Guitars and Amplifiers

Another favorite of mine is making music. Now I am not exactly a guitar hero, but I can play some decent Blues and Rock and work a lot on various Zappa tunes. I played in bands from time to time  (right now it is "The Wrong Haircut") and join sessions every now and then. Being on stage is something magic. I mean it really isn't so important if you play 100% perfect or not; it is important to be there and play. Because I post a lot on guitar related BBS, I'd like to introduce my gear and explain some pros and cons. The most important part of this page is probably the last few paragraphs.

Guitars

I own seven guitars by today and all of them have a different character, different personality and sound spectrum.

Sunny         1994 USA Fender American Standard Stratocaster, rosewood fretboard and sunburst finish. Special 40th anniversary edition with neckplate sporting "1994 Fender Stratocaster, 40 years and still rockin' " . I fell in love with that guitar while strolling through a local music store. I already owned a Strat and just wanted to play around. This one was lighter than my "Blondie", sounded weaker but warmer and had large jumbo frets on the pretty thin neck. Now I ain't no friend of slim necks. I like a meaty baseball bat, but over the years Sunny has become my #1 axe. It just plays right! Because of the  light weight I don't have a problem to do a long show with her and she really is a part of me.

I have Hot-Rodded her a bit over the years, put Custom Shop Texas Special pick-ups in and blocked the tremolo with a wedge-shaped piece of wood. The trebble knob is out of order; it is now glued on the scratchplate and locked in the 10 position. Sunny has a very powerful but classic Strat sound and an astonishing long sustain. The sound goes from very clean and present to dark and crunchy, and I mainly play solos on the neck PU. I simply love this instrument and it's warm, balanced, clear voice that comes partly from the 10-42 strings I use.

Blondie       1994 Fender Mexico Stratocaster in Black with maple neck. A beautiful and heavy sounding guitar that I equipped with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails at the bridge. I love the meaty neck and the very good quality (all hardware is US made). This axe isn't any better or worse than any US Stratocaster. It weights a lot more (heavyer wood), but that makes for a long sustain and a punchy tone. The pickups are hotter than the Texas Specials and the overall sound is pretty distorted and rich. This may be the quintessential blues axe.

The Hammer        1997 (?) Hamer Studio, burgundy red, two humbuckers. I traded a Strat for that one. A very powerful sounding, easy playing guitar. Like every Strat player I wanted a humbucker equipped, Gibson style guitar as well. It took me some years of searching. I tried Epiphones, Gibsons, PRS, Fender Fat Strats, everything that had that warm, long sustain and powerful sound. While a Gibson or a PRS aren't in my budget, a used SG or an Epiphone Les Paul with Gibson pickups seemed the thing to buy. Then I stumbled into this Hamer.

The quality is excellent and lets nothing to be desired. The look is basic and simple, no bindings, but the craftsmanship is impressive from the Tune-O-Matic tailpiece to the closed tuners. The neck is glued to the body and a bit wider but shallower than what I know from my Fenders, the fretwork is perfect and without a flaw, the two humbuckers sound very 70s and reproduce the sound of each string (10-48 for this one). I am very, very happy with that guitar! Top notch quality for a price in the Epiphone range.

The Bullet     1982? USA Fender Bullet, rosewood neck and green-metallic body. #102107 "Bullet 1 Star" logo. The neck is probably a 1966 Fender Telecaster part (Kluson Deluxe vertical striped tuners and tussrod access only fron the body side), the body has Tele weight and dimensions, the scratchplate is Strat-shaped but with only two PUs and   Tele-like electrics. Everything on this axe looks Telecaster, but the sound is punchyer, thicker, say Tele on steroids. While the bridge PU has the classic Twang, the neck PU sounds a lot P90-like ... warm and full. The intermediate position is very clean and beautiful for rhythm parts. The 09-42 strings I use help to maintain a balanced sound.

The strong V-shaped neck with small frets and no roll at all isn't my favourite, but the axe has a very cool blues tone. Plus the Bullet ain't no collectors item yet; I bought mine around € 400.--. If you look for a versatile Blues or Country axe with a high "cool factor", you will love the Bullet.

Scarlet                 1995 Epiphone Sorrento, antique burst. Another guitar I bought without thinking it over. This P90 equipped hollow archtop is an axe you have to get used to. It can produce the classic, fat Jazz tone, and it can deliver a George Thorogood-like scream. But it ain't no stage tool. The resonance of the body makes for eternal feedback at mid volumes on any "overdriven" amp and the only remedy would be to stuff paper or wool into the instrument (like Ted Nugent and George did) and kill the nice, natural harmonics.

Scarlet can play a lot more music than I can play. In fact, she is the one guitar that I have to fight regularly. I string her quite heavy (13-58 flatwounds) to get the most resonance and sustain out of that archtop body. She can be a dream for people who love the shorter Gibson scale and painted necks, but I am not used to it, so it's quite difficult for me. This guitar is incredibly versatile, going from warm, nearly acoustic Jazz tones all the way to a solid Rock crunch and scream. As I said before, Scarlet needs some getting used to. When strung with 09-46 (pretty thin for a box like this), the guitar can produce incredible vintage crunch through a clean amp. I don't know why, but the sound is clean and dark with fat strings but gets crunchy and bright with thinner ones. I understand the dark and bright thing, but I don't know what produces this very, very cool crunch at clean amp settings ..... Maybe there's something about harmonics and interferences that works here. It doesn't happen with 09-42, it doesn't happen with 10-50 ..... A cool Blues-tool for old amps. And  I was lucky with the price. I got mine at € 500.-- and today they retail for more than twice that price.

Bonnie          1979 Fender F65 Dreadnought acoustic. I got this one as a birthday present from my wife and I am very proud of it. The pretty round neck makes for  good playability and all the bindings (top, bottom, bottom center and neck) and cross-shaped pearl inlays add a touch of class. I was never an acoustic player, but I got into it after  starting to discover the rich tone and nice coloured sound of this instrument. Now this paddle ain't no Santa Cruz or boutique-made gem, but the aging has done her good and the guitar sounds a lot like a few Martins I heared so far. I am surprised by the precise intonation and bell-like clearness of the instrument.

It seems to be finished with that old laquer that crackles when the climate changes and it has some cracks and scars on the (solid) top. The fretboard feels more like ebony than rosewood and is pretty hard; I play Martin light acoustic bronze strings and that seems a good combination. The neck hasn't moved a bit since I got it.

Z                   1992 Ibanez Silver Cadet Dreadnought acoustic.   A quite well built beginners acoustic guitar without major ups or downs. After years of "electric only" this was my first attempt to go back to the basics. It is Korean made and I lowered the saddle by 1 mm after some time. The fretboard is pretty soft in feel and the neck has a deep V shape. The tone got better after I pulled the scratchplate off, but it lacks bottom and high sparkle so the sound is pretty monodimensional. There is nothing bad to say about this paddle; it's a good value student guitar and while the finish isn't excellent, you can't go wrong with it either.

Goin' goin' gone....

I had a few more guitars over the years and some may be worth mentioning:    -    My Höfner Classic Concerto acoustic nylon string; a mass produced but very well built classic guitar.    -    The Aria Diamond SG copy I got when I was 12 and absolutely into AC/DC; I should never have sold that axe. It was perfectly finished, very well built and had a very rich sound.   -     A Squier Stratocaster (maple/black) that had the worst setup of all axes I ever had;  incredible high action and everything you touched had that "cheap" feeling, but the PUs had the old classic Stratocaster sound from the 50s. When I listen to the tapes I recorded with that guitar I always think: "how can I get that cool old tone again?"   -   An Epiphone Les Paul Standard. I had original Gibson PUs in it and it had a good long sustain and original Gibson sound to my ears, but I sold her anyway ("I was young and I needed the money!").    -   Aria Pro II Strat shaped with two humbuckers and a Floyd Rose style vibrato. I wanted something to do divebombs on and got this crappy piece of junk. It didn't last longer than two weeks in my posession because I don't play any music with dive bombs in it. Should have thought about it earlyer.    -   A Live Precision Bass, simply a very bad copy of a Fender P Bass. It's always smart to have a bass around if you want to home-record some music. But then get a good one.

Amplifiers

We all go through the same stages with amps. First we start on a small and cheesy solid state practice amp, then we want that huge all tube full-stack monster or at least a combo with 100+ Watt. After a time we realize we don't play any venues where we can crank our monster to the max, so one settles for a high class mid-wattage (20 - 50W) tube combo that serves for recording and club gigs.  That's what happened to me, and chances are it has happened (or will happen)  to you as well. I see an amp as a music instrument. It's not only a megaphone I blow my guitar sound through. It is a very important part of my sound. I know that I play different on different amps, and I highly recommend to chose an amp before deciding on a guitar. You can change a lot on an axe; new PUs, split coils and/or reverse polarity with  a small toggle switch, use thicker strings, pots of different impedance, change to a bone-nut and bass frets .... but your amp has that ONE sound! And "ya gonna dance the girl that brung ya!" as they say.

Fender Hot Rod Deluxe   40W 1*12 open back all tube combo

Difficult to say anything new about this amp. It's a pure dream. You already figured my preference for clean or warm crunch tones from my guitars; now here's the amp to reproduce the perfect single coil punch. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the 50W range has more punch, more compression and better clean tone than this Fender bestseller. Mine came with Sovtek tubes (they use GT now) and I was in love with it from the first moment on.  The crunch channel is very nice, warm and bassy and I can get every tone from Surf City to AC/DC, the latter sounding very realistic with an added 2*12 cab.

The three major flaws are   -  the serial FX loop (you can't blend the wet signal in and out),   -  a very poor distorsion (I don't use that anyway) and   -  one set of tone controls for all three channels (clean/crunch/boost). My setup is all three tone controls to 6, gain to 3, reverb to 2 and presence to 7. This makes for a nice, sparkling clean, warm, SRV like rhythm and a piercing, powerful lead sound. That's all I want. If you absolutely want high gain, add a Big Muff or a Rat and you get yours, too.

Marshall Valvestate 8080   80W 1*12   open back tube/solid state combo

One all time bestseller for the people from Milton Keynes and a lot better than its reputation. You have to realize that this amp was mainly built for kids that want a big-wattage Marshall in their bedroom. You can gig with it, but it sounds thin and squeamish compared to a 100W head and a 4*12 wall. On the other side this amp offers a very realistic British tone in mid volume levels. It is an ideal practice amp and a very good recording tool. Yep!  And with it's parallel FX loop and 2/4 channel architecture it offers a lot of different sounds and the real British distorsion, not to forget the contour pot: you can shape your mids from low to high and dive into that new "lo-bottom" thingy.

Now I don't play it very often these days, and while a lot of bands started with this amp, I don't take it to gigs anymore. But I have constantly a mike put in front of its Eminence speaker because the amp serves a lot for recording. The volume is limited to what you get from a 15W tube amp, but that is sufficient for garage music and small gigs. And if you stay at these levels, the amp is good. No flaws, the original tone and it's a Marshall.

Powerland 25   25W 1*12 open back solid state combo

What an adventure.  Not much bigger than an average computer monitor, this amp comes from the 70s tube vs. SS wars. It has one very interesting sound (the crunch) and two very bad ones. The clean sounds thin and "through the nose", the distorsion (or "Drive 2") is ridiculous and let's me think of a fuzz through a telephone, but the crunch ("Drive") is very good. The amp has three gain knobs plus a master volume (!!!), and each can be pulled out for brightness on the channel. That's something for a late-70s piece of junk. Just like the footswitch (either clean/drive or drive/drive2, depending on a knob setting on the amp's panel).

Scarlet, my archtop, sounds OK through this little beast. The warm and sustaining sound of that guitar goes very well with that flat solid state crunch. It is a very interesting studio tool and I experiment a lot with it, pushing it through different speakers or cabs or pushing my Fender through the weak 12-incher in the box (now THAT'S speaker distorsion!). Another trick I did recently was to close the amp's back by 90%. I fitted a piece of plywood into the open rear and now there's only a small slot of maybe 15mm large directly under the amp chassis. The sound got punchyer but I also added a lot of mud with this "custom job". After all you can't go wrong when using the amp:  it was really cheap (€ 25.-- used) and works all the time... I'm real happy to own it.

The other good ones

If I could add one more amp to my collection, it would be the  -  Engl Screamer 50 Pro Blues. A Sound exactly between Fender and Marshall, sounding a bit darker but having a very distinctive grain and superb lead tone. The 50W 2*10 closed back all tube combo is ridiculously loud and a very versatile tool. The clean is not that good, but a lot better than on any British or US-Hi-Gain brand. In fact it can sound a lot like the    -    Vox AC30, 33W 2*12 open back all tube combo. It has a very classic crunch sound and that's it. No distorsion, no clean, just that distinctive, typical, classical Vox crunch. It's an absolute must for a blues guitarist, say you go zero to Rory Gallagher or Keith Richards in a second.   -   I once owned a Park 10W solid state cube,  a nasty little beast for home practice. It had two gain knobs and you could get ridiculous distorsion levels at very low volume, still very cheesy sounding through that 8 inch speaker.   -   The Carvin Legacy 100W 2*12 all tube  closed back combo is another very well made amp I already played. Very modern Hi-gain sounds in a well built amp.   -   If I had to buy an amp head and a 2*12 (4*12 is way too big and heavy to carry them around), I'd go for the Marshall JTM 45. The classic 6L6-tubed amp that Marshall came up with in 1962. The design is based on the Fender Bassman but offers more overdrive and crunch.  -  Even better: get a Marshall Bluesbreaker combo. It is the JTM 45 with an added tremolo effect in a 2*12 combo package. Maybe the best Marshall ever. That's the early Clapton, Yardbirds tone and both, JTM 45 and Bluesbreaker combo, exist as reissues. The Bluesbreaker is reasonably priced (about the same as for the Fender HotRod DeVille 2*12) and well worth the money.  -  Last but not least the Marshall JCM 2000 TSL 401 (phew!) 40W 1*12 all tube open back combo, shurely the most versatile Marshall amp so far. It can go from clean (OK, pretty clean) via Plexi to Mesa and has the classic Marshall voicing. Three independent  channels make for about twenty knobs on the front, but once you learn how to handle the thing, it is like my Fender a "one for all" amp, just a bit on the heavier side.

Effects

Stomp boxes are hard to rate. It depends a lot on your guitar, your amp and your PUs. And then they all come up with different sounds every year; how many (different sounding) Tube Screamers, Big Muffs and Dunlop Wahs are available and how does The Original sound? If you want to use effects: be smart and build yourself an effect-board. Mine is wired and the boxes are more or less fixed on it. I only need one electric plug (there is a 9V power transformer under the "upper floor") and I plug my guitar cable into the board and the board cable into the amp. The board goes into a home-made gig-bag and is easy to transport. At least that was the plan.  I will list the effects in the order of importance (to me) rather than by alphabet or sound modulation.

Seiko ST 747 Tuner

What do I have to say? Anybody without a tuner here? The Seiko is by far the most precise and easiest to read so far. It works for acoustic and electric instruments, shows cents, goes through 10 octaves and is cheap. You can even "capture" a reference A and let everybody else tune to that (pretty helpful in bars with slightly detuned pianos).

Jim Dunlop Cry Baby

The wah-wah, short and simple. This one or the Vox. No other box has a bigger influence on your sound and no other FX can be used on so many different kinds of music. From Funk over Blues to Rock or Metal ... if you play guitar, you ned a wah. I like the cheap Jim Dunlop Cry Baby version. It has a rock solid housing, the frequencies are just where I'd tune them myself and it's about half the price of the next serious competitor.

Ernie Ball Volume Pedal

Change the axe onstage without putting the amp on standby? Swell into a melody (a la Mark Knopfler on What It Is) or play the guitar like a violin? A volume pedal does the trick and the good ones have a tuner-out, so you can keep your tuner plugged in; or you can put your main signal on the bypass and the processed signal through the volume pedal and play with the levels ... a must! The Ernie Ball is a sturdy beast. You can hammer nails into walls with it; in fact I think that's what they made them for in first place!

Boss Line Selector LS2

You got more than one stompbox? Then you need a line selector. It is not just a simple A/B box. It is a A/B/Y, A+B/C, A/B+C, A+B+C and so on box. I route my guitar through the line selector into my amp. It has a true bypass (0) and two more FX loops (1 and 2). So I can fiddle with the lineup, let the signal go through all of them at the same time or just activate a group and then switch them all on at the same second. Very, very cool and helpful if you need to change your sound from one preset to another in the middle of a song. If I take more than one effect to a gig, I have my Line Selector with me.

Snarling Dogs Very Tone Dog

Taking more than one guitar to a gig gets old very fast when you have to carry all your gear yourself. This box is like the Gibson Varytone circuit and it bites. It doesn't make your Les Paul sound like a Tele or your Strat sound like a Jazz-jewel, but you get close enough for live gigs. Good Dog! You have 10 different presets (snarl!) five for hubucker, five for single coil guitars and you get weird sounds when using them "in addition" instead of "opposed to". Highly recommended!

Boss Compressor CS3

Anybody who does not know this box? All knobs turned to 12 o'clock and you can have a hefty in-your-face sound at any level. It has to be used BEFORE the distorsion in the chain and is helpful for any clean or crunch sound. You can even try to use it for home recording and singing. It's not ideal, but it does the trick until your banker allows you to buy an old Neve microphone compressor (for the price of a decent 80ft powerboat).

Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi

My favourite distorsion. I have that black "chicken head" edition from Russia that comes in a wooden box and the tone and sustain controls are really effective. From a dark, bass heavy trash-sound to screaming punk tone; it's all in the box. It has no outside power intake, so I had to do a 9V plug myself. One very cool sound is to turn the volume down and the sustain up; this results in a pretty clean attack tone with a distorted, endless sustaining decay. Very helpful and easy to use in a band context when you have to cover a lot of space with your axe and can't play full throttle.

Boss Chorus Ensemble CE5

Everybody needs a chorus every now and then. Even if you never play clean lines, it can "vitalize" the sound of your guitar when you play rhythm parts and make you sound fatter, thicker. The CE5 is a stereo model (for what it's worth) and can drive two amps.

Ibanez Digital Delay DL5

If you don't need an eternal delay or you can pass on a programmed precise 174ms delay time and 19% decay rate (yep!), this cheap plastic part does the trick. It has a very warm delay sound and that's what I bought it for. If turned to short delay time and few repeats, your guitar will sound fatter, a bit of an archtop effect. Very cool!

Danelectro Fab Tone

The real heavy, heavy, heavy, metal, metal, metal distorsion, think "chainsaw massacre" and you get an idea.  It's so powerful and loud, I always have to take care not to overload my pre-amp tubes and it's the most unlikely pedal to bring for a wedding gig! Very effective bass and trebble controls.

The other ones

Now I probably forgot all your most important FX boxes and only talked about some of mine. I own a lot more than the ones I mentioned, but the Top Ten effects above are the ones I really use from time to time. I have a TS5 Tube Screamer (very bad!), a Tokai TOD-1 Overdrive (crackles when used), a The Rat Fuzz (sounds too thin, too ... rat!), a Korg AX-30G Multi FX (superb compressor but cold distorsions and the sound goes south when you use more than two effects at the same time), and no Phaser, Flanger, Tremolo, Roto-thingy or the likes. I would not use them or do not know when to apply them to my music, so I simply don't care.

About miking and taping

Wether you want to mike your amp into a mixer for a gig or for recording, you will have to deal with a microphone and its limitations. I like AKG microphones, but the Shure SM 57 is The Legend for guitar amps. Any mike changes your sound, colors your tone a bit (except those hyper expensive Neumann or Telefunken tube micros), and your amp will sound a lot more crunchy through the PA or on the record. You can influence that by positioning the mike's membrane in different angles or distances. In fact any clean Fender vintage box can sound like a Mesa Boogie when miked close and loud.  

I am not the most professional producer and because I am a guitar player, I am pretty stupid when it comes to electronic gadgets, MIDI and all that stuff. I have spend some money on home recording equipment and I can only tell you what I have come down to. My gear is basic and I can understand the setup, so when things hit the fan, I know where to look for an error.

Dual P II 400 PC system (that's right, two processors parallel) with 512 MB RAM and a 20GB U2W-SCSI disk under Windows 2000 Professional (I need the multi-CPU version). There is an SCSI 4x burner, a SB Live Platinum (with that patchboard at the front) and a 1GB Jaz in the computer, and an old 20 inch Samsung monitor on top. This may sound expensive, but the only things really hard to swallow were the soundcard and the Jaz. Pentium II computers are cheap when bought 2nd hand (I found an old server from a company that went belly up) and a twin-400 is always fast enough for processing about 20 (a P III 500 is about as fast), so I rather spent money on a big screen (used) and a lot of memory (cheap because people don't want old SDRams anymore). The computer came down to about 2000 €.

I tried Cubase (too complicated), Cool Edit (not enough options), Music Maker (incredibly complex but not really made for recording analog instruments) and finally came down to Samplitude 2496. That's the biggest and most powerful of the Samplitude kits and a pure dream to work with. 10 minutes after installation, I already had my first multi track recording going. You can do up to 999 tracks, swap them together (bouncing) and now record another 998 next to it and so on ..... enough power for my little studio. The compressor and the exciter sound very natural and "analog" and make that software a steal at 600 €.

Another important part is my old 8 track analog Yamaha mixer. I plug the instrument or microphone into that mixer and route the mixer's sum into the stereo A/D input in my computer's front. I can record up to 6 mono tracks at once and make them one stereo or two mono tracks on the computer (imagine recording a drumset with 5 microphones ..... how do you do that if you have only one input on the PC?). It is in fact a submixer and helps a lot.

As I said before, I like AKG microphones. Yes, I dream of an old Telefunken U 47, but I can't afford it. So my mikes are an AKG D65, cheap and cheesy but with a workable frequency curve and it adds a bit of volume and body to a voice. That's not very good for a perfect reproduction, but it's excellent for an amateur recording!  -   For acoustic guitars  and other instruments I use my AKG D 3700 Tri Power. Initially a voice mike, it has a very clean and bright character, can stand ultra loud volumes before distorsion and adds a lot of bass to the recording. That's not good, but I can easyly cut the bass in the mix, I can't add it if it's not there!   -   Bass drums and guitar combos get my Sennheiser 609 glued to their membrane. It sounds Rock with a big R! Dry and tight with a good reproduction of higher harmonics. A perfect tool for a low price. The "brick" shape is very comfortable. You just hang it in front of the speaker and don't need to hassle with (or buy) a stand.  -   That's it. I only own those three. If I record a drum, I bring the 609 for the bass and the 3700 for the snare and try to borrow more mikes from friends. That's not 100% studio professional, but again: THIS IS ABOUT HOME RECORDING!

-   When miking near, always, ALWAYS place the mike vertical to the speaker cone, not to the center line.   -   The closer you put your mike, the more punch and crunch you get.   -   The further you go from the speaker, the more headroom you get.   -   If you want a dirty, bass heavy sound, place the mike behind the speaker cone in the cabinet or amp (no shit!).   -     For recording use two microphones: one dead on the membrane and one about 2 meters away.   -   There are no limits! Try every distance, angle or configuration. Use a vocal microphone on a bass amp or sing into trumpet-clip micro. It will sound weird, but maybe that's the lo-fi thingy you look for.  

-   Afraid you don't have the money for a cool microphone right now? No problem. I started with an el-cheap-O vocal mike  and used that for a about two years. It lacks the dynamics of a drum or amp mike, but it works good enough for shows.    -   Tape your guitar signal without any amp, just the cable into the mixer, then send the signal from the mixer through your FX into your amp to a microphone and tape that as a second track. You can repeat the same part a hundred times, hear EXACTLY what an effect, different microphone or different amp does to your sound or to that song; and finally keep only the best (or layer different tracks).   -    Keep it simple! The moment you have to think what a cable is used for, unplug everything and restart. Every cable and link damages your signal. Use as few cables, stompboxes or devices as possible.

Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar!!!

Remember my FX board and the plan to transport it everywhere? Now let me tell you something about plans:  90%, say 99% of my gigs, I just play my axe through a cable into my Fender amp. No bullshit, no nonsense simple and true guitar sound through a tube amp. That's all. I may bring my Wah  from time to time, but if we don't play Voodo Chile or anything where I have to solo for a long time, I don't even hassle to plug it in (well, the Wah needs a second cable, someone can stumble over it and unplug my signal line, the sound quality goes south, the battery can go belly up or I need an extra electric plug....). What for? Playing music in a band is not about your expensive and beautiful sounding guitar jewel through a perfectly miked vintage amp in a room with 100% correct audio conditions.

It is about being there and playing your butt off in any given situation and with any available gear.

So before you fine tune your sound to the specs of your favourite guitar hero, rather tune your sound to the rest of the band and the room you play in.    -     If your band's other guitarist plays a Les Paul through a Mesa Boogie, you better go for a Tele through a Vox. At least your guitars will sound different and you don't end up in one sonic mud.    -    If your bassman plays a Hi-Fi tone, add some rumble and distorsion to your guitar; if your bassman is very loud or plays a Precision-style instrument, cut the bass frequencies on your amp and play more in the mids.   -    The smaller the room, the louder the drums, the lower the distorsion! Full gain is for open air stadiums.   -     Don't fiddle around with your tone too much. If your sound can be distinguished from the other instruments at same volume level, that's good enough.

The public want's to see a show, a full power, right from the heart act. They are there to enjoy music, to see  musicians having a good time on stage so they can hop onto your train and take a ride with  the band. They really don't care what tonal subtilities your XYZ effect box or boutique amp is able to reproduce. They are there for the full frontal violence of live music. That's all what counts. Your gear shall just help you to perform for them, no matter if it's worth 10 or 10000 bucks, no matter if you play for 5 or 500 people. Go out and play!

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last updated    10-March-2002