IDEALISTIC APPROACH OF BEING A "GOOD" GUITAR PLAYER

This post isn't going to be a review. Instead, I'm going to share with you something that I had in mind for some time that can hopefully expand the horizon of your guitar playing and tone chasing. It's about becoming a better guitarist. What's been driving me to write this post is actually the fact that in the last few days, I've been searching for a way to keep me motivated as a guitar player.

First of all, let's look at some of the top guitarists in the planet. They all have some things in common regardless of their genre. One of them is the willingness to learn; to be humble. They are willing to learn from other guitarists that inspires them and apply that knowledge into their playing. Take Paul Gilbert for example: he's considered a monster in the world of fast guitar playing, but to acknowledge the work of Johnny Cash in the realm of country guitar playing and applying it to his song writing techniques is just very humble and heart-warming; the result shows best during his live performances when he's able to balance between hard and soft songs.

John Petrucci also improved his technique by simply learning from other guitarists that had been playing with him together during G3 concerts. He's so used to alternate picking, he doesn't even consider putting bits of legatos in his playing; but by learning from other guitarists and acknowledging their great work really put Petrucci on the extra mile of his already amazing techniques.

Secondly, most of them are willing to learn many genres although they are known only for particular genres. Take Eric Johnson for example, he's known for his instrumental Rock and Blues but he can go far with some cool Jazz comping, Latin, Swings and Bossa Nova. Guthrie Govan perhaps is one of a few guitarists that can master many different extreme techniques ranging from shredding speed guitar to groovy funk rhythm playing. That kind of multi-genre thing really helps many guitarists to enhance their tone palette too! They will not just stuck with one boring overdrive sound; instead, they will investigate how to achieve many different and interesting sound for different types of moods.


Other thing is their view about their gears. This is a bit hard to apply for us because some of us are limited both financially and/or availability of gears. Andy Timmons really knows the details of his gear, he knows exactly every pedal, every tube in his amps, every cable, every speakers, everything! This really helps him to shape his unique tone that influence him to play in certain way that goes into his liking. On the other hand, some guitarists such as Mike Stern don't really go crazy with expensive gears but they rely on simple setups that are handy, don't require massive maintenance and produce consistent tones during concert.

More importantly, the main point that I want to say ultimately is try to rotate your concentration on different stuffs. Don't just concentrate on tone alone, don't just concentrate on techniques forever, don't just concentrate on gear all the time; try to circle between different stuffs. That way, you will avoid getting bored and you will also develop a bigger picture of being an overall good guitarists. Many young players concentrate only on playing as fast as you can as precise as you can; that's good but that's boring, if players start to develop ear for good tone, they will start tweaking and probably learning different techniques that suit different tones and that is exactly what many young guitar starters need!

I've just recently started to explore good Jazz tone. It requires me to get out of my good overdrive tone and start exploring ways to replicate a semi hollow guitar tone. It's not just about the tone, I'm also trying to learn how to comp in a modern Jazz music and it's really hard for me considering how comfortable I am in the world of Rock music. But the result is starting to show slowly and it's very rewarding to see yourselves develop some new and inspiring tone and techniques.

I hope you all enjoy this post. Reviews aren't going to be as much as before, but I promise to keep the blog interesting! Come back often and enjoy your time here.

Cheers and God bless :)

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.I

No review today, but something different.
Today I want to share a little bit of my opinions about guitarists with great tone and great skills. They're all highly respected musicians and most of them are enjoying their careers either solo or with their bands. Most of them most people will already know because of their popularity but some of them are not really famous in the public but possess great tone and exceptional guitar skills. Some of them are my biggest influences but some of them I don't really check them out yet.

John Petrucci from Dream Theater

John Petrucci is famous for his work with Dream Theater, a progressive rock metal band that's currently growing rapidly in terms of popularity and exposure in the public.

His tone is coming mainly from his Ernie Ball Music Man John Petrucci signature guitar combined with Mesa Boogie Mark series amp. His EBMM JP guitar is usually loaded with DiMarzio LiquiFire and Crunch Lab humbuckers.

What sets him apart from the other guys in terms of tone is his ability to get a well defined fat warm super-driven notes during high speed picking with not too much muddiness when using highly saturated amp. The settings on his amp is not really surprising in the world of metal heads: scooped mids. Although he used scooped mids, his humbuckers are designed to work well on mid frequencies so he's kind of trying to balance between the amp and the pickups to get a well defined tone.

He definitely uses many FX pedals especially during live performances to create layering effects. He uses chorus, phaser, flanger, delay pedals and also overdrive pedals ranging from stock market models to hard-to-find vintage modded ones. However, his tone does not mainly come from his gear but it's mostly from his fingers.

Recommended album with great tone: Black Clouds and Silver Linings, Scenes From a Memory, Octavarium.

Stevie Ray Vaughan(R.I.P)

Almost every blues guitar fans know him and try to get his tone. He's a very famous Stratocaster user that really knows how to get a good tone out of it. The secret of his tone is nothing more than his Strat on a 6L6 based amp with mild drive and some boost with the Tube Screamer. In fact, if you have a Strat, a Fender Twin Reverb Amp and a Tube Screamer, you'll nail some of his famous tones instantly.

He used various gears and guitars but his main ones are the Fender Stratocaster '62 "Number One", a TS808 Tube Screamer and Fender Twin Reverb/Tweed Bassman Amps. Secret ingredient to his tone is super heavy gauge strings, probably around .013 and tuned it down half step to lesser the tension of the strings.

A lot of modern guitar players mentioned SRV as their tone inspiration because of his massive bluesy tone. Even gear manufacturers are trying to capture the sound generated from his gear and make it into a box or something. Thus, SRV is undeniably a very important figure in the world of guitar tone development.

Paul Gilbert from Racer X/Mr. Big/Solo

Every shredder must have heard Paul Gilbert's name at least once in their life. He's the shredder of the nineties, very famous with his work with Mr. Big and some people even know him while he's still in Racer X.

Starting from his solo album era around Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, his tone is suddenly transformed and becomes very enjoyable.

His tone is not really the fat-warm type of tone, but it's very rich with articulation and definition. It's good for fast stuffs, chords and blues licks.

The secret of his tone during the nineties is definitely an Ibanez PGM with no tone knob loaded with PAF style pickups, particularly DiMarzios ranging from PAF Pro to the Tone Zone to even the Super Distortion high output pickups. The Ibanez is then plugged into a Marshall high gain amp. He get a very decent tone coming out from this combination.

Another secret to his tone is the picks that he used: he prefers a .60mm Dunlop Tortex to the standard small pointy Jazz picks that almost everyone uses. He angled his thin pick to get more treble and attack from the strings and it really is the biggest secret to almost nail his tone.

FYI, he didn't really care about tone until he started touring on G3 with Joe Satriani and John Petrucci. He now uses Marshall Vintage Modern, Ibanez Fireman loaded with DiMarzio Area series pickups, Majikbox Fuzz Universe overdrive pedal and some flanger, phaser delay and other boxes. He also used some Xotic pedals and he constantly changes his pedals depending on what he wants. Now he sounds much better than he was!

Definitely check out Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, Fuzz Universe and his works with Mr. Big and Racer X. All of them contain Paul's mighty shred-ready tone.

Andy Timmons

He's relatively new to most guitar players but he's actually been around for quite some time in the guitar world. He played with metal band called Danger Danger around nineties. He's now currently a solo artist and has his own band called Andy Timmons band.

The secret of his tone comes mainly from his signature Ibanez AT series loaded with DiMarzio Cruisers and AT Humbuckers/Seymour Duncan JB plugged into Mesa Boogie Lonestar/Stiletto Deuce/Transatlantic 30. Other important part of his tone is the delay FX units that he uses and also his gain box. He loves the Echoplex tape echo very much, but he prefers to use a box to replicate the effects during live performance by using an EXH Memory Man or sometimes using rack type delay units. For his gain box, he relies mostly on his signature Xotic BB Preamp. He used Ibanez Tube Screamer sometime in early 2000 to get that bluesy tone much like SRV's with more gain. He's also known as a Telecaster guy and he also played an SG although we haven't see him playing live with his SG.

He's been respected very much as a guitarist and also as a tone chaser. He tried various pieces of gear and experimented with all of them to achieve a good sound. Unlike any other Ibanez endorser artists, Andy prefers the sound of a guitar with lower output pickups and cool vintage-style hardware and look.

Definitely check out his new album Resolution and his compilation That Was Then, This Was Now. Don't expect anything too shreddy from his songs but he has couple of tricks under his sleeves just in case someone needs shreddy stuff!

Stay tuned for PART II !!

Cheers and God bless :)

MXR M103 BLUE BOX

Double octave down

I checked out this pedal right after I realized that Paul Gilbert used this pedal on his signal chain to produce that crazy massive monstrous tone that he used before he starts crazy tapping(see his live videos on youtube, he always uses this pedal right before Eudaimonia Overture song starts). It sounds crazy and I figured that I should try one and imitate that craziness on my signal chain. I also figured out that Jimmy Page used this pedal long time ago on one of Led Zeppelin's song.

It's basically an octave fuzz pedal. Different from Octavia or any regular vintage octave fuzz pedal. This one generates two octaves down; it has blend knob so you can control the amount of dry/wet signal that's coming out.

How does it sound?

Just like Paul Gilbert on the video that I watched haha! I got that crazy monster tone, but I didn't get the Eudaimonia Overture tapping lick *sad*. To be honest, this pedal is only good for that monster tone, but you can't really use it for regular playing because once you start doing that, it'll sound so muddy, overly-compressed and lifeless.

The fuzz is not really that sweet, this is intended for someone with experimental attitude that has the courage to explore this wild tone and make it into something useful. Maybe you can use this to get a synth-like sound out of your signal chain, but to be honest this won't do the job perfectly as other synth based pedal on the market(micro POG, POG, whammy pedal).

Strange pedal I must say

It has some sort of analog tracking circuitry, sometimes it can generates up to 2 octaves down when you play high enough but if you play on the lower notes then sometimes you'll get only 1 octave down. Even sometimes what comes out from this thing is only random note-less fuzziness. It's quite unpredictable !!

Anyway, this pedal is a true bypass(almost......but the tone sucking doesn't really bother pups with output of 140mV and above) and it's simple enough to understand the features that this thing has. Place it in the front of your signal chain, preferably after the compressor so you can use the output knob to adjust the amount of bad fuzz coming out of this thing.

Beware

Some people complained about the low output level of this pedal even if the output knob is cranked all the way. That doesn't happen to me but if it happens, just follow my suggestion to put it in the very front of your signal chain.

Also beware that this pedal contains it's own version of some noise gate circuitry inside. Try to play a sustained note from your guitar and you will hear how "digital" the sound is when the note starts to fade. YIKES!

Does it worth?

Retail price below $80.00. I say it really depends on your purpose of putting this pedal to your signal path. If you have the courage to make this strange pedal works on your guitar playing, then it's not really too bad. If you look for something that's easy to tame and frequently used, this guy won't match your taste. If you just want to imitate that Paul Gilbert lick or Jimmy Page guitar solo, it's worth a try, but maybe this pedal won't last long on your pedal board.

From 0 to 10

This also depends a lot. I would pull a middle line and say it's around 7.3. To be honest, I'm a little bit disappointed with how it overall sounds. It's too compressed and has some artificial tone quality that I really try to avoid. I'm not saying this is a bad or useless pedal; it all really depends on our skill to tame this weird pedal to work our way. As I said on my previous post, a good player can even make a thin metal box sounds good to your ears.

Cheers and God bless :) !

p.s. Starting mid August, I will edit most of the posts and we can have links to audio clip containing dry guitar sound vs guitar sound with related pedal engaged. Stay tuned !

A TILTED VOX AMP AND AN ARMOR ALL SPRAY

One thing about tone chasing: it's endless, just like trying to chase your own tail and it will drive you crazy, both physically and financially. You will surely get better tone and you will learn so much about your guitar by doing that, but what matters the most is your final result.

It's good to make significant changes sometimes, for example upgrading from a cheap solid state amp into a fully loaded tube amp, or maybe replacing a tone-coloring pedal with something more decent. But trying to exhaust yourself trying to find a perfect tone is not going to happen quickly and in exhaustive way.

If you are concerned about the way your signal chain sounds, you should first worry about how you play your guitar. Observe basic simple techniques that will beautify your guitar playing. A player who makes great vibrato with a $85.00 Walmart Strat plugged into a cheap practice amp will still sound so much better compared to a player who tries to mask his bad technique using a $3000.00 guitar using exotic woods plugged into an echoplex that's connected to a Vintage Modern Marshall.

I want people not to get obsessed with gears but to get obsessed trying to make their playing to sound great. Guitar playing is not all about live action coolness or bragging expensive rig, it's more about how you put beautiful compositions into someone's ear.

Even the King of Tone himself said the same thing haha !

Cheers and God bless :D !

The Beginning of Guitar Tone Chasing

Please enjoy my review of gears on this blog. Hopefully I can bring unbiased review so that we can share knowledge and spread the good stuffs around.

I am mostly going to review guitar FX pedals. However, I will also review other stuffs such as pups, strings, picks or even some guitars that I have tried.

Thanks for checking this page guys