GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.III

Finally, the last part of "Guitar Artists with Great Tone" post! Hopefully you already made some guesses on the artist that I will mention on this post.

I won't mention his name, but I'll mention some interesting facts about him.

He uses mainly Stratocasters.

He's from Austin, Texas.

He's 56 years old.

He had his own Signature Strat.

He uses Fender and Marshall amps mostly.

Any guesses? I'll give you some more hints:

He played an old ES-335 and Les Paul as well.

He suffered from a tone OCD.

He sometimes sings.

Is it clear now?

Anyway, our latest guitar artist with the greatest tone(in my opinion, of course) is

....(drum roll)....

Eric Johnson (applause)

In my opinion, he's the man with the tone and feel. He adapt his playing closely to his tone. He's surely not a shredder but his melody lines are pretty good and difficult to play.

He uses mainly his signature Fender Stratocaster which is based on early Stratocaster during the '50s and '60s. The newer signature Eric Johnson has rosewood fingerboard with modified pickups. His amps are Marshall Plexi 50/100W and Fender Twin Reverb. He's a very big fan of '70s Echoplex tape echo. He uses Tube Screamer and Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face as well as Deluxe Memory Man.

He has three main sounds: clean rhythm, a bit dirty rhythm and a full lead tone. His clean sound is sometimes boosted with a Dyna Comp. It's the cleanest clean sound ever with a very rich harmonics with little bit of delay and chorus; it's based on Fender amp. His rhythm tone is a classic Stevie Ray Vaughan type of sound with the help of Fender amp combined with additional gain box such as TS, very glassy and bluesy and very good for chord works. His lead tone is based on Eric Clapton's Cream-era lead tone that comes mainly from an overdriven Marshall Plexi amp and sometimes together with the Fuzz Face.

This guy really shapes his playing to suit his tone. He has a very good chording technique with some hybrid picking involved. Also he is very good with arpeggiated lead notes. Most of the time he involves some jazz licks together with blues based scale. Very non-traditional playing with influences ranging from Hendrix to SRV.

He's famous for his "tone OCD". He tweaks his gears frequently just to get the right tone. His perception of tone is very high above the standard and that results in amazing smooth fat warm tone that is really the best in my opinion compared to any other guitar artists.

Definitely check out his classic "Ah Via Musicom" album and his newest recording "Up Close" and listen to some of his songs to experience the best guitar tone ever recorded. Not just the tone, the fingers are also great on those albums, some songs are hard to nail!!

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do and I hope that you can gain some knowledge from these series of discussion post. I will come up with more discussion post along with more review of some cool vintage-y guitar gears :)

Cheers and God bless :)

ANALOGMAN OD-9/808 WITH SILVER MOD

I bought this pedal from Analogman's website and it's one of the best version of Tube Screamer in the market I must say. Maxon is the original company that designed TS for Ibanez. They now produce their own TS9 that is quite different from the original TS from '70s Ibanez era.

Are you serious? Another Tube Screamer?

YES. In fact, this is one of the best version of Tube Screamer available. This OD9 is using JRC4558 chip that IS EXACTLY THE SAME as the original TS808/TS9 that many players put on their pedal board: Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons(YES, him again), Stevie Ray Vaughan....

So yes, this is another Tube Screamer.....BUT

The one that I purchased from Analogman features Silver Mod. That was basically capacitors and components upgrades to increase clarity and warmth a little bit. It also add more sustain to the overall sound. And this Maxon version is already True Bypass. Sound-wise, it does not have high amount of gain to be honest, even when I tried to crank this thing up all the way, it does not saturate too much. This is great as a clean boost and that amount of gain can be used to replicate the tone of a vintage tube amp that is pushed right after it starts to saturate.

This might means it's not for heavy stuffs, but it add pleasant touches to your tone. I got earlier Andy Timmons' famous Electric Gypsy tone by using this pedal on a clean channel.

I'm sorry though, I haven't got a chance to review this with any other Tube Screamers on the market. I tried an Ibanez TS9, but that thing cuts the bass a little bit, so I prefer this box rather than the original Ibanez version.

Wow that sounds great, but was it worth?

I forgot how much I spent but I think it was around $200.00 since I opted for the Silver Mod. This is so much more expensive compared to any other Tube Screamer on the market. I would love to compare this as a modded pedal with other modded TS from Keeley or everyone else. I know that Keeley TS has been used by many people including John Petrucci and that must says something. Unfortunately, Petrucci does use it in an already saturated amp so I don't know how it originally sounds.

It sounds good though, so I think it is still worth every penny.

Other thoughts?

I plugged mine before an AMT SS-11 Preamp that I use as a tube amp replication box since I am not allowed to play with tube amp in my apartment *sad*. It sounds very bluesy overall as a gain box. If you have not ever try any Tube Screamer pedal or even know what a TS is, this thing is an instant Stevie Ray Vaughan replicator if you have a strat style guitar with bright single coils. Very effective to add smoothness to your already saturated amp, you can set it to be your "lead switch" and step on it when you begin your solo.

How I set it up personally

Drive around 12 to 2pm, Tone around 4pm(YES, this is what a TS is famous for!), and as usual Level depends on your entire rig, I set mine around 10am.

Sounds almost perfect! Anything missing?

It lacks bass frequencies. I guess that's the nature of any Tube Screamers we all can find in this world. But hey, this thing sounded great already and you can reduce the Tone knob a bit to get a little of that bass back but sacrifice the famous tone everyone loves :D. This might not be true, I mean how can reducing treble adds the bass if we talk about circuitry, but if you add more Level while reducing the Tone, this will help to achieve that effect.

From 0 to 10

I will give this fantastic box an 8.9! Price is the main factor. The lack of bass does not really bother me that much since this is already warmer than most TSes in the market.

So what bothers you?

The switch. It's so hard to step on it even if it's angled. It's not your regular small circular switch, it's almost similar to a Boss style switch but smaller and placed in the middle with not too much height difference compared to the enclosure around it. However, note that the usual TS9 has the same switch, so I can't really complain.

Check it out : www.analogman.com

Audio clip: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12709731/sound%20demo/maxon%20od9.mp3

Cheers and God bless !

p.s stay tuned for audio clips for this post and my previous BB Preamp :) Will be around sometime in August