vincolo1 Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 No I am not turning my amp up too loud (is that possible..?) I am getting a headache from too darn many options.....the guitar, the pedal, the amp, the electronics, the pick, the hand motion, the cables, the type of speakers...good god man...... Then on the amp there are tones, levels, positions, volume, room placement and on the guitar there is tone, volume, wood type, pickup type, string type, fret positions.......its endless....... How long has it taken to get that sound you liked? Or are you still searching? and if you have "your sound" did you just model what someone else had (for equipment) and did that work for you...? at least I got one part of it right...the Epi LP because even if I never get the holly grail of sound, I am at lease certain that I am holding a guitar that could deliver it when the combination is correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlie brown Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 "My" sound/tone, is really a mixture of all my influences, but distilled down, to what I really like the most! One guitar, and that might vary, any given night, and a great tube amp! Fender Deluxe Reverb is an excellent all around tone monster. I do use a Boss Blues Driver...but only to beef up the tone for leads...not to "change" it, save adding some "grit." Any other pedals, are only used when playing gigs that require lots of different stylings, to (help try to) satisfy the audience. But, if it was up to me, 98% of the time, I'd use a guitar, the boss pedal, and an great tube amp. Anything more "distills" or replaces tone. Whether that's good or bad, depends on your own preferences. ;>) CB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JefferySmith Posted August 25, 2008 Share Posted August 25, 2008 No I am not turning my amp up too loud (is that possible..?) I am getting a headache from too darn many options.....the guitar' date=' the pedal, the amp, the electronics, the pick, the hand motion, the cables, the type of speakers...good god man...... Then on the amp there are tones, levels, positions, volume, room placement and on the guitar there is tone, volume, wood type, pickup type, string type, fret positions.......its endless....... How long has it taken to get that sound you liked? Or are you still searching? and if you have "your sound" did you just model what someone else had (for equipment) and did that work for you...? at least I got one part of it right...the Epi LP because even if I never get the holly grail of sound, I am at lease certain that I am holding a guitar that could deliver it when the combination is correct. [/quote'] Get a Line 6 amp. That should quintuple your choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bender 4 Life Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 I had "that tone" long long ago.........but eventually my '71 Univox 105w 4 channel stack completely self destructed (giving me a near fatal shock and melting all the wiring in my Les Paul in the process). I searched for "that tone" again for years . Went through a couple of Marshalls, a couple of Fenders, and several lesser known amps.....once again, Then I bought a Vox Valvetronix amp.......set it on the Twin Reverb model.....and channel 2 on the Dumble OD model. Got my 2 favorite tones back........with 1 wonderful amp!:D/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheX Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 The only time I ever had that perfect tone was playing a 50 year old classical guitar in Spain. I couldn't afford to buy it but I spent hours playing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 Believe it or not I've recently achieved the exact sound I've had in my head. It's a warm full clean tone with a lot of body, not punchy. I play mostly jazz but I don't like the sound of the typical big jazz box guitars. I accomplished this miraculous feat with an Epi LP Ultra II and a Crate Palomino V32 Class A amp. The Ultra II pick ups were changed to the SD Jazz - JB combo. I'm only using the SD Jazz pick-up in the neck position. Occasionally I'll use the nanomag. Of course this is all very specific to my personal goals. Now that I found the sound, I'm selling everything else, and I'm cured of GAS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RotcanX Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 The search for tone is a never-ending quest. For no matter how great your sound is, it can always be better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gashole Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 It took me about 22 years, but I found it. I've had high end and low end guitars ;w/ buckers and traditional single coils, tube amp combos and various stacks, a few hybrid amps, pedals of every description, 2 processors, and while I often got close it did not come together for me until 6 or 7 months ago: That is when I discovered P90 PU's weren't the cheap looking POS I had always dismissed them as being. Now, I have found the tone that I think is "me". P90 PU's sound great through all of my amplification options, w/ or w/o pedals..their initial response and decay honestly make playing "easier" for me...I don't feel like I'm fighting the guitar or the amp to grab the tone I hear in my head...it's just right there. I had no idea what I was missing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hbomb76 Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 My IDEAL tone came to me back in the mid 90's with an SG through a Marshall JTM-30 (30 watt 2x10 combo) ran into a (cosmetically almost-matching) Marshall 1965A 4x10 cab. Unfortunately the cab was 8ohms and the speaker output was 16 on the amp, so I couldn't use it that way obviously. But while I was messing around with it, the combination of the open-back combo and the closed-back cab provided a friggin' BEAUTIFUL balance. It was like Angus Young's "Highway to Hell" tone with a hair more overdrive and a tad more low end. It was truly MY "brown sound", and if I can ever get another one of those amps and another 4x10 I'll have the cab wired for 8ohms and will get rid of everything else. Till then, I get fairly close with my AVT halfstack (on its own or through the clean channel with a Blues Driver), but it sucks that I found my sound so early and had to abandon it. So I KNOW my sound, AND have acheived it, but it went as fast as it came. H-Bomb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffguitar Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 Mine came with a set of Gibson 57 classic humbuckers and a Johnson all tube amp with a Patriot Ragin Cagin speaker in it and a Behringer tube screamer. Still trying to get my 57 classics to work properly in the bridge position, but even now, they sound incredible. Also, a Jimmie Vaughan strat with custom shop 54's in it also makes me all warm and fuzzy. i use both at shows and switch back and forth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Lister Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 How long has it taken to get that sound you liked? Or are you still searching? and if you have "your sound" did you just model what someone else had (for equipment) and did that work for you...? Tone searching never ends completely. There are too many variables at play. But' date=' what most pros know [i'](and rarely tell)[/i] is that once you find good, workable tone the rest is nuance and tweaks. The familiar tones we attribute to certain pros have more to do with how you play -- not what you play it on. As you mature as a player you develop certain styles that you use over and over, mixing and matching and blending, and that results in the so-called signature tones. As for modeling someone else's equipment -- a dead end. Think of it this way -- if you and Jimmy Page played the same night on the same stage with the same gear, Jimmy will sound great like you expect and you will sound different -- maybe just as good or better, but different. But that's good. The world has Jimmy, it needs you. Hit every BLUE NOTE baaaby..., I'm going to play on:-" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CodeMonk Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 Believe it or not I've recently achieved the exact sound I've had in my head. It's a warm full clean tone with a lot of body' date=' not punchy. I play mostly jazz but I don't like the sound of the typical big jazz box guitars. I accomplished this miraculous feat with an Epi LP Ultra II and a Crate Palomino V32 Class A amp. The Ultra II pick ups were changed to the SD Jazz - JB combo. I'm only using the SD Jazz pick-up in the neck position. Occasionally I'll use the nanomag. Of course this is all very specific to my personal goals. Now that I found the sound, I'm selling everything else, and I'm cured of GAS. [/quote'] Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I've had my AC30CCH for about 6 months or so. It always sounded great but was still looking for the sound I heard in my head. Well, this past weekend I spent at a friends house. He has a basement so we can jam for awhile. After fiddling with all the knobs, I hit the sweet spot I was looking for (The AC30 has alot of sweet spots IMO)! I sounds great with my EPI LP (With GFS FAT PATs) as well as my Strat (Stock pickups, although I am still considering Texas Specials, or GFS's equivalent) . And quite often I have my TS-808 running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smerdlap Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 oh god.... i spent hours in front of my amp, my ibanez, 1 overdrive pedal and my multi effects pedal. after 3 days of tinkering, i found an AWESOME sound! but it sounds like crap with my new G-400. so i have been trying to re-find it. the pain is endless... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stan 58 Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 Only 1 post and your an advanced member, you must know the boss! Stan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincolo1 Posted August 28, 2008 Author Share Posted August 28, 2008 Only 1 post and your an advanced member' date=' you must know the boss! Stan.[/quote']for some its all quality...not quantity...!!!!!! 1 post but what a post it was...! Hee Hee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincolo1 Posted August 28, 2008 Author Share Posted August 28, 2008 Good, so I am not crazy, I am not missing the train on trying to find this certain combo that makes all the effort worth it and I am not alone..... As I read the post strangely this quest for sound and for those who had it "once" sounds like a lot of college stories I have heard....."there was this one girl in college,,,lost her, but been looking ever since". I am searching for the open and air-y sound of Boston...late 70's. (well their sound didn't really change in the 80's)anyway, there are a few sounds I like, but Boston would make me happy and then again, there is this other side where heavily over driven, pinch harmonics and bends payed real fast provides a sound that comes damn close to "This other girl in college"..! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Sentry Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 I dunno, man...I'm kind of strange about my tone. As far as I'm concerned, there is no one amp I prefer, no one effect that I must have (EXCEPTION: a volume pedal because you can't do swells as well with a humbucking guitar vs. a single coil.), and to a point, there is no one guitar that delivers everything and anything I could ever want as far as my "dream tone". I play my Gibson, my Fenders...and my Epiphones. In the past I've owned Ibanez, Dean, Kramer, and a whole assortment of brands that have come and gone. I've got Roland amps, Line 6 amps, and in the past I've had a whole array of different makes, and manufacturers ranging from combo solid state amps that would blow someone's head off to vintage tube half stacks. The whole TRICK to this is not to find one "magic" combination that delivers your perfect tone....do that and you'll put yourself into such a deep hole you'll never crawl out, and it may also be a moot point because 6 months down the road you may find yourself doing something else stylistically. The TRICK to this.....(and this is just my opinion). First...get rid of the pedals. No...don't toss 'em! Just set them aside.... Next....plug the guitar straight into the amplifier. Depending on what you have....dial it in for a really clean tone (no effects, no reverb, no delay...just turn it off for now), or a tone with a slight amount of crunch. Do your adjustments until you have a tone with THAT setting that you're happy with. Once you've got THAT tone down, you can build on it accordingly by adding in your effects one at a time and setting those based on what you want. Tone, IMHO, is like a house. But before you can build your metaphorical house, you have to have the foundation. And, because not all houses are alike, not every guitar/amp is going to give you that "sweet spot" based on a certain setting. Some amps might sound better with more midrange vs. others. Or, more presence, higher or lower treble. But if you are getting headaches, IMHO you need to step away from the effects boxes, strip it back down to the basics, and start over in terms of dialing in what you want in terms of tone. 2 cents. EDIT: One more thing....as far as brand name goes, or whatever...who cares? If you're using a 200 dollar guitar and a cheap, 100 dollar amplifier that is delivering this tone that your ear likes, that's all that matters. (And sometimes, when a song calls for a certain kind of part, that can very well be what the doctor ordered.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincolo1 Posted August 28, 2008 Author Share Posted August 28, 2008 Hmmm, very good point The_Sentry. Take it back to basics....I have not done this in a long time, its always pedal on...max pedal settings and go from there. I'll try this tonight. your so right about a hole you'll never get out of. I feel that I am there...either my licks sounds are unappealing or they sound like some other lick sound I am tired of. So yes the reverse of adding more gear.....reset the gear you have and build from the bottom again. Another person just recently mentioned taking a weekday and taking over the amp tryout room at the local music store and try everything they have.....BYOG (bring your own guitar) and for their time at least buy a new set of strings or something to be fair. Thanks everyone....all advice has been great and now I feel like I have a new avenue to travel down and I am eager to get started. now about those college girls...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gvdv Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 No I am not turning my amp up too loud (is that possible..?) I am getting a headache from too darn many options.....the guitar' date=' the pedal, the amp, the electronics, the pick, the hand motion, the cables, the type of speakers...good god man...... Then on the amp there are tones, levels, positions, volume, room placement and on the guitar there is tone, volume, wood type, pickup type, string type, fret positions.......its endless....... How long has it taken to get that sound you liked? Or are you still searching? and if you have "your sound" did you just model what someone else had (for equipment) and did that work for you...? at least I got one part of it right...the Epi LP because even if I never get the holly grail of sound, I am at lease certain that I am holding a guitar that could deliver it when the combination is correct. [/quote'] I like different tones for different songs, on different guitars, and at different times. And then I also often change my mind, too. :) If it sounds good, then I'd use it, if I were you. The great thing about these choices is that we can take advantage of them when, and if, we want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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