Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Gear wise -Another vote for a Fender .... no FX except for reverb

no FX besides 'verb???? gotta have a compressor. i think the open back cab (a la FENDER) is a big part of the equation too. when i'm a twanging (on one of my teles or my strat) it's usually thru my Fender Deluxe w it's straightahead treble and bass controls... no graphic or parametric eq's to deal w like on those boogies! i usally run bass between 3 and 5 and the treble is anywhere between 2 and 6 all depending on the room and the band's instrumentation.

Well I am just a Pseudo Country player !

If thats the way you like your amp settings' - very close to mine - you should check out this guy
http://www.sarnomusicsolutions.com/
Hand built in the US of A

My "Pseudo Country" sound - open back cabs and Sarno Pre-amp ...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/94352276/Scarletjam.mp3

OK you got my interest, being a street musician I have issues many dont
have like enough batteries to survive a Market, or Cruise Ship ... been doing
some good Willie Nelson stuff and Rockabilly/Blues-Rock. Here's what I have so far : Acoustic Yahama 6 string, piezo-electric pickup ( dont laugh, it's super high-impeadence, need FET preamp for bass responce ), small 1/2 watt amp (like cigar box 386) driving a FAB Chorus pedal set for max delay, depth, feeding a 15 watt portable amp ( old CD bookshelf powered speakers ). AWESOME, sound travels more than a parking lot, into storefronts, bounces off moving cars, etc. Has a sweet dual 12 string ELECTRIC sound I havent heard anywhere else + sustain. Being an electronic hobbiest helps - whatever it take to sound right

Old thread I didn't see before, but I gotta chime in.

Fender or Peavey amp, clean as you can get it, plenty treble and mids, easy on the bass, single coil pickup, and that's only 20% of it. The rest is on your hands. To get the kind of effect you want you have to be able to pick very clean and distinct, and let the notes ring. Entirely different than a lot of rock playing, where you can get by with a muffled note here and there. Practice on an acoustic. Or in a bathroom with a unplugged electric, and get it so you can hear every note clear as a bell. Once you can pick clean and precise, you'll start to hear the twang come out. Don't set the action too low or it will buzz on the frets, and a maple neck tends to be brighter than rosewood.

My favorite guitar is my Peavey Patriot, (strat body and tele 2 pickup configuration) usually set on both pickups. (single coils) For some reason that guitar had a great chimey sound, but my Strat will do it well too. Clean amp is a must, and an open back cabinet works well, but I also get a good country sound with my Peavey MX and Kustom 2x12 rolled and pleated cab, and it's a closed cabinet. BUt the amp is clean as they get. Eric Johnson uses 2 Fender Twins (blackface) for his clean sound, a Marshall for the dirties. In many cases the normal, rather than vibrato channel of a Fender will do better, my Super Reverb does. Bright switch ON. (My Fender and Peavey both have Bright switches) Any way you go about it, keep the amp clean as possible. Push the mids harder than you normally would, and don't let the treble get out of control, just enough bass to bring the low notes out.

Thanks Billy, you were the main person I was waiting to hear from! I agree with and everything you said will be very helpful! My crate palomino gets a near fender clean sound is a combo with an open back. Think I'll work with it and see what I get!

Don't know a thing about the Palamino, hope it does a good job. One thing I thought of later, to give you an idea what I was talking about with clean picking and fretting, you can hear Eric Johnson do it a lot of course, especially on Steve's Boogie, I think the name of the song is, also listen to my song Silhouette of A Daydream. No country twang, but the same idea.

Notice all through that song you hear 2 or 3 notes ringing at once? In several places that's one fretted note and the strings above and below it still sustaining. Not easy to do, it took me a couple of hours to write the song and a couple of months working on it to be able to play it that clean and precise every time. That's the same thing you see a lot in country, very clean picking and fretting, loads of sustain, and quite often you can't muffle a note. Like the last 5 notes of my song, that's 4 open strings then a hammer between two of them. If I'm slightly off it kills the ending. Same for a lot of that song, the fretting has to be very precise or it's dead in the water.

That's the idea I was trying to get across. Listen to Eric Johnson weave chords into a lead. Especially clean. You can hear every note clear as a bell. I'm not as good at it as Eric is, he's just beyond belief...but even in his exceptionally fast leads, every note is clear and distinct...but that's what you're looking for. Very precise picking and fretting, no muffled notes, lots of sustain. Without effects...except maybe a compressor...and I use my Arion Analog Delay all the time no matter what style the song is, set for one light slap back at about a half second or so, and I use very little or no reverb. I got rid of my compressor, didn't like it. Now I depend on new strings and a good amp to get me enough sustain.

Lotsa luck, it ain't easy, but once you get good at the kind of picking it takes, you'll be noticably better overall. I had a head start, my father hated rock and roll and I set out to show him a rocker could play good guitar without muffling anything over 40 years ago...so I've always tried to pick as clean and precise as possible. Tune to open G and learn Peter Frampton's "Penny For Your Thoughts", and the Beatles' "Blackbird". Both were recorded in open G and both require precise fretting. Standard tuning, learn to duplicate every note of Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing". And I mean exactly note for note. Preferably on an acoustic. Practice more on acoustic than anything else, that helps a lot too. I almost never pull out an electric, it's almost always the Takamine. Learn it on an acoustic and you can peg it on electric. I firmly believe in acoustic guitar for practice and just diddling around.

That comes from hanging out too close to the ironing board......

Need to clean my glasses. Could have swore I read something about flat pecker . . .



Seriously mayes66 . . . thanks for posting.
Audio / visual aids are a big help against a learning curve.

I know this is an old thread, but I came across it and figured I would put my $.02 in.

I've been playing country for quite a while and there are a few things I've learned. First, a tele definitely helps. Unfortunately, not everyone has one (although they should). A strat can be used, in fact I've done it for years, but there are some setup issues that need to happen. If you happen to be playing a stock strat with "normal" single coil pickups, you should be pretty good. If you have a metal-ized strat running hot dimarzios or duncans, then you may be in for a significant challenge depending on what you're going for.

Generally, there are a few things to keep in mind, but mostly that the moniker "country" is as wide as is the description of "rock". What kind of country are you looking to play? You can go everything from classic country like Hank Williams, country jazz like Chet Atkins and Rodney Crowell, classic outlaw like Haggard and Waylon, hot country pickers like Jerry Reed and Ricky Skaggs and their musical children, modern country pickers like Brad Paisley, and even the southern-inspired rock by guys like Brantley Gilbert and Aldean. For some of that stuff, a strat in any configuration is in its wheelhouse. For other stuff, you can make it passable. An often overlooked change is string gauge. A lighter string will often allow some of the crazy double-stop bends and other snaps and pops associated with country picking, while a heavier gauge can bring out the old-school country jazz type sound.

Amps are another huge key to all of this. Contrary to popular wisdom, country of all sorts can be played on non-country amps. When I spent some time in Nashville, I saw several amazing pickers playing the strip using marshall stacks and other high-gain amps. It wasn't common but it can be done. The most common amp was some form of fender tube amp though. I'm currently using a twin reissue, which is nice and loud, but a bit much for most gigs.

The key to amp tone is really the high end response. Some strats can get a bit throaty with the mids and bass depending on the setup. I usually compensate by rolling that off on the amp. I run the bass lower (around 3 - 4), the mid range slightly higher (4 - 5) and the treble a little higher than that (between 6 and 9 depending on the room). On my twin, I use a little reverb (between 2 and 4 at the very most). This gives me a nice balance between my strat and my teles when I switch. I run the strat using mostly my mid/bridge position and sometimes move into the bridge position alone.

Effects are pretty simple. For modern country, I run a compressor and a little slapback delay. To give some edge, I have some overdrive, but just enough to give it a bite but nothing crazy. If I'm doing something more classic, phase90 or some chorus. I have a volume pedal I use for some things as well as a crybaby that gets used from time to time in subtle ways.

The biggest thing though is technique. You could be playing on Willie Nelson's rig but if you are doing power chords and sweep picking solos, it's not going have a country sound. If you want country, you gotta learn the hybrid picking and double stop bending and all the other things that define the genre. If you do that, you can play almost anything and make it sound "right enough". Brent Mason plays with a PRS on some of the biggest and most famous country albums ever recorded - he's about as country as modern country comes.

Good Luck!

Thanks for all the input. I have the technique I was looking for advice on sound and settings. What I have gotten out of this thread is that it is about setting the amp so the mids are not scooped and very little low end also the use of a compressor is important. Basically I am looking for a Paisley type of sound. I know he uses Dr. Z amps witha tele. I hope this thread helps other players as much as it has me. Again my thanks!