Fat One Amps

I don't like it!

I think it is one more degree of control that I simply don't want to lose. My guitar is connected to a pedal board, multiple cords, multiple pedals, into the amplifier or amplifiers, then is mic'd and sent into the PA. If I am lucky I actually hear what coming our of my amplifier speaker live or through the monitor mix - nearly live. If my guitar sound is distorted by the amplifier speakers I am using, that is just a bit too much. I don't know how to control speaker distortion so can't be sure the sound I am projecting is good, or not. Let's talk more about that...

Some guitarists never play clean. They use Distortion controls, or the Drive/More Drive/Overdrive channel or setting, or modelling amplifiers mimicking cranked overdriven amplifiers. Do they know what their guitars sound like without all that colouring and all those harmonics present? Nope. How could they?

Those "dirty" channels and settings can make one guitar sound much like any other. You could imagine that the difference between a high quality strat with lovely pickups and a plywood slab strat with generic OEM pickups should be huge, but with an amplifier which isn't clean, how would you know? Playing your guitar clean though a fine tube amplifier should be a delightful sound experience. Adjusting the tone control on a strat by even one number will make a difference that you can hear and use in your playing, and changing pickups is like having a whole new landscape. Let's talk about strats...

So, the drummer in my band is many things (awesome drummer, singer, band leader, gear expert,...) and an experienced pro sound guy. Last practice when complimenting him about about how good our sound was and how loud I was at the same time, he actually told me when guitarists talk about getting good tone in the mix, they really mean volume. In his words  "You guys all talk tone, but what you really want is to get lit up with SPLs!"

Guilty! I thought about this and have to agree. Both the other guitarist in our band and I have been struggling with keeping our volumes down enough to not bugger the sound mix and still get the sweet sweet sounds we need from our great tube amplifiers. Is anyone surprised? I'm not. Here's why...

Well of course ... but remember, guitar tone controls and most amp tone controls take away signal content but don’t add signal content.  You could conclude having the tone controls fully up is “the true tone” from your guitar or amplifier, and it is. With the volume and tone controls dimed, your pickups are fed mostly directly out to your amp and with the amplifier tone controls dimed, signal is not attenuated and with a good amp this can sound wonderful. But is that what you need?

EVH maintains “volume is tone”. This is true for him. He is hyper-sensitive to tonal nuances (can or at least could hear the differences between 10 foot and 20 foot instrument cables from guitar to amp) and typically plays with his amps so far into saturation that volume changes on his guitar move the amplifier response further in or out of saturation. So turning up in this situation increases the saturation in the pre-amp and the overdrive in the power amp and changes the frequency content of his sound. The sound gets fuller because more harmonic content is present, but not necessarily louder, because the amplifier cannot produce more power – the additional harmonics are being amplified and consuming the power amplification potential of the amplifier.

Steve’s Music in Toronto used to have a sign in their acoustic guitar room, and maybe still does: “No playing the following songs: Stairway to Heaven, Dust in the Wind, Needle and the Damage Done, …” - you get the idea. I used to think this was just music shop sales staffer sour humour, but imagine if you were the one who had to listen to those songs all day, by all levels of player. I’d go nuts and maybe you would too.

Now move the Saturday morning tire kicking guitar players out of the acoustic room into the main shop where there are all those amps. Yikes! All those loud, overdrive and distortion control equipped, solid state simu-tube amplifiers trying to nail the intricate SRV, EVH, Satch, Zack, Kurt, Foo Fighters solos and riffs we all love to try and show off whenever possible. Now that would drive me insane. But I am not normal – I love the sound of electric guitar clean, overdriven and cranked too … as long as it is a good sounding amp. Otherwise it can be very disappointing. Great tone is fairly easily accomplished using technique, fresh strings on an acceptable guitar, limited pedal-age and an amp that can faithfully reproduce all that.