The quick answer would be to get a Twangbanger/Surfer neck & middle. A Fulldrive 2 should make you very happy with a strat and Classic 30.
If you want anything resembling Allmans, you need a Les Paul/Marshall.

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

Have you thought about a humbucker for the bridge? -that should help with the zep and allmans stuff, and still give you the SRV s/c neck tone. Maybe a 'lil 59.

Another great pedal is the G2D classic, which has a lot of old marshall flavour.

 

[BigBazz]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

A Marshall Bluesbreaker II pedal probably the smoothest sounding overdrive you can get, which also has a clean boost built in

and also costs a hell of a lot less than all those pedals, give it a try

 

[Twitch]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

I wasn't impressed by the Bluesbreaker II clips. Right now, I do have a Fat Strat, but was planning on going SSS because I want that strat 4th position.

 

[JimiHWannaBe]

Re: Tonemasters please guide me!

Try out a Keeley modded BD-2 seriously this pedal is like allman bros in a box.