General Music Chat

wisebrow - Fender DeVilles & digital effects don't mix real well, as a rule, as I found out when I auditioned for some flunkies who didn't know better...the guitarist used a Gibson with it, too. Was a waste of money, imho, cuz it sounded like muddy mushy poop, at best, cuz it was such a mixed up mess to me ears.

1st thing I do, especially whenever I'm playing with other ppl, is to seek out a useable tone that allows individual notes to ring through. The faster you play, the more important this becomes. Save the strong echo stuff for the long slow parts, if you use it at all. Chorus & flange can make you sound out of tune, if you set the depth too deep. As has been said many times before, at high volumes, use LESS gain unless you're trying to muddy it up on purpose.

Not being a lead player, this is about the limit of my knowledge on the subject, but I've helped a few lead players with my limited knowledge by using these basic rules.

Let me try this again: I would like to know if anyone out there can give me advise on how to dial in my gear. Im used to playing acoustically so this electric thing is new to me. I want to play the blues. I have a electromatic gretch hollowbody with a bigsby. My amp is a Fender De Ville tube amp. Thanks again for any help. Your right Sass this site is awsume. I got on it to find some band mates and now will probably use it as a learning device as well,

Thanks Phil I'll try that. I don't use any effects with this set up. And I guess I won't need to. So whats the difference between gain and presence?

Gain is overdrive, Presence is clarity. Simplified definition.
Play with them each one at a time and listen how the sound varies from one extreme to the other and find the in between sound that you like.
For cleaner sound, less gain and more master volume.
For distortion, more gain and less master volume (keeping the level that you want to play).

Presence will bring you up front. A low presence setting makes you sound like you're in the background; like you're a secondary instrument in the band. A high presence makes you sound like you're out in front of the band.

On some amps, like a Mesa Boogie Triaxis, you'll have a Gain and a Drive (or Overdrive) setting. The drive setting will be your distortion - the higher you set it the greater the distortion; the more "fuzz" you hear.

The Gain setting gives you sustain + loudness. The higher the Gain the more sustain and the louder your signal. As a side effect, the higher the Gain the more it distorts the signal on its own. So with Gain and Drive (Overdrive) you have two ways to control distortion, and they can have a vastly different effect on your overall sound.

There is a compound effect when you couple a high Gain with a high Drive. A high Drive setting with a high Gain setting will give you a very distorted sound (heavy metal/speed metal) because you're taking a distortion and sustaining it, which creates an effect where notes blur into each other (too high for both of these settings and and it sounds "muddy").

One of the tricks I've seen pros use is to create a more "defined" crunch sound is to always cut back on the drive and then up the Gain. You get a much clearer distortion sound that way. It sounds like crap on lower volumes to setup your amp this way; your crunch will sound too thin and flat. But what you have to remember is that on a good quality amp (specifically tube) the higher your volume and the higher your Gain, the more distortion you create naturally. So you can set the drive really low when you know you're going to be playing loud.

I think just playing with it daily in a quiet environment is the key.
Not to diss anything these guys have posted. After all it was they whom helped me out when I went the tube route.
One of the things that I do to get the tone I like is to cut back on the mids as the gain increases. I rarely increase my volume more than a half step from 3 - 4. The lower the volume required the more soak I need to maintain the crunch I want. (provided I have the volume control on my axe set at 11) Once again it's a matter of half steps not jumps from 3 to 6 or something.
You'll know your onto something when the bass player looks at you with a big fat smile and nods his head. YEA BABY!!

THATS WHAT IM TALKIN ABOUT! THANK YOU THANK YOU AND THANKYOU! Ray