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Posts Tagged ‘Tone’

Your Tone Sucks, Just Sayin’

Posted in Guitars, tagged on February 21, 2019| 2 Comments »

No, not really.

But since I returned to participating in online guitar forums, as I experienced in the past, there’s always that one in the crowd that let’s just say is much less conciliatory with their evaluation of others’ tone. On the one hand, lots of people enjoy the audaciousness of people who do this and use it as their entrance into the discussion to pile on; on the other hand, it makes me and, perhaps, others like me, cringe at the rudeness.

Personally, my first thought when I read comments like this is what makes this person think they know what’s good tone and what’s not? And if the comment is particularly rude, I’ll look at that person’s profile or do a search on them to see if they’ve got the stones to back up their audacity. What I find is a mixed bag. Some are skilled and active musicians; others are just “bedroom” players. But they do have one thing in common: To me at least, they come off as real a-holes.

But personality evaluations aside, the title of the article points to the spurious nature of “good tone.” You see, the problem with tone is that its measure is purely subjective. What sounds good to one may sound terrible to others. It’s also such a nebulous subject that it’s virtually impossible to provide a definitive list of what the characteristics of good tone actually are.

You’ll read or hear people mention terms like musical or lush or three-dimensional. Most people are implicitly aware of what those terms mean, but those adjectives are just as ambiguous as tone. I’m not here to tell you what good tone is but after years and years of playing I’ve come to an understanding that could help clarify things.

The Two Sides of Tone

There are in fact, two sides to this tone thing. The first is what we as the musicians consider to be good tone and the second is what others think of it.

Fundamentally, the most important judges of our tone are ourselves. In chasing that unicorn of good tone, what we’re searching for is what pleases us. So we pore over magazines, both physical and virtual; participate in online forums; watch and listen to countless demos of gear in our quest to find our sound. After all, at least for many, our sound inspires us to make music.

Note that I wasn’t all-inclusive by saying “at least for many” above. This is because I’ve known many gear sluts who just buy gear because it sounds cool or has some nostalgia or whatever attached to it and don’t pay much attention to the context in which they apply it. I have a good friend who used to play with me who put a ProCo Rat in his signal chain. That’s fine, but he would try to use it with an acoustic guitar. It sounded absolutely horrible to me and the rest of the band. And that’s a perfect segue into the other side of the tone equation.

The tricky thing about tone is that while I will stand by what I said that we’re the most important judges of our tone, especially if you gig, you have to realize that it’s important to sound good to your audience. I have to admit that it’s a bit of a pride-swallowing experience to get negative feedback from others on the tone you’ve worked so hard to achieve, but nevertheless, it’s important to listen.

Years ago, I was playing in a band, and during a break, a bandmate told me during a break, “Dude, I’m sure you’re ripping it up, but I can barely hear you.” I told him I was plenty loud and the amp I was playing had a fairly deep voicing. But he persisted and said, “Yeah, maybe so, but I can’t hear you and you’re the lead guitarist.”

At first, I was a little miffed because I had worked out and dialed in my tone for the gig. But I realized that if my bandmate was standing 15 feet away from me, and he couldn’t make out my tone, I was probably getting lost in the mix. So I went back to my amp at the back of the stage, added more mids and highs without turning up my volume, then suddenly, I was cutting through!

That brighter and slightly biting tone did not really please me at first; not that it was a bad tone. It’s just that I was so conditioned to playing with a smoother and deeper tone that I wasn’t really used to it. But from then on, when it was time for me to solo, I just hit my booster for a few dB of gain, and my sound punched right through the mix! That made everyone smile – including me. For goodness sake! I was playing a Les Paul through a Marshall! It was supposed to be midrange punchy, and I dialed it back! 🙂

Since then, I’ve come to love that tone, but it took getting, and more importantly, accepting that feedback that helped me break through. And after that gig, a fellow guitarist I knew who was attending the event approached me and said, “I don’t know what you did to your rig in your second set, but you sounded killer!” So… lesson learned.

So in light of all that was discussed, remember that first and foremost, develop the tone that pleases YOU. But be open to what others might have to say. It’s that compromise that will get you on your way to good tone.

The fallout of this is that for most people, it will slow the rate of their gear acquisitions. At least for me, once I found my sound and got some positive feedback on it, I’ve been extremely careful in my gear choices. Anything I get now has to be able to strike the balance between what I like and how it may sound to my audience.

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Ernie Ball: The Pursuit of Tone with Buddy Guy on March 25, 2016!

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , on March 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

buddy_guy

Got the following in an email from Keith at Ernie Ball:

Ernie Ball, the premiere builder of strings, accessories, guitars and basses, has a new documentary series, Ernie Ball:The Pursuit of Tone on AT&T AUDIENCE Network (DIRECTV ch.239 or on AT&T U-verse ch.1114), that kicks off March 25 with blues legend Buddy Guy talking frankly about a wide range of topics  — from how he got his start with a 3-string guitar to Muddy Waters’ last words of advice.

Here are a few clips from Ernie Ball: The Pursuit of Tone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpmXaiJ64_w) . In this clip Buddy opens up about his reputation as a wild and crazy guitar player, “I started kicking the music stands off the stage,” Buddy says at one point. Also, included is the official trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thQs9A0hWa8)  from the new series.

Unfortunately, if you don’t have DirecTV or AT&T U-verse, you can’t watch it. Hopefully, after the show airs, they’ll post it in its entirety on YouTube.

I’ll admit that I’m not a “blues guy,” but I do appreciate shows where icons of certain genres talk about their craft, and Buddy Guy is certainly an icon! I watched the clip on YouTube, and though short, you could just feel his passion for what he does.

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Describing Tone: An Article from AmplifiedParts.com

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , on October 31, 2011| 2 Comments »

I recently received an interesting article from the folks over at AmplifiedParts.com entitled, “Describing Tone.” It takes both a scientific (quantitative) look at tone as well as presenting more qualitative ways of describing it. The qualitative section seems geared to describing tone within the context of selling gear, but if you think about it, when we’re talking about tone, we’re doing a selling job. The author, Kurt Prange makes an interesting statement in the article: “If someone told you that a particular speaker sounds ‘rich and creamy with buttery mids and crisp highs,’ they might as well have said, ‘it sounds great, trust me.'” I’ll speak more to that in a little bit. But without further ado, here’s the article:

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The Audible Frequency Range and Describing Tone

by Kurt Prange

 

As guitarists, most of us sooner or later find ourselves in pursuit of tone. A talented guitarist can find a way to make anything sound good, but there should be no doubt that our equipment and the tone it provides can inspire and help fuel our creativity. In pursuit of tonal inspiration, we need to develop a vocabulary to help us find what we’re looking for in our sound.

 

The Audible Frequency Range

Most guitarists start out by learning the names of the musical notes corresponding to a particular string and fret number, but they are not initially aware that these notes also correspond to the fundamental frequency of the vibrating string. For example, the sixth string played at the 5th fret (low A) in standard tuning has a fundamental frequency of 110 Hz. Any doubling or halving of a frequency is an octave, so the next octave up from 110 Hz would be 220 Hz. In order to develop a vocabulary for tone, we have to think in terms of frequencies as opposed to musical notes.

The audible frequency range for us human beings is about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz (20 kHz). For descriptive purposes, it’s common to divide this range into at least three parts: lows, mids and highs. The specific border frequencies where, for example, lows end and mids begin are not definite. Look at a guitar speaker’s frequency response chart and you’ll see three commonly accepted ranges: lows from 20 to 200 Hz, mids from 200 Hz to 2 kHz and highs from 2 kHz to 20 kHz. With respect to these divisions, the fundamental guitar frequencies are all low to mid range; however, the sound we hear from each note we play also consists of harmonic frequencies in addition to the fundamental. To get an idea of what the fundamental would sound like on its own, just play a note and turn the guitar’s tone control all the way down. You’ve just “rolled-off the highs.”

If you play through an amp with treble, middle and bass controls, you can experiment with the extremes of each control setting to get a feel for how the relative level of each frequency range shapes the overall sound. “Scoop the mids” by turning the middle control down. “Roll-off the lows” and “thin-out” the tone by turning down the bass control. Now, “Fatten-up” the tone by turning the bass control back up.

Describing Tone

Using words to describe how something sounds is not always easy, but in the pursuit of tone it is often necessary. Browse through websites and ads for guitars, pickups, effects, amps, tubes, speakers, etc. and you’ll see a plethora of tonal verbiage that would probably seem like nonsense to the non-musician. When reading through this jargon, you can usually separate the adjectives into at least two groups to get a better perspective of the big picture.

First, there are the basic tonal adjectives that stand on their own. Most guitarists would understand their meaning without the need for much clarification. The words in this group stand on their own because they are closely related to common control settings. Describing tone is simplified considerably when a comparison can be made and most of the adjectives in this group can be paired with a clear opposite. For example, you might compare bright vs. dark for highs, full vs. scooped for mids, fat vs. thin for lows or some other variation to express more or less of a particular attribute. You could say, ‘I’m using Acme brand 12AX7 tubes in my amp and they sound too muddy, I need something that will brighten up the highs and give me more gain.’

Second, there are the ambiguous adjectives that leave you with some doubt as to what they really mean. They serve as a kind of garnish to add personality and make a tonal description sound more appealing or marketable. For example, the highs might be crisp or bell like with sparkle or chime, the mids might be buttery or woody, there might be mid-range honk, the tone could be warm, rich or creamy. This is good stuff if you don’t take it too seriously, but these words don’t really mean much on their own. If someone told you that a particular speaker sounds ‘rich and creamy with buttery mids and crisp highs,’ they might as well have said, ‘it sounds great, trust me.’ Another aspect of this group of adjectives is that they can allow you to identify a target audience that the product was designed to reach. For example, you probably wouldn’t target the death metal crowd with a ‘warm, vintage-voiced pickup with rich fat lows and top-end sparkle to express the subtleties of your playing style in fine detail.’ You’d be more likely to describe ‘fat, thunderous lows with upper mid-range sizzle and crisp highs for brutal rhythm and scorching leads.’

When communicating with other people to get suggestions for which product might get you closer to the sound you’re looking for, it’s usually best to make comparisons, while using mostly adjectives from the first group and going light on those from the second. Of course, the best way to know if something is right for your sound is to play through it yourself and set up an A/B comparison, but that’s just not always possible. So as we journey along in our pursuit of tone, we have to develop a vocabulary to help ourselves and others find the way.

Kurt Prange (BSEE) is the Sales Engineer for Amplified Parts (www.amplifiedparts.com) in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Kurt began playing guitar at the age of nine in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a guitar DIY’er and tube amp designer who enjoys helping other musicians along in the endless pursuit of tone.

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Addressing the “ambiguous adjectives” paragraph, I tend to agree with what Mr. Prange has to say for the most part, but I do think that ambiguous adjectives play a key role in describing tone; so long as you make the distinction between the unabiguous and ambiguous. I agree that on their own, ambiguous adjectives do very little to inform me, though they are certainly effective at raising hype – something that happens a lot on forums like The Gear Page. So as a bit of a follow-on to Mr. Prange’s words of wisdom, be very wary of those who do nothing but use unambiguous adjectives to describe the tone of their gear; especially if they’re trying to sell it to you.

The problem with unambiguous adjectives is that they are purely subjective. What might seem “muddy” to one person may be perfectly acceptable to another. To me, I find most Fender amps to be muddy, with really booming lows, but those people who dig that tone, would call them “smooth.” Get the picture?

And then of course, I totally agree with Kurt Prange in that the only way to really see if some gear fits you and your style of playing is to play it yourself. Ultimately, you’re the best judge of great tone. Don’t defer that to anyone else.

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Finding YOUR Tone

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , on October 25, 2010| 7 Comments »

Go to any blog or forum and you’ll see lots of discussions centering around Tone. You’ll also see some heated debates about it that often escalate into name-calling and all-out arguments. With respect to tone, everyone has an opinion. Some are put more eloquently and authoritatively than others, but in the end, they’re still just opinions, no matter how educated or experienced one may sound. For this particular discussion, I’m referring to “Tone” as that unicorn that we all chase that is a combination of what we’re playing as well as how we’re playing.

Admittedly, even with the articles I’ve written regarding tone, my viewpoint is well… my viewpoint. People call me out all the time on that and offer their viewpoint, and that’s all well and good. But it’s still just their viewpoint. I think the challenge of describing tone is that it is incredibly difficult to articulate something that is produced aurally and then evokes an emotional response. The result is that when speaking in reference to something like that, instead of being able to capture the meaning definitively, we have to speak metaphorically, with copious use of “sounds like” or “feels like.”

So with respect to that, to find your Tone, as I’m apt to say quite often here, you simply have to try things out for yourself. Recordings get you into a general area, and they’re quite helpful, which is why I do them in the first place, but keep in mind that they don’t tell the entire story. For instance, here’s an experience I’ve had several times when evaluating amps. Like almost everyone, one of the first things I do is to try to find recordings and videos on the Internet so I can hear how the amp performs. But one thing I’ve learned with evaluating an amp is to take note of what guitar and effects are being used to do the recording. An amp may sound great with a Strat, but may sound absolutely horrid with a Les Paul. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been disappointed when I finally audition an amp in a shop that I’ve gotten wind of on the Internet. The point to this is that you have to do ALL of your homework…

Salient Question: How do you know when you’ve found your Tone?

Taking into account that different styles of music require different combinations of gear, the way that I’ve found that I’ve hit that sweet spot of finding my tone is that my performance becomes effortless, and I’m going on pure instinct and expression. I’m not thinking about the sounds my gear is making or how the individual components are functioning or if my levels are correct. At least when I hit that sweet spot, I can FEEL it, and I’m left to be truly creative.

For instance, at my church gig last night, I was in the zone tone-wise. I used a fairly simple, low-wattage setup with a VHT Special 6 amp (which I ran into a 1 X 12 speaker cab for better bottom end), my pedal board, and a Les Paul. Clean or dirty, I just felt I could do no wrong. I didn’t do any tweaking, except for turning down the gain on my amp or guitar. I was able to perform on pure instinct, and that just made the set so much more enjoyable. The point to this is that when you don’t have to worry about it, chances are you’ve found your tone.

But I’ve also said this before: Tone is an ever-moving target. What makes you happy and inspires you today may likely change over time. Myself, I was a Strat/Fender Deluxe player for years. But as of the past year or so, I’ve converted over to the Les Paul/Plexi combination. More likely than not, I’ll probably stick with this combination for awhile as I’ve found that I’ve bonded much more closely with this combination than with the Strat/Deluxe combination. But only time will tell…

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What’s Your “Go-To” Tone?

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Like any gear freak, I’ve got tons of gear. Just check out the “My Rig” page, and  you’ll see what I mean. I use it all. Now while I rotate my usage of guitars, I use all my amps in the studio. But when playing out, I almost invariably go with a specific type of setup: A humbucker guitar through a vintage-Marshall-style amp; and lately and more specifically, a Les Paul through a Marshall-style amp. That tone simply speaks to me. Clean or dirty, it’s what I almost always go to in a live situation.

At my church gig yesterday, I brought along one of my favorite amps: My Aracom PLX18-BB Trem, which is a “Bluesbreaker” style 18 Watt Plexi clone with two channels and no master volume. With that amp, I usually play in the Bright channel, which is a clone of the Plexi circuitry. This is a simple channel with just one volume and one tone knob. I love this channel! I usually have the volume dimed, with the tone at about 3pm, then control the amount of breakup with my guitar’s volume knob and/or pick attack. That amp just oozes Plexi goodness, and is so incredibly dynamic. The EZ81 rectifier provides just the right amount of sag, where even with the amp dimed to the hilt, it never turns soupy or mushy due to sag. I also loaded it with NOS ’59 GE 12AX7’s in V1 and V2, then have a 60’s JAN Philips 12AT7 in V3. To compensate for the overall brightness of the amp, I loaded a kick-ass Fane Medusa 150 to bring out the bottom end. The net result is that this amp sounds A LOT bigger than its 18 Watts may imply.

Then take all that Plexi goodness and combine it with a Les Paul, and to me, that’s a recipe for rock-and-roll! 🙂

It took me several years to get my “Go-To” tone, which accounts for the gear that I’ve got from my explorations; not that I’d get rid of much of it because in the studio, having lots of gear to get different sounds is important, but for me, when I’m playing out, it’s the Les Paul/Plexi combo all the way. To my ears, there’s simply nothing like the tone that that combination produces!

So what produces your “Go-To” tone?

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What’s the point of using an attenuator?

Posted in amplifiers, amps, aracom amps, attenuator, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar attenuators, guitar gear, guitar gear reviews, guitar tone, instruction, Music, musicians, PRX150-Pro, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 10, 2010| 6 Comments »

This is a hotly debated topic, and there are great arguments for or against using one. I’m of the former group and have used attenuators to great success over the years. To demonstrate how useful an attenuator can be, I put together a quick video. Here you go:

I wanted to be as non-technical about the usage of an attenuator because there are so many attenuator designs on the market. So I kept this video at a fairly high level. I’ll get into more detail in the next video when I discuss the Aracom PRX150-Pro.

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Color Me… Transparent

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2009| 3 Comments »

A friend of mine asked me to recommend a pedal that would push his amp into overdrive so it would just be his amp distorting. Naturally, I recommended a transparent clean boost that would slam the front-end of his amp and make his pre-amp tubes clip. So I lent him my Creation Audio Labs Mk.4.23 clean boost (best I’ve ever used, btw). He hooked it up, turned on his amp, slung his axe, strummed a chord, immediately muted and turned to me saying, “Dude, this doesn’t sound right.”

“What do you mean?” I replied,  “It sounds fine to me.”

“It’s too bright!” he exclaimed.

“Dude,” I replied, “That’s how your amp sounds when you overdrive the tubes. Actually, that sounds killer. Lemme try…”

So I took his guitar, and did a couple of riffs, and bent and held a note to get some feedback. The tone was rockin’!

“That was cool, dude, but it’s still really bright,” he said.

“Oh brother, bleed off some highs from your tone knob, for chrissake,” I said, obviously getting a little exasperated.

He did, I played a bit more, then gave the guitar back to him.

“That was better,” he said, “but it doesn’t sound quite right.”

“Ha! That’s because you’ve been using a Tube Screamer for so f$&kin’ long for your overdrive sound, that you’ve never really known what your amp really sounds like when it’s overdriving without any help,” I quipped.

“You know, you’re probably right,” he said, “but it’s what I like, so I think I’ll stick with it. Sorry dude…”

“Hey! Not a problem, you just gave me the material for my next article! Thanks!” I exclaimed.

The point of that story is that for some, transparency isn’t pleasing to them at all. With my friend above, he was used to the Tube Screamer’s mid-range hump, and when he heard his amp overdriving with the full spectrum of the EQ, he didn’t like it all. I also met a dude who uses a compressor that’s always on to fatten his tone and punch through the crowd noise when he’s playing (he plays a lot of open, public spaces). In either of these cases, it’s all good because as the old saying goes, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

The reason why I brought this is up is because there’s a lot of talk among gear freaks about transparency; that is, the natural sound of our guitar(s) and amp(s) without any coloration. By convention, transparent tone sets the baseline for our sound, which we then color with effect pedals. That seems to be the convention. For some however, that baseline includes some coloration; like my friend who always has his Tube Screamer on. Again, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Admittedly, for myself, before I started using attenuators to get the natural cranked tone of my amps, I was someone who used a Tube Screamer or OCD to get my grind. Once I started using attenuators, it actually took me awhile to get used to not only the transparent, natural, cranked sound of my amp but also the dynamics as the pedals I used added sustain and compression. But now, and for the last few years, transparency is where it’s at for me, and it has really opened up a whole world of tone for me. More importantly, it has helped me understand how different types of amps, especially tube amps, sound in their natural states.

Please don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using pedals to form your baseline at all! But if you do turn on a dime, as it were, and decide to go for transparency, be prepared for a little surprise. When you suddenly experience the full spectrum of EQ from your gear – especially with the case of a great attenuator like the Aracom PRX150-Pro that enables you to get the cranked tone of your amp at reasonable volume levels, you may not like it as your ears are used to the altered tone from your pedals or other devices you’ve had in your signal chain to achieve your baseline tone.

But I will say this: I do argue for creating your baseline tone as transparent as possible. As celebrity chef Emeril Legacie says about cooking, “It’s very easy to add ingredients, but it’s a lot more difficult to take them away.” With respect to your rig, if you build on a good base of transparent tone, it’ll have some very good effects on how you approach your tone. I’ll share with you a few points of what I discovered:

  • I’ve come to appreciate the natural character of my amps. I use four amps (though I normally gig with only two of them). These are all based on different power tubes: 6L6, 6V6, EL84, and 6AQ5. These all have different characters when cranked. When I’m recording, I can pick an amp that fits the type of response I’m after.
  • A fallout of the the first point is that I’ve found that I’m using effect pedals a lot less; especially overdrives, which I still love, but I use only to provide a different character. For instance, while I totally dig the sound of my main gigging amps, Aracom VRX22 and VRX18, the drive channels are on the  bright side when pushed. But if I want a little low-end oomph for some rhythms, I switch to the rich clean channels of these amps, and get my grind from one of my overdrives, like my Tone Freak Effects Abunai2, that has a clipping circuit, plus adds both compression and sustain (this pedal rocks, by the way).
  • Going more barebones in my approach has also made me a better player – especially with respect to sustain and vibrato. Where I used lean on my pedals as a bit of crutch to get sustain, I’ve had to learn how to eek out as much sustain from my guitar using just my fingers. Once I started getting that down, it was a whole new ballgame for me.

Whew! I didn’t mean to write an entire treatise! 🙂 But to close this out, if you’ve never really experienced the natural tone of your gear, I encourage you to do so. It might just blow you away. Then again, you might not like what you hear, and that may give you pause to research getting another amp – that’s never a bad thing…

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Where Does Tone Reside Part II

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, guitar gear reviews, guitar tone, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, RV-7, Strat, Tone, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2009| 4 Comments »

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article entitled, “Where DOES TONE Really Reside?” where I discussed the equipment vs. fingers religious debate that seems to rage on the forums now and again. I meant to follow up on that article much earlier, but well, life happens and it’s easy to get sidetracked, so here’s my follow-up:

Tone is NOTHING without music.

Music gives tone a context. Here’s a good test of this statement:

  1. Set your rig up to your sweet spot; that is, where you think it just sings to you, no matter what you play.
  2. Start plucking out random notes, not trying to be musical at all. Could be some dissonant scale of some sort, or just randomly plucked notes. Do some bends and such. Ugly, right?
  3. Now, without changing your settings, make music with that tone. You could comp some chords, or do some melodic lead.

For example, here’s a clip I quickly recorded that demonstrates the steps. In the clip, I’m playing my Strat through a Hardwire reverb, into a Reason Bambino on the Normal channel, at just the edge of breakup. The tone that this produces is silky smooth, but responds to attack and volume increases with just bit of grind. I’ve been using this setting quite a bit lately. It creates a very three-dimensional sound.

The first part – thankfully – is very short, and is just random plucking of notes. Without touching anything on my guitar or amp, in the second part, I do a little chord comping and create some music.

The point to that little exercise is that in both parts, the tone I’m producing – at least to my ears – is gorgeous. But flat-out tone with no context well… it just plain sucks!

So put everything together, where does tone reside? As I stated in the first article, it’s in both your gear and your fingers, but ultimately, you have to give it context, and that’s applying that tone to music. But keep in mind that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What is considered “great tone” is a purely subjective thing.

Cheers!

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Making My Strat Sound More Like a Strat

Posted in effect pedals, Effects, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar accessories, guitar effects, guitar gear, guitar gear reviews, guitar pedals, guitar reviews, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, new gear, pedals, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2009| 3 Comments »

I love my Strat. It’s a cheapo MIM version, but it has a great sound. But ever since I started using it with the KASHA Overdrive pedal, it sounds even more like a Strat to me! I know, that sounds a little cuckoo, but that Classic channel on the KASHA Overdrive really brings out that jangly tone that defines the Strat tone; that’s to my ears, at least…

The other day, I was messing around with a dominant seventh ditty in A as I was trying to pick up some improv techniques from Chuck D’Aloia’s Blues with Brains video. I originally just recorded my Strat running through a reverb, then into my amp. It sounded pretty good, but I wanted to get a bit more top-end bite, but not a lot of drive. So I switched my KASHA Overdrive on and my jaw dropped! Here’s what I came up with…

That pedal just brings out the best in a Strat. I swear, now that I’ve been using it with my Strat for the last couple of days, I think it’ll always be on when I perform with my Strat. It really sounds great!

BTW, both rhythm and lead parts were played with the Kasha overdrive pedal. For the rhythm part, I was in the Classic channel to get that jangly Strat sound from position 2, while I was in the Hot channel for the lead in the neck pickup. So sweet sounding!

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How the New Breed of Attenuators Will Change How We Approach Our Performance

Posted in amplifiers, amps, Amps/Amplification, attenuator, gear, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, overdrive, PRX150-Pro, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2009| 3 Comments »

Aracom Amps PRX150-Pro AttenuatorAs many know, I’m a big fan of attenuators. In the past I’ve owned a couple and have tried out several. And with the addition of the Aracom PRX150-Pro to my rig, I’ve finally got a device that is helping me realize all the tonal goodness my amps have to offer. But this entry isn’t about the Aracom attenuator. There are a few attenuators that have entered the market in the recent past including the Faustine Phantom and others that are having the same effect on axe slingers and how they approach their tone.

So what’s the big deal? Most folks know how an attenuator operates. It sits between your amp and your speaker(s), and squelches the output signal from your amp which results in a lower output volume, so you can drive your amp to high gain levels and not shatter your eardrums. That’s the basic premise behind attenuators in general. But up until recently, attenuation came at a price, and that is the loss of tone and dynamics, or completely changed tone at higher attenuation levels; to put it simply, loss of tonal quality. I’m willing to bet that this very thing has kept lots of people from using an attenuator.

But with the new breed of attenuators hitting the market, loss of tonal quality is much less of an issue, if it’s an issue at all. Now you can bring your output volume WAY down, and be assured that the tonal quality you’ve worked so hard to achieve is still there.

So how will this change the way we approach our tone? I would venture to guess that many guitarists have really never known what their amp sounds like fully cranked up – at least for extended periods of time. Sure, if you’re a pro and regularly play huge venues, you know what it sounds like. But for us mere mortals who rarely play in more than a dance club, we’ve never been able to fully experience the cranked up tone of our amps, and that’s where a great attenuator comes into play.

When I hooked up my PRX150-Pro, the first thing I did was to set it on load mode and turn the variable to full attenuation, then dimed the master and volume on my amp to see what it would sound like. I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of new tones that were suddenly available to me: rich harmonics, tons of sustain, and incredible touch sensitivity. It was as if a whole new world was opened up to me.

With my old attenuator, I rarely went to real high levels of attenuation because it made my tone sound weak and lifeless.  Plus, I didn’t want to burn out my tubes – which I learned the hard way when I cranked my amp while hooked up to the attenuator. But with the Aracom attenuator, I knew I could crank it as high as I wanted to and still be safe. What this means is that I now have access to a wider landscape of tones and dynamics that I can also safely reach. And that’s another feature of the new breed of attenuators: They appear to be much safer to use than the older designs out there.

Here’s an interesting question I got from a buddy of mine: Will I get rid of my overdrive pedals as a result now being able to get the fully cranked tone of my amp? Not on your life! 🙂 I love how they add color to my tone. But I will tell you this: Now that I can crank up my amp to high gain levels without the concomitant high volume levels, I’m actually not using my overdrive pedals as much. Oh, I still use them because they add certain characteristics that aren’t possible with my natural overdrive tone; just not as much as I used to because when I want just straight amp overdrive, I just crank my amp. But when I want to use them, I run them through the clean channel of my amp that has lots of clean headroom, so I can take advantage of the tone that they offer.

So is it a significant change to how we approach our tone? Possibly. I know of some folks who’ve completely stopped using overdrive pedals altogether as a result of using an attenuator, and use a clean boost or even just their volume knob on their guitar to get the lead volume they want. Me? I like to have a few different “brushes” that I can use to create different textures, but in either case, getting that cranked up tone naturally without shattering eardrums is pretty huge.

I think the folks who will gain the most from these great new attenuators are the home studio musicians. Imagine being able to record a screaming guitar solo, and not have the wife or neighbors yelling at you to turn down your volume! I regularly do my recording into the wee hours of the morning, so having an attenuator has been a godsend. But up until I got my PRX150-Pro, I had to wait to record solos until it was day when I could turn up my amp to a gain level that didn’t get me yelled at, as my other attenuators just didn’t give me the tone I needed at high attenuation levels. Even if I used an overdrive pedal, it doesn’t sound good unless it’s working with your amp and pushing your pre-amp tubes, and that takes juice! With a great, transparent, or non-tone-sucking attenuator, you can push your amp hard, and keep your volume under control!

I know of a lot musicians who poo-poo the use of an attenuator. But an attenuator can do wonders for gigging. Want to make the sound guys happy? Here’s another way to look at it: With an attenuator, you can focus on your tone, and not projecting out to the audience. Get enough volume to hear yourself on stage, then let the sound guys do their thing. PA technology has come a long way since the early days of rock and roll, where amps had to be played loud to get the sound out to the audience. Also, if you think about it, speakers are highly directional. If you want to disperse your sound, use the PA.

There’s been an interesting thread that I’ve been lurking on The Gear Page entitled, “Sound guys think I’m too loud.” Someone suggested early on that the original poster could use an attenuator or a smaller amp to reduce their volume. The suggestion of using an attenuator went largely ignored, but as I followed this thread and read all the various insights, using an attenuator is the perfect solution for this.

I’ve heard a lot of the complaints about attenuators in the past, and I’ve also had my issues with them. But with the new breed of attenuators, tone suck is no longer an issue. And that tonal quality will be sure to change how guitarists approach their performances.

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