General Music Chat

I guess I got lucky with my band, cause we all agree on everything...

Your band sounds like it's managed by " Devine Intervention" then.

Ive heard so many people moan over the whole "digital" is crap and you need to play gibson through a marshall and everything else just sucks.
I dont agree.... I play a SCHECTER C1 Classic through line 6's X3 LIVE. And she is beautiful. God bless them both.

I've heard several Line 6's while teaching at a music store that sold them. They do kick serious butt in the right hands !!

Sounds like some guys I've played in bands with at times. Several who played with chorus always on...always...one who played a strat, only in the bridge + middle pickup out of phase position, wouldn't change it no matter what, one who played with distortion on all the time, even in country songs...

Experience has shown me very very few will listen and make adjustments for a better, more versatile sound. It's still worth trying, never walk away until you try, but I'd say the 80/20 rule applies. 20% of the musicians out there have 80% of the style, taste and musical sensibility to broaden their musical horizons. The rest find their little rut and refuse to climb out of it.

Do talk to the guy, tactfully if possible, and you might find out he's one of the 20% we're all looking for...from the info I see so far though, probably not.

I have a friend who plays a reworked Mexican Strat through a Line 6 and it sounds great. super nice tonal qualities. I play an acoustic through a lil Fender Champ w/a half dead battery and I get a great slightly distorted sound. didn't work at the Fraud in the sun though because they refused to turn the monitors up enough to hear myself, so I had to turn the guitar up and it over distorted.

Never stop searching
Never stop questioning
Smoke it if ya got it

Hayden King @
www.myspace.com/blunderingeye

Everyone here is right, in each of their own way.

Pete, that 20/80 rule is the perfect analogy. I know of one guy that tried to address the tone of this guitarist, & he is one of the best, tone-wise, so I don't have real high hopes for him, but yeah, I will try.

The damned chorus/flangey stuff is the absolute worst most of the time in a band setting when the depth is set too high. I kept thinking he was out of tune, & then I'd remember the friken pedal. I did make him check his tuning 4 times in 2 hours, but he didn't get the hint. It isn't even possible to combine the chorus or flange with the digital delay on my Zoom, but he managed to use it all, somehow. What a horrid sound that is!

It's funny. I've worked with some really good players, who had fantastic skills ripping through leads & yet couldn't find a tone to save their collective butts. The last one I worked with even let me set his amp up, cuz at least he realized the problem. Now THAT is rare!

It's funny, the last few weeks I fell into a rut where I kept going back to a very specific patch on my pedalboard, frustrating over why I preferred the tone of that patch over all the others.

Also re-tuned all my guitars to standard and played around a LOT with the patches. What I found was that the guitar tones were shaping the patches far more than I had initially believed. Since they were all tuned different, I had used them for different songs and based the patches for each song off the guitar tuned for it.

I concluded through all my experimentation that the 'cheaper' guitars just lack good tone and the preferred patch just happened to add enough color to mask the problem. I think I'm going to trade in one or two, or possibly replace the stock pickups in the cheap ones (they do play well and stay in tune, which is hard to find lol). Haven't made a decision yet on that one.

I've also discovered that I've come to loathe humbuckers as neck pups. Just seems like the wrong frequency to be picking up that kind of tone that you want from the neck. I definitely prefer the H/S/S combo.

Thats funny Philby, Im in a side band called Strange Hombre. I got in it to pass some time waiting on my main band to get rolling.

The other guitarist quit so Ive been playing with them to see them thru some guitar auditions. We had a guy in the other night who used one of those little GK amps and a Johnson Amplification Processor. Everything heplayed sounded like it had way too much syrup on it for me. I was glad that I brought my Strat out and I just set up a cleaner Fendery amp sound with my little Mesa. He overdid the effects on everything. He seemed like a mature quality player, but it just sounded like crap to me. I use a couple of effects to emphasize things or too make an effect but this guy put it on everything. Of course my cleaner sound just cut thru like a knife, I mentioned to him that he should cut back the effects some and it would sound better, but he acted like I dont know what Im talking about. Maybe not, but having around 1000 paying gigs under my belt thru the years I do know what sounds good or bad. The guys in the group seemed stoked over this guy but I really think he will hurt their sound.

People like this are what I like to call a Bedroom player, they play at home at low volume levels and then they dont cut the effects when they play live. I have a POD Pro that I have started using live, I had to go thru all the presets and cut the effects on almost every preset. They sound great on headphones or at low levels, but when I plugged it into our pa and cranked it it just turned to mush.

My advice to any guitarist on here is to try and play at some point at the level you will play live, these little units sound good miced up, but when you crank them they fall apart. Also the louder you get you should cut your gain back some, on my Mesas live I dont have the gain much past noon or halfway and I have live tone to die for. Not being arrogant, just experienced, now if I could just remember YYZ. The little chords coming out of the solo, played it the other night live cause it was requested, imagine that and I just killed it after the solo. Oh well

Philby, I would just move on if I was you. Sounds like the players are entrenched and all you will do is raise a stink if you confront this problem. Also if they dont have a singer run to the hills. Without a competent vocalist all you are going to do is play in the garage, and any competent vocalist wont want to play with this guitarist cause all the effects will take up the singers sonic space.

RUN RUN RUN

I love my rut like a pig likes his muddy, little pig pen. lol

Of course my cleaner sound just cut thru like a knife, I mentioned to him that he should cut back the effects some and it would sound better...

Excellent observation, and quite right about the volume as well. That's why I keep the Peavey MX onstage, nothing beats a really good clean sound, especially when I want effects. Most of the time when I play any effects at all through the dimed Super Reverb it's a overdrive pedal (Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal) and then mainly because it gives me more sustain and overtones, not for the distortion. The amp already has all the distortion it needs.

For effects, I take the Gilmour approach, I want my amp as clean as possible, mostly because an overdriven amp like the Super Reveb gets too muddy if you pump a distortion pedal through it. I tried a small 10 watt practice amp preamped through a bigger one, the distortion channel just didn't cut it onstage, even though the amp was turned down pretty low and the volume was left up to the bigger amp.

The only reason I don't use the MX for everything is the distortion channel just won't do what I want it to do. I've tried it onstage many times, I always drop back to the clean channel and my trusty Ibanez SD 9 distortion pedal, it gets a much better sound. It also won't duplicate the cranked tube amp sound, which is the only reason the Super Reverb doesn't stay at home. It gets a Gilmour type clean sound, no problem, I've never played a cleaner amp, but the solid state preamp section just won't work for distortion at stage volume even though I can get it to sound great at bedroom volume.

Until I got the Super Reverb I played the MX alone onstage for around 15 years, it did a great job but most of that time I had it jumpered in back instead of plugging in the foot switch so it always stayed on the clean channel. Once I got the Super Reverb and got it fixed, it only took 3 or 4 gigs to find out I still wanted the MX for effects, most everything loses some level of tone or gets too muddy when run through the cranked Super Reverb. The overdrive works great, I get some awesome harmonics and overtones, and of course delay works well, anything else goes to the clean MX. End result, great tone all around...and now I have the one thing that's been missing the past 15 or so years...maxed out tube amp. Ovedriven but not totally saturated, mushy distortion.