music: King Johnson- Hot Fish Laundry Mat
I’ve been obsessing over my guitar tone recently. And for good reason: this spring has been explosive with music on the personal front. The band reconvened after about two months of hiatus, and after bringing fellow acoustic conspirator Duncan into the mix, we’ve solidified a lineup of sorts that will ensure that this musical project goes out with a bang. We actually have a gig lined up on the 13th of May, and perhaps one more before July. I’ve also started up with another band since January, something that tends as much towards gospel/soul as a twentysomething caucasian with two overdrive pedals can get. Both bands are coming along nicely and have spurred me to refine my rig.
(warning: geeky guitar content to follow.)
Refine is an understatement. I’ve been perseverating over my guitar tone. I’ve taken some big steps towards that holy grail of tonal perfection, which inches closer to what I think I want with every step. I’ve switched my strings from the muted, jazzy flatwound .11’s to the standard round-wound .10’s, which has afforded me a little more speed, attack, and nuance in my playing but has cost me some thickness in my lows and mids. More importantly, I dropped a good chunk of cash on a beautiful amplifier a couple months back: a refurbished and customized ‘76 Fender Vibrolux, with all point-to-point electronics cleaned up and tweaked to 60’s blackface specs, down to the faceplate and grille. The amp isn’t quite blackfaced completely, though: it still has a pull-out volume knob for high boost, and some pretty sweet AlNiCo Fender Special Design Speakers. It’s truly a unique amp, and I was very lucky to run into it on craigslist when I did. Between the vibrolux and my Gibson things are sounding pretty sweet. But your instrument is not just your guitar and amp, it’s everything you run your signal through. Upgrading the speaker cones and pickups of my rig are items I really should give some thought to, but not now. Now I am devoting full attention to obsessing over pedals.
Which pedals an electric guitarist decides to use might make the most difference in terms of customizing their instrument than the guitar or amp itself. Those little metal boxes are not generally thought of as part of someone’s instrument, but they are incredibly important. I would say that the pedals I’ve chosen to use account for half of my tone, and after a good amount of research and experimentation, I’d say that with my current setup I’m a little over 75% of the way there. The basic setup is a giant effects loop running out of and back into a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor (used mainly as a mute button for me). The loop, right now, is a Dunlop Crybaby (wah) > Electro Harmonix Q-Tron (bubble sound) > Ibanez TS-9 DX (overdrive with low-end boost for a little growl) > Ibanez TS-9 (lead distortion) > Boss BF-2 (flanger) > Boss CS-3 (compression and a little sustain). Then after the effects loop the whole thing runs into a Line 6 Delay Box (for which I’ve dialed in the Maestro Tube Echo, Electro Harmonix Memory Man, and Sweep Echo settings) before being sent out to the amp. It’s a lot to deal with.
One of the great parts to a rig like this is that there are so many places to tweak your sound just so. Each box does something different, and depending on the order in which they are placed you’ll get different results (wah > overdrive sounds different than overdrive > wah). Mixing and matching pedals has been even more fruitful than messing with knobs on each individual pedal. But all these knobs are a double-edged sword: all these options leave more possibilities for things get messy. Between the guitar, amp, and pedals, I have no less than seven volume knobs and six tone knobs. Finding and maintaining the right balance is quite a balancing act. There is also the issue of signal degradation: with all those input and output jacks, and with all those cables connecting the jacks, there is bound to be some diminished quality in the sound. If (when?) I get really, really serious about all of this, I replace my mid-grade cables with customizable solderless connectors, or the top of the line gold-plated cables.
I’m not quite satisfied with my rig. Sometimes I don’t think I will ever be, and half the fun is going to be continually building and experimenting with different combinations. While everything I have will stay put, I can’t help but wonder if replacing my standard crybaby with the 535Q, or if it is worth swapping out the q-tron for the q-tron +, which offers a softer, vowel-like response. The flanger is old and horribly beaten up and makes some pretty freaky sounds, which can be cool sometimes, but maybe I’d be better off with something a little more reliable and even-keeled, like the MXR Phaser. Perhaps throwing in an EQ at the end of the effects loop will give me a more full tone. And recently I’ve been enamoured with the leslie speaker effect, which points things towards the Uni-Vibe, but damned if I don’t have a stereo rig. It wouldn’t make much sense in mono to have a Uni-Vibe, which is essentially a phaser that pans between a left and right channel, but there are some less expensive options. I also have a Boss Octave Pedal kicking around, but it’s less than awesome as it cuts out and distorts when you play chords through it. Makes me drool after some of the high-end Electro-Harmonix Synths…
I spent a good three afternoons at Mr. Music trying out different pedals in different combinations. Didn’t buy anything, although I think they are pretty sick of me now. These pedals and all the options they offer have my head spinning. Maybe I should take a lesson from Angus Young and worry more about what my fingers are doing instead of my feet. After listening to all the options and pedals I begin to lose perspective. After talking to a particulary helpful guy at Mr. Music for over an hour on Wednesday, I handed back an armful of pedals with an apologetic and resigned look on my face, and thought to myself, that’s it. I’m going acoustic.
Posted by davidtaus at April 29, 2006 11:32 AM | TrackBack