Ending the Pedal Dance - A Tube Amp Tone Tip

[Obed]

I originally mentioned this concept in another thread, and a couple of people there really liked it. One suggested I make a new post about it and see if the Epi-Mods can get us to sticky it. So, here goes!

 

Tube Amps - The Quest For Tone.

It seems that we guitar guys spend a lot of our time searching for the right tone. Getting a good distortion is one of the biggest factors in finding the tone we're looking for. Most folks would agree that the distortion of an overdriven tube amp is highly desirable. The Epiphone Valve Junior is often the first tube amp any of us own, what with it's low cost and simple operation.

 

But what happens next? Often we start shelling out money on stomp boxes of all sorts looking for the best way to dress up the VJ (or whatever other amp we happen to own). I'm here to tell you that this may not be the best plan of attack for most of us.

 

 

An Old-School Approach.

For many of us, we look to the heyday of classic rock in the late 60's and early 70's for inspiration. But remember that they didn't have all these crazy effects boxes back then. For the most part, all many of them had was a guitar and a tube amp. So, how did they do it?

 

With the guitar's volume knob.

 

While most of us simply leave the guitar's volume on "10", the guitar adds its own gain to the signal typically starting above "3." The practical upshoot of this is that you can change the level of distortion by changing your volume, both with the knob and with your picking hand's intensity of attack. This works especially well with tube amps, as the overdrive is directly related to clipping the signal with greater gain.

 

 

How I Do It.

For me, it works best like this if I set up the amp's gain in such a way that when my volume's on "6" the signal is clean when I pick lightly and slightly clipping when I dig in more to get the following results:

 

- (2-3) The guitar is VERY clean. Depending on the settings it can be almost acoustic-y. This is good for chunky chord strumming.

- (4-5) Good, clean electric guitar tones. This is the typical "clean guitar" sound

- (6) Clean when played lightly, slightly dirty when played heavily. Very bluesy. This is where I spend most of my time.

- (7-8) Dirty in a classic rock crunch sort of way. This is where most of my overdriven rythm playing occurs

- (9-10) Screaming lead that cuts over the band. This is where solos happen.

- Remember that the pickup selector and the tone knob also give variety to the sound. Just as your volume doesn't have to be "dimed-out," your tone doesn't either.

 

 

Final Thoughts.

Not only will this free you up from the pedal dance, but you won't have your pedals decaying your signal or coloring the natural, warm, and all-around-good sound of your amp. Plus, you'll find yourself being a more expressive player as you learn to make the tone changes come from YOU rather than all your toys. You get to concentrate on your actual playing rather than screwing around with your gear all the time. Mix in playing with your tone knobs, and you can get even more sound variety! If you watch the pros, they very rarely mess with their amp once the playing starts.

 

 

Try it out... it's how Clapton, Page, and the rest used to do it. It may not be ideal for everyone, but I've found this technique has been amazing for me. It's tried-and-true, and works wonderfully on simpler amps like the Valve Junior.

[layboomo]

I originally mentioned this concept in another thread' date=' and a couple of people there really liked it. One suggested I make a new post about it and see if the Epi-Mods can get us to sticky it. So, here goes!

 

[u']Tube Amps - The Quest For Tone.[/u]

It seems that we guitar guys spend a lot of our time searching for the right tone. Getting a good distortion is one of the biggest factors in finding the tone we're looking for. Most folks would agree that the distortion of an overdrived tube amp is highly desirable. The Epiphone Vale Junior is often the first tube amp any of us own, what with it's low cost and simple operation.

 

But what happens next? Often we start shelling out money on stomp boxes of all sorts looking for the best way to dress up the VJ (or whatever other amp we happen to own). I'm here to tell you that this may not be the best plan of attack for most of us.

 

 

An Old-School Approach.

For many of us, we look to the heyday of classic rock in the late 60's and early 70's for inspiration. But remember that they didn't have all these crazy effects boxes back then. For the most part, all many of them had was a guitar and a tube amp. So, how did they do it?

 

With the guitar's volume knob.

 

While most of us simply leave the guitar's volume on "10", the guitar adds its own gain to the signal typically starting above "3." The practical upshoot of this is that you can change the level of distortion by changing your volume, both with the knob and with your picking hand's intensity of attack. This works especially well with tube amps, as the overdrive is directly related to clipping the signal with greater gain.

 

 

How I Do It.

For me, it works best like this if I set up the amp's gain in such a way that when my volume's on "6" the signal is clean when I pick lightly and slightly clipping when I dig in more to get the following results:

 

- (2-3) The guitar is VERY clean. Depending on the settings it can be almost acoustic-y. This is good for chunky chord strumming.

- (4-5) Good, clean electric guitar tones. This is the typical "clean guitar" sound

- (6) Clean when played lightly, slightly dirty when played heavily. Very bluesy. This is where I spend most of my time.

- (7-8) Dirty in a classic rock crunch sort of way. This is where most of my overdriven rythm playing occurs

- (9-10) Screaming lead that cuts over the band. This is where solos happen.

- Remember that the pickup selector and the tone knob also give variety to the sound. Just as your volume doesn't have to be "dimed-out," your tone doesn't either.

 

 

Final Thoughts.

Not only will this free you up from the pedal dance, but you won't have your pedals decaying your signal or coloring the natural, warm, and all-around-good sound of your amp. Plus, you'll find yourself being a more expressive player as you learn to make the tone changes come from YOU rather than all your toys. You get to concentrate on your actual playing rather than screwing around with your gear all the time. Mix in playing with your tone knobs, and you can get even more sound variety! If you watch the pros, they very rarely mess with their amp once the playing starts.

 

 

Try it out... it's how Clapton, Page, and the rest used to do it. It may not be ideal for everyone, but I've found this technique has been amazing for me. It's tried-and-true, and works wonderfully on simpler amps like the Valve Junior.

 

 

+1 to all of it! Right on the money IMO!

[m-theory]

Good info to post. I would've just assumed that this was common knowledge for all, but you're right...this isn't something that young players are aware of.

 

There's a 16 year old phenom that's been coming to our Sunday night jam for a couple years (he just got accepted into a music school to finish HS...so cool!), and he learned this guitar volume trick by watching me and some of the other more seasoned players, but there are numerous players, especially young ones, that just hit full throttle all the time. Even though some of these guys are pretty good players, they tend to fatigue the listener very quickly, because they simply have no touch or dynamics.

 

This may be the hardest thing for any musician to get a handle on, truth be told, but it's a characteristic that all great players have mastered, and anyone who can get control of it sets themselves apart from the vast majority of all other players.

[Obed]

I first heard about this concept years ago from one of my buddies, but he didn't explain it very well. Plus, I didn't really know much about how to dial in a decent sound on my amp at the time. Years later, I started playing with it after I bought a SansAmp pedal for plugging in direct at church. I originally had troubles getting a good clean sound, and remembered what my buddy had said.

 

Since then I've found this popping up here and there. Gibson's email newsletter had an article about it once. A couple guitar magazines did too. I've heard guys like Joe Bonamassa talk about when they learned it. On another guitar forum I'm part of, it seems that most folks have never even tried this. Whenever tone discussions come up, most of 'em say that they couldn't play without their tube screamer pedal.

 

I was talking about this with that same buddy the other day. He was saying how he'll go through cycles of times when he uses just the amp and this technique versus times when he uses his army of stompboxes... and whenever he switches back to the simple amp-and-guitar setup, he falls in love with his tone again.

[layboomo]

"Good info to post. I would've just assumed that this was common knowledge for all, but you're right...this isn't something that young players are aware of. "

 

Not limited to younger players m-theory........I know alot of guys who play dimed all the time and rely on their pedals for everything as a matter of habit......A bad one IMHO.

[dmock66]

"Good info to post. I would've just assumed that this was common knowledge for all' date=' but you're right...this isn't something that young players are aware of. "

 

Not limited to younger players m-theory........I know alot of guys who play dimed all the time and rely on their pedals for everything as a matter of habit......A bad one IMHO.[/quote']

 

Guilty here. I had always set my amps to get the best tone I could from them (clean and gain channels) then used pedals for the rest. I have used an OD through the clean channel for a while even when I have a gain channel, but none the less - volume and tone on 10 and let it rip. Over the past year or so I've started to read more and more about how players use the volume knob to effect their tone. Since applying some of these techniques myself I've realized how some of the tones I've heard over the years, on all the albums I've tried to emulate, were essentially done this way. Yeah, some guys I dig play full out all the time - but like has already been mentioned, those guys cause ear fatigue quickly. I now realize that I was one of those guys. I'm not a kid anymore (41 years young), but never had anyone show me this before. I never read an article about it either. I grew up on Van Halen and Scorpions. If you weren't on full gain, you weren't set up right!

[cGil]

Yup. Good stuff! I'm with ya'll 100% on this one. I sorta tripped over the secrets of riding the knobs 10 years ago when I discovered the joys of coil taps and phase switches. That's when I realized there are infinite tones at your fingertips if you simply know to just look for it.

 

Gil...

[ssgfowler]

Back in the 80's when I was a young and kinda dumb metal dude I kept the guitar on 10 no matter what, but then I was playing 100w SS Peavey's at earsplitting levels, so it really didn't make much difference.

 

Now, ever since I picked the guitar up again, and went tubeaholic, the volume knob is my channel switch, distortion pedal, and lead boost. The only time I ever use a distortion pedal now is when I'm forced to practice with the amp turned down so low it won't overdrive on its' own. I hate having to use it.

 

For proof of how well it works just watch any live AC/DC footage and see just how much Angus Young fiddles around with the volume knob on his SG to get from almost clean to screaming with a very old plexi Marshall.

[copper1281734000]

This is some good advice, but it doesn't work if your pickups are to hot like mine. I don't necessarily like them being this hot, but I'm not into pickup changing (yet). I can do some degree of overdrive control with my volume control, but not enough to go from clean to leads with the turn of a volume control.

 

I usually keep the volume on 10 for my most used sounds, and if I need less drive, I turn down the control. If I do a solo, I either use the boost on my amp or my modded DS-1, which is now kind of a clean boost.

 

This is very useful, maybe I should get around to changing the pups, but I'll do that another day. Great advice though.

[ricach]

Although I utilize my guitar volume a lot, I find when I tire of 'my' sound, its sometimes cheaper to buy a pedal for some new fun then to change out anything else. It has nothing to do with finding the 'ultimate tone', just a new one.

[Obed]

This is some good advice' date=' but it doesn't work if your pickups are to hot like mine. I don't necessarily like them being this hot, but I'm not into pickup changing (yet). I can do some degree of overdrive control with my volume control, but not enough to go from clean to leads with the turn of a volume control.

 

I usually keep the volume on 10 for my most used sounds, and if I need less drive, I turn down the control. If I do a solo, I either use the boost on my amp or my modded DS-1, which is now kind of a clean boost.

 

This is very useful, maybe I should get around to changing the pups, but I'll do that another day. Great advice though.[/quote']

 

What pickups are you using?

[bluefoxicy]

Oddly enough, the way I've been playing La Grange involves picking style. I'd put the amp right to where it would overdrive a little fingering, and finger some stuff; then when the overdrive kicks in I grab a pick and start hitting it heavy, and it starts pushing the amp with the little extra attack and takes it just where I need.

 

Of course, I had the guitar on 10.

[bluefoxicy]

The only time I ever use a distortion pedal now is when I'm forced to practice with the amp turned down so low it won't overdrive on its' own. I hate having to use it.

 

Bite the bullet and get a hotplate. People might have other cheap attenuators that work but so far I keep hearing that the $300 one alters the tone the least, and it sounds to me like you really want your tube tone.

 

Of course if you're on a budget you might have to go with a $50 Webber attenuator... they don't do too much badness, it's not like you can't find a cheap attenuator that won't totally kill your sound. Ask around or check the other attenuator threads.

[ssgfowler]

 

Bite the bullet and get a hotplate. People might have other cheap attenuators that work but so far I keep hearing that the $300 one alters the tone the least' date=' and it sounds to me like you really want your tube tone.

 

Of course if you're on a budget you might have to go with a $50 Webber attenuator... they don't do too much badness, it's not like you can't find a cheap attenuator that won't totally kill your sound. Ask around or check the other attenuator threads.[/quote']

 

 

I have the Weber Mini Mass and like it a bunch, but sometimes I still have to turn it down to the point that the Weber sucks so much tone that I end up putting the amp on 3 and use the distortion pedal(ie. GF is home and I just have to play).

The happiest medium (for me) is the Weber on 8 and the amp at about 2 o'clock. Unless the mean old lady who lives across the street ain't home, then I can get away with playing it the way it was meant to be... Cranked!!!

[m-theory]

People might have other cheap attenuators that work but so far I keep hearing that the $300 one alters the tone the least

It's very good, but it's still just a resistive attenuator, no different than any other, really, other than that it likes to see a specific ohmage load. I would find it very hard to justify spending $300 for an attenuator for a 5 watt amp, frankly. If I had to attenuate, I'd be far more inclined to go with one of the Weber small wattage units, or build my own.

 

In Weber world, the load dump is a resistive attenuator, and the mass adds a speaker motor, to simulate a driven speaker. The former is more transparent than the latter. Both work fine, but both do color the tone to a degree, the extent of which is determined by the amount of attenuation applied.

 

Any form of attenuator will change tone at least a bit, because part of what you hear with a cranked amp is air movement from the speakers being pushed hard, and that just doesn't happen when you attenuate. Still, without question, attenuation is far preferrable to pedal distortion, imo.

 

The power scaling option would be an interesting one to try, although it's more involved, of course.

[copper1281734000]

 

What pickups are you using?

 

498T. Too hot, other pickups I use work great with this technique.

[m-theory]

This is some good advice, but it doesn't work if your pickups are to hot like mine.

Change the volume pots. Yours are probably 300k or so. They should be 500k. You could go to 1m, but it's really not necessary, and does weird things to the taper, imo. That's a 13k pickup, which, although hotter than a PAF by far, should absolutely be able to clean up nicely with the volume pot.

[copper1281734000]

Change the volume pots. Yours are probably 300k or so. They should be 500k. You could go to 1m' date=' but it's really not necessary, and does weird things to the taper, imo. That's a 13k pickup, which, although hotter than a PAF by far, should absolutely be able to clean up nicely with the volume pot. [/quote']

 

Thanks, I'll check sometime and decide upon it.

[alfsboy]

Last week I tried a variety of guitars through a Fender Pro Junior valve amp .pure heaven .I played a 335 type Legacy which had suprisingly good pickups in it and anew Taylor solid body .A Gibson ES 175 and a Fender USA telecaster .all were simple tone heaven using the only two controls ,volume and tone ,on the amp and controlling volume mainly by the guitars volume .i played some clean jazz on them and cranked it all up to OD . Sheer bliss .Sheer control. I will get a Pro junior at some point ,nothing else is need .

the shop has now gone .Sound Control has gone into receivership but thanks for letting me into tone heaven before you went ..

[wpkg]

I originally mentioned this concept in another thread' date=' and a couple of people there really liked it. One suggested I make a new post about it and see if the Epi-Mods can get us to sticky it. So, here goes!

 

 

[/quote']

 

+1 this should be a sticky. and like Van Halen said, Volume is really Tone.

[m-theory]

Thanks, I'll check sometime and decide upon it.

This is a very simple way to significantly improve your guitar for very minimal cash outlay. Good pots will set you back about $20, and the tone caps are a buck or so. Huge bang for the buck that's worth many times more than the money and time it takes to do it.

[ssgfowler]

Change the volume pots. Yours are probably 300k or so. They should be 500k. You could go to 1m' date=' but it's really not necessary, and does weird things to the taper, imo. That's a 13k pickup, which, although hotter than a PAF by far, should absolutely be able to clean up nicely with the volume pot. [/quote']

 

Good advice. Stock Gibson pots are 500k for both volume and tone. I use an Angus Young Signature p/u in my SG at the bridge and it's one of the hottest that Gibson makes but it still cleans up nicely with the guitars' volume knob.

[Steven Lister]

I originally mentioned this concept in another thread' date=' and a couple of people there really liked it. One suggested I make a new post about it and see if the Epi-Mods can get us to sticky it.

 

* * * *

Try it out... it's how Clapton, Page, and the rest used to do it. It's tried-and-true, and works wonderfully on amps like the Valve Junior.[/quote']

 

Definitely should be a STICKY!!! Here's why:

1. THIS METHOD WORKS!

2. EASY TO FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS GIVEN

3. IT'S TIMELESS

4. SHOULDN"T BE LOST TO FUTURE FORUM MEMBERS -- FORGOTTEN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TOPIC LIST

5. WILL SELL ANOTHER WAREHOUSE FULL OF VJR's

 

And, if EPI wants to sell even more product they should also STICKY it in the Electrics forum (more traffic there)!

 

Many players who would/should buy VJr. will pass on it -- why? Only one knob!?! We new-age players are so accustomed to multiple bells/whistles that at first glance, VJr. looks like some kind of toy (on the shelf next to multiple knob amps).

 

When I went amp shopping late last year, I initially passed over VJr. b/c of the 1 knob+low price=cheap toy equation. Gladly I put a peddle in front and only then did I change my mind and buy it. But, it was only after reading Obed's first post on this method (thanks again BTW), and trying it out, did I discover what VJr. was capable of -- without any pedal at all!

 

Bottom-line: This method is a key to unlocking VJr.'s full potential and shows players and potential buyers that without anything but good ol' fashioned, free, know-how, VJr. is a vintage rock/blues PROFESSIONAL GRADE WORKHORSE!

 

Garage bands, bedrooms, studios, and blue-note bars from Memphis to Melbourne to Moscow, mike-it-up and...,

hit every BLUE NOTE baaaby..., I'm going to play on

[beau]

A lot of times, I'll use a compression pedal to reduce the volume - so instead of managing the volume knob which does tend to roll off the highs, I'll use the comp pedal for my clean playing, and then turn it off for the leads. Volume is a tricky thing to mess with when you're playing guitar and singing at the same time... a single pedal is a lot easier because it doesn't require looking to see where you're turning it.

 

However, sure, during solos, it's great to vary the dynamics with the knob.

[m-theory]

instead of managing the volume knob which does tend to roll off the highs

Only if your guitar doesn't have a treble bleeder cap. You should install them. Very simple to do, and it allows you full use of the volume pot.

 

Volume is a tricky thing to mess with when you're playing guitar and singing at the same time

Just like anything else, it requires some practice, but it's actually easier than searching for a stompbox while you're singing. I know exactly where my volume knobs are, and don't have to look down to adjust them. If I'm aiming for a pedal, I almost always have to look down, or else I hit the wrong one.