by Simon B » Wed Jul 22, 2009 5:31 pm
interesting replies....
for me guitar tones are something I am obsessed with.
as I write this I am sitting in a room with 9 amps,and 7 guitars and there is another 10 amps in another room. and I have started getting my arse into gear and getting a webpage underway and start some advertising on the reamp studio
a big lesson for me was, I was reamping some tracks, and I got a cd on the sounds they were chasing. I spent 2 days trying every amp and mic combination I just couldnt get it close. the sounds I ended up agreeing on were a badcat, and a hiwatt with a pedal..... I was really annoyed at the fact the sound came from a pedal, it went against everything I stood for, valve saturation should kick the ass of a pedal.. but it was the closest I could get it to the sounds.
things I have found are....
guitarists are quite pretentious.
Some guitarists will not even try an amp because of the maker, not whether it its best sound for the song, and the 2 most common brands they will not try are mesa or marshall, because they are biased one over the other.
amps I have put NOS tubes in and biased a little differently, and chasing the little 1%er's in better dont barely get noticed unless they are guitar geeks like me.
Tone is in the fingers, if you go chasing your favourties artist setup, exactly and plug in, it may sound similar but it wont make you sound like them, and a classic example of this is I know a guy that was support for Van halen and got to play through the brown sound, you know what he sounded like him playing through Eddies rig, he didnt sound like Eddie.
some guitarist when choosing their dream amp play mostly lead through it when they are trying it out.... which is cool but I would figure the rhythm sound be more important because it is played for the majority of the song.
nearly everyone can agree on whats a good clean sound, but dirty sounds everyone is always chasing, and there is no agreeing on what hi gain is.
in about 2 months I am going to try and arrange to do a hi gain shoot out, using video and studio mics and reamp the same track through the amps so the comparison is as fair as possible.
less gain and double tracking is beefier for me.
my suggestion on getting good guitar sounds are to get a band and sit in rehearsal or bring up a mix and then chase the guitar sounds, the human ear is sensitive to high and lows so when listening to an amp on its the human ear likes the amp the most with the rock n roll smile. boosted bass and treble.... in a band situation the guitar is lost because it is caught in the bass and cymbals.... so for a band setting chasing the sounds when the band is in the room is best, and then find a way to let it compliment the vocals, or if you hate the singer drown them out
for me there are 2 guitar products that nearly cover everything..
that is the mi audio revelation amplifier, made in sydney actually
and the fractal axe fx.
so here is how I stand on guitar sounds.
when chasing guitar tones it is very easy to get caught up in other things, there are just too many options nowadays. make it sound good then stop.
now to answer your questions.
muddy could be settings, try less bottom end and less gain. play with the mids and treble
I would suggest going guitar > gt8 > di> amplitube
I hope this helps
Cheers Simon
Hello my name is Simon Bray and I like guitar amps, currently at 20 something.
http://www.ponymusic.com.au/record/