BASIC TIPS FOR GETTING THE RIGHT TONE

I can't get that guy's tone!! What on earth is wrong with my expensive gears???

Frustrating isn't it? You have all the nice pedals and what you think the best guitar on this earth and you still can't get your desired tone. You keep asking what's wrong with your setup, you got all the most expensive gears and you wonder why they don't make any good sound. Lots of people have been there before and today I want to share my perspective of basic guitar tone guide.

First thing first

Let's analyze all the factors that count toward the creation of your tone. Before we even do that, this is what I basically will do: ask yourself, what kind of sound are you aiming for? The best way to determine what kind of sound do you want is basically by having some references. It could be your guitar hero, your friends' tone or some guitar sound that you had heard before in your life.

Your guitar

After you answer that question, lets's start with the very first thing that you have to observe: your guitar. You can't nail Slash's signature sound using a Fender Stratocaster with single coil pickups. You can't nail Stevie Ray Vaughan's tone using an ESP loaded with EMG pickups. You can't play Metallica songs using a Telecaster.

Getting the right type of guitar will cover 50 to 90% of your tone. This is generally true, as long as your tone does not require huge amount of effect processing. Here are some of the famous guitar tones that are usually being used by guitarists everywhere:

1. Stratocaster sound: bright and clear, can be achieved using any guitar with single coils and ash/alder/basswood body.

2. Telecaster sound: super bright and twangy, can be achieved using Telecaster guitars with Telecaster pickups.

3. Fat humbucking tone: fat, round and warm. Can be achieved using anything with humbucker or P90 pickups regardless of the body type. Generally people will use a Les Paul with mahogany body but anything can do.

4. Jazz tone: similar with no. 3 but you can also use a semi-hollow guitars to get this beautiful tone.

Your signal path: Amp and Gain Box

You must choose your gear carefully to nail a desired tone. Not every nice pedal and expensive amplifier on this planet will do the trick. If you want a straight forward rock sound from the '70s and '80s, use a tube amplifier that's capable of producing a medium amount of overdrive and if you need an extra push, use a Tube Screamer. Using a hi-gain amplifier won't produce your desired tone. Adding a high-gain distortion pedal on a clean amp will also not work best.

If you're trying to nail heavy metal sound, use a Hi-Gain amp with medium overdrive setting and push the amp a bit harder using a gain box with a small amount of gain. You can also use a cleaner amp that's being pushed with distortion pedal as long as you cut the mid a little bit.

For a more classic Hendrix tone, use germanium fuzz pedals, they can replicate a vintage cranked up Marshall with fuzz face pedal.

Experiment a little bit in your local guitar store with some amplifiers and/or gain boxes. I suggest to start by hearing from well known brands such as Marshall and Fender for amplifiers and Tube Screamer TS-9 or 808 by Ibanez/Maxon for the gain box. If you know what you want, you don't have to buy those stuffs, there are lots of cheaper alternatives that you can search on the internet or by asking to someone; they will recreate your desired tone and they sound almost as good as the big names.

Other stuffs in your signal path: time based and modulation

Delay, Reverb, Chorus, Wah, Flanger, you name it...not everyone use them in their rigs and you have to be careful about choosing them. Guitarists tend to buy expensive stuffs but they don't really utilize them to the fullest; I personally use two delay pedals(one for short and one for long), a reverb and a chorus.

I won't suggest to overly use these effects since it will kind of ruin your original tone. Keep them as subtle as you can. Most guitar heroes don't over use them as well they wan't to preserve their original tone.

The thing that matters the most

Ultimately, no matter how good your gear is, you need to practice hard too! If you are currently aiming someone's tone, it's good to learn some tricks that the person usually do because the techniques are sometimes influenced by the gears.

I once fell into the trap of thinking that hi-gain can be used anywhere. It's so easy to play in highly distorted amp and I thought it sounds good. Once I heard how terrible it sounds, I immediately change my tone to further fit the style that I play. It uncovers all the bad habit that I usually do when I used hi-gain settings, but with practice, slowly you can develop your skill while at the same time improving your tone. It worked pretty good on me and my friends, so it should work for you too!

I hope this post would help you! Feel free to share it with everyone.

Cheers and God bless :)

FUTURE POSTS

We already know what the picture below means...

I'm still doing some experimentation with this baby and see how it will compare with a Memory Boy and my Carbon Copy. Hopefully some time this week I'm gonna be able to post a review of this wonderful box. I'm having a great time tweaking around this lovely pedal and it really inspires me to play.

I'm also gonna do reviews of popular Boss distortion pedals as soon as I can get an access to them.

Stay tuned! And thank you for reading my blog. I hope you enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy writing it! God bless :)

TC ELECTRONIC HALL OF FAME REVERB

Tonight, I got a chance to review a relatively new reverb pedal from TC Electronic called Hall of Fame. It's a superb pedal with lots of knobs to tailor your reverb to your pleasing. One thing that I want to point out to you before we even start is that this thing marks the new chapter of digital guitar world that still carries the passion of analog sound; it has the new Toneprint technology that allows you to download an artist's reverb tone to the pedal via USB.

Overview

This thing looks nice and neat, it's just as big as your nano EHX pedal. It has four knobs; one to adjust the length of the reverb called decay, one to adjust the reverb treble called tone, one to adjust the level of reverb, and one to select the reverb mode. It has a selector for long and short pre-delay. It also has a true bypass switch(sweet!) that can be switched to buffer(even more sweet!) depending on how many pedals that you will have in series with this pedal. It has stereo output and input. What more can you ask from this pedal?

Sound

It's a digital reverb, same as the other reverb pedals out in the market, they are basically delay pedals. This one is more flexible and adjustable. I can get lots of settings out of this little box that can totally enhance the trails of my tone. It's just so good and so tweakable that it requires hours of some serious tweaking to get the ultimate reverb of your dream.

If you don't want to spend hours on getting your reverb tone, take the USB cable from the box, connect this pedal to your computer and download your favorite guitarist's setting. Voila, you'll get the exact setting of your guitar hero.

The different reverb modes, all sound very convincing. It even has the Mod option to add chorusing to your reverb just to make it sound like you're using a super short delay with lots of repeats from a tape echo.

What it lacks

NOTHING! I can't find anything wrong with this reverb pedal. It's so flexible, it sounds great, it's easy to use, it's true bypass/buffer, and it's small enough. I wish everyone on this planet would make pedals like this!

Worth the money?

Price range around $150.00, a bit pricey for a reverb pedal. But with those options available in this pedal, it's worth every penny you spend, trust me!

From 0 to 10

10 of course, you can already tell haha!

Here's a sound clip containing different modes of this pedal that I think are the best. It starts from dry to room mode, hall mode, spring mode, church mode and modulation mod: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God bless :) !

JEM 7VWH

This JEM does not belong to me, I'm actually quite honored to have what used to be one of my dream guitar sitting in my house. It belongs to a friend of mine, Anthony Woen.

The look

I got a chance to analyze this JEM both in terms of sound and look. It's just gorgeous; its gold hardware, Edge Pro locking trem, vine tree inlay, jumbo frets, gotoh tuner, DiMarzio Evolutions and its monkey grip are just awesome!

The feel

It's the ancestor of the current Ibanez RG model, so naturally it has that oversized horns on its body just like my PGM and every other RG based guitars. The neck is just awesome! It's thin, meaning that it will help you run across the neck easily. Doesn't feel to good when you try to play chords here, a bit more thickness should help. It's thinner than my already flat PGM Prestige neck. I don't need to speak about the locking trem, it's just totally awesome, the same exact trem as what I have on my PGM.

Weight isn't too bad. It's an alder body guitar, it's supposed to be a bit heavier compared to a basswood guitar, but it isn't; in fact it is lighter than my PGM!

The sound

DiMarzio Evolution on the neck, middle and bridge. They're fantastic for modern hi-gain sound! The alder body and rosewood combination adds more tonal color to the overall sound. The JEM supposed to sound pretty bright due to the alder body but in fact it isn't that bright. It sounded pretty good on distortion pedals and tube pre-amp! Overtone harmonics are appearing on some spots in the neck, it has a strong punch in the mid-high mid area. Definitely a shredder's guitar! Either the neck and the bridge delivers punch and clarity. Roll back the volume and I get that sweet spot break-up sound.

On the clean channel, the neck pickup sounded like an SG. Very good for jazz runs, lots of fat tone that's good for chording as well. Combine the neck and the middle and I got a pretty subtle sounding clean signal, good for funk and general strumming. I didn't really use the middle pickup but mid+bridge gives me another good funk-type sound with some added treble. I don't really use the bridge pickup on the clean channel.

Sustain is pretty good. It doesn't hold as long as my PGM, but it does hold longer than every Strats that I've touched.

What it lacks

Nothing! This guitar is in fact one of the most versatile guitar on this planet. It does everything. However, not everyone will enjoy this guitar. The pickups are a bit too hot for me and I always prefer a single coil in the neck. Nonetheless, it's my preference; this guitar will surely blow you away if you're a Steve Vai fans or just someone looking for a HSH super strat.

The verdict

I compared this gorgeous JEM side by side with my PGM, and I recorded some tunes with both guitar on same settings just so you can hear the difference between how the JEM and the PGM sound. All clips started with my PGM first, and then the JEM later.

Clean signal: CLICK HERE

Chorus added: CLICK HERE

Screamer and delay: CLICK HERE

Fat crunch rhythm: CLICK HERE

I hope you enjoy this post.

Cheers and God bless ! :)

SIGNAL PATH 101

Hi everyone, today I want to discuss about the so-called "GENERIC SIGNAL PATH" for guitar. Signal path is basically all the stuffs that are between your guitar and your amp or speaker or earphone or whatever device that will generate the sound. Let it be your preamp, your wah, your volume pedal, your FX pedals, your booster, your loop, your switching boxes, they're all part of the signal path.

There is no scientific rule about how to arrange your pedals

People had thousands of different configuration on their pedalboard. Some prefer certain pedals on a spot, others prefer same pedals on different spot. That really depends on a person's need and how they want their signal to sound.

What you need?

The first step on figuring out how to setup your signal path is by knowing what you need. These are what people usually need:

- at least one 'Gain Box' (Distortion, Overdrive, Boost or Fuzz)

- at least one 'Modulation' (Chorus, Flanger, Univibe or Phaser)

- Compressor

- Wah pedal

- at least one 'Time Based' (Delay or Reverb)

- Volume pedal

People go with rack-mounted effects for its superb control, but now stomp boxes are popular again. I'll go explain how I setup my stomp boxes, it's pretty general and you can apply my explanation to rack-mounted effects.

My signal path

On the input plug

Guitar -> Wah -> Overdrive -> Amp

On the FX loop

Send -> Boost -> Volume -> Chorus -> Delay -> Reverb

This is the most generic setup that you can find. You can replace the volume pedal out of the FX loop into the very beginning of the signal path to make it act like your guitar volume knob instead of making it acts like a master volume control. Some artists put wah pedal after distortion to get more extreme wah sound. Chorus or flanger can be put before or after distortion out from the loop to get more wobbly sound.

FX Loop

One thing that I should point out is the fact that I had a preamp pedal that acts as my amp and cabinet simulator. It has the send/return plugs for FX Loops which means you can put some boxes there that you don't want to get mixed with other pedals that you put before the amp. Usually you put delay/reverb pedal on the loop to avoid those pedals from getting affected by the increased gain signal from the overdrive or distortion pedal.

If you don't have FX loop, you can just put everything before the input of the amplifier or preamp. It will sound a bit different and some pedals might not be able to tolerate the amount of gain increase caused by gain boxes on the beginning part of your signal chain. If you do run into this problem, there are some loop boxes available to be placed right before your amp and it will have send/return option for your pedals.

Try to experiment as much as you can

You can start from the most generic signal path that I explained above, but ultimately there is no correct option of placing your FX units. Try to research different setup and see if you can find the best setup for the tone that you're looking for. Pay attention to your pedal requirements as well, sometimes a pedal doesn't want to be placed before of after a specific pedal because it might damage the unit.

That's all for now, I hope you enjoy my post!

Cheers and God bless ! :)

SATURATION

In this post, I want to explain a little bit about different kind of saturation on guitar tone. Familiar with the word distortion, fuzz or overdrive? If you had heard any of these words before, then you'll probably understand most of the content of this post. Let's get started!

Clipping

A saturated guitar signal is basically an amplified guitar signal that's boosted until it reaches clipping(above the range of signal tolerance). While some electrical engineers think that clipping is bad, some guitarists think that getting a clipped guitar signal on an amplifier is the best thing they ever heard. Most rock guitarist rely heavily on saturated tones. Whether it's a crunch rhythm, singing sustained lead, boosted clean-break up or fuzzy creamy tones, they're all basically clipped guitar signal.

Achieving clipped signal

There are multiple ways of reaching saturation. One is by driving an amp or running the amp volume as high as it can be. This works well especially on tube amps. Some amps don't have the capability to reach clipping without being driven prematurely, this leads to the invention of preamplifier that contains tubes or solid state components that will boost the signal before it enters the amplifier so that clipping can be achieved without pushing the amp volume too high. This kind of saturation is called amp-overdrive.

Other way is by using boost pedal on a clean sounding amplifier. The benefit of using pedal to achieve clipping is that it can emulate the sound of amp-overdrive at even lower volume level. People sometimes use pedals on an already driven-amp to achieve a higher level of distortion.

Types of saturation

There are three types of saturation that are common:

Overdrive

Overdrive signal will usually sound pretty open, the clipping isn't too much and it doesn't break too much from the clean signal. This is the type of sound that you can get from amp-overdrive. You can also achieve this sound by using common overdrive pedal such as Tube Screamer or similar stuffs. This sound can be found mostly on blues and some classic rock songs.

Distortion

This is the sound that defines rock and metal music. Distorted signal comes from stacked amps that are already on overdrive state. The sound that it generates is very compressed, heavy, crunchy and clips even more compared to overdriven signal. Modern amplifiers are sometimes high-gain, meaning that it can achieve distortion without having to be stacked. People can even achieve this using distortion pedal on clean channel or even using overdrive on dirty channel. You'll be surprised that sometimes people combine two overdrive pedals to create a smooth distortion sound. Metal player usually cut the midrange of their tone to get even crunchier and tighter distortion; lead rock guitarist will boost the midrange to get more body out of the distortion.

Fuzz

Fuzz is the most clipped signal compared to distortion and overdrive. It can be achieved using any fuzz pedal that contains germanium diode. This kind of sound was starting to emerge on the '60s and '70s thanks to Jimi Hendrix. People sometimes combine an already dirty amp with the fuzz pedal to achieve higher gain guitar tone that can sing and sustain the notes better.

MXR M234 ANALOG CHORUS

Finally, the pedal that I've been waiting for is here! It's the Analog Chorus by MXR! I can't believe I'm actually using a chorus pedal now, I've been living without one for years and I thought I won't need it until some days ago haha!

First Impression

Good pedal so far, not really true bypass but the buffer switching in this pedal isn't bad at all. In fact, it increases my signal volume instead of eating my tone, so I'm pretty grateful for that. Comes with EQ knobs that you can control to adjust the amount of bass/treble cut on the chorus; also it has a level, rate and depth knobs to adjust the basic chorus functions as in other pedals. It has a stereo option, the second output will carry the dry un-chorused signal.

The sound, the feel

This is not boutique pedal, doesn't have a sky-rocket price tag and it's not really something that people look around too much in the forums. I don't know how it compares to other chorus pedal yet except to a Boss Dimension C chorus. Boss chorus pedals are known for their wide open spacey lush layering effects that bring lots of air around the notes or chords that you play; that's exactly what I've heard from the Dimension C chorus.

But fear not, this pedal is not bad at all. In fact, it's pretty good and it's comparable to its rivals. Just hear the sound clip that I posted on the bottom of this post to get an idea of how it sounds. It's pretty flexible and you can adjust the kind of chorusing effect that you want from the knobs but it works best when you don't over-do the depth off the chorus.

What it lacks

It's a perfect chorus pedal if you want to layer your tone nicely just like in the '80s. It doesn't work well on a heavily distorted tone although it sounds perfect on a clean channel. It also doesn't bring out the dimension of the notes that you play as much as Boss DC-2. I'll try to compare this pedal with other well-known chorus pedals and see what will happen.

Worth the price

Yes! For a hundred bucks, this is the best chorus pedal for its price range!

From 0 to 10

10!

Here's a sound clip, beginning with dry signal, the pedal turned on and the pedal turned on with a touch of delay and reverb: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God Bless ! :)

NO OCTAFUZZ FOR ME, MXR ANALOG CHORUS ON THE WAY

Sorry for the very lack of update everyone.

Bad news and good news, here we go

I changed my mind, I don't really want the octave fuzz pedal anymore, I don't really see how it will fit on my playing style. So with the same amount of money that I already saved, I turned the budget to an analog chorus by MXR. It's on its way now, hopefully by tomorrow I'll get a chance to put it on my pedalboard.

What really draws me to this analog chorus pedal is the lush layering sound that it's capable of. I haven't personally tried this pedal on a local guitar shop, but from the videos on Youtube and from some reviews, I can be sure that this one will satisfy my needs for a clean, lush, wide, spacey chorus effect.

Those of you who doesn't really know what does a chorus pedal do, here's a short lecture about it.

Sometimes, a guitarist needs to add some layering to its guitar sound to recreate the effect of some number of guitars playing together. This can be done easily by stacking together multiple guitar tracks on the recording, but for live situation, this is where a chorus pedal will shine. It's a time based effect(mostly), it creates a slightly out of tune sound on a certain period of time and by doing this, it simulates multiple guitars being played together.

A chorus pedal will thickens a clean sound, will add some harmonics quality on dirty tone and it will help lead tone to layer up the notes even better.

Stay tuned!

Hopefully my MXR will arrive tomorrow, I'll have some time to post stuffs after that :).

Cheers and God Bless