Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Could it be the amp?

I did some testing not too long ago with some friends: 5 guitars through four different amps.

It was interesting - they all sounded good through all the amps. You could still distinguish the sounds you anticipated from different pickups but all was good.

That said - my FireBird was having some issues recently and because I love it so much, I assumed it was the amp. I was wrong. Loose wire inside - finally broke off and boy was that an ugly sound!

Good luck

Talbot

"Any ideas how i can at least take some of the extremes out of my sound ? By extremes I mean when my amp is cranked up which i always have it for the record, take out some of the extreme tinny sounds and the extreme bass sounds without having to create separate sounds for every guitar I use?"

You can try to buff the treble with your tone control on the Strat, but every guitar is different as far as components, the rate sound comes out of the wood and back into the strings, body wood makes a big difference as does the electronics and impedance and frequency of the pickups. If you have an FX pedal like a Zoom, or any of the others they usually have a preamp setting there. With something like that you can store up to 99 combinations of EQ. That means you can set up your guitars each to its own EQ that you want for that axe. And if you liked the FX you can program each with the characteristics that best match that guitar since FX react radically different at times with different guitars. I happen to like the Zoom FX better than my older pedals. Most of those boxes have a noise floor at about -100db, meaning you would have to crank your amp almost full out to even hear anything from it.

I have a Zoom G3, and I program the pre amps first in the FX chain. That way I can use the same FX but still get the great individual tone of each guitar without need to adjust anything after you set the preamp once for each. To go from guitar to guitar in preamps just use the up down foot switches. But any modeler / FX box can be programed like that. It also has the options of by passing the FX modeled amps and cabinets so that you don't color the natural tones from the guitars.

Good advice from Slacker - set up presets for your different guitars. BUT the real purpose of having multiple guitars is to have different sounds. If you just want two guitars with two different tunings ready to go, either get 2 of the same model guitar, or learn to retun quickly. A tube amp would probalby help your tone, too.

Do some tweaking with your pickups. If you have a guitar that sounds too tinny, lower the treble end of the pickup, see how it sounds then raise the bass end if you need to. If your strat is getting too much distortion, the pickups may be too close to the strings. I've had to tweak almost all of mine, for the same reasons. The Super Ferrite pickups (single coil) in my Peavey Patriot are so hot I have to lower the neck pickup to below the level of the guitar body to keep it from popping every time I hit the strings hard. The strat with single coils are almost as high as I can get them, without pulling it out o fthe case and looking, I think I had to lower the treble end of the bridge pickup and raise the treble end of the neck and middle pickups, similar with the humbucker pickups in the Cort. I've finally got them all where they don't sound too bright or bassy, while still preserving the sound of the guitars pretty well. The strat sounds like a strat, Cort sounds like humbuckers, the Peavey is two single coils like a telecaster, and it sounds pretty close to one. It gets a little more treble, but I left it that way so I have that brighter sound when I need it.

Seymour Duncan probably makes a pickup that would sound hotter just by R&R , labor savings too..

Another good idea from Billy - pickup adjustment. Guitarists can be dumb, we just adjust the tone controls!
When I replaced the neck pickup on my Tele, I got a really hot alnico one - I had to crank it as far down as it would go and it's still as loud as the original bridge pickup.

Changing your setups will help smooth things out a bit but honest truth... Lose the MG amp. There is just something nasty in there that cannot be muted or tweaked away. Find a nice tube amp and I suspect 90% of your troubles will go away.

Can't you just play one or two guitars and tune them quickly between songs? My favorite band uses typically 3-4 tunings per show and just arranges the set list in an order where they can play all the songs in one tuning, change the tuning play the next block of songs, then repeat.