eyema_believer
Bondservant
No really--you're guitar tone is what mine wants to be when it grows up. So spill some beans: what's the electric guitar's signal chain (we know it's a homemade tele)? Is that a Mesa? What else is working for you?
(Before the purists jump in and tell me "Tone is in your hands, dude!"--I know that. And the way I drive is in my hands too. And I'd probably drive faster in a Porsche!Seriously, the touch and the gear work together, and I'd love to know more about at least your gear side...)
Too funny Mr Strat!
This is my Vox Tonelab into the power amp of my Crate V-32, miced with an sm57. The Tonelab was set with an ac15 preamp model, and no speaker cab model. The biggest thing I can share with you that I've learned about guitar tone is this: use a compressor before the amp to give you sustain, INSTEAD of using of a bunch of preamp distortion to get your sustain. Hit the powertubes HARD with this nice "cleaner" sound, and crank the amp, giving you powertube saturation and still more compression. If you have it, use an amp with EL84s. They will sound better quicker than a 6L6 or an EL34, which have tons of clean headroom. If you imagine Eddie Van Halen's sound on the first album or two, it was a nice sort of cleaner distored sound.... that's what you want, not a "buzzy" preamp distortion.
My other "secret" is big frets. If I play on my Fender Strat (american plus model, 88) my hand cramps in a few minutes from the low fret wire, and small neck profile. The difference in at least getting some true jumbo frets will be enormous. They are so easy to bend, you might slide them off the neck until you get used to it..... but now that I'm used to it, the guitar almost plays itself. I have a custom neck profile.... it's about 1/2" thicker at the first fret than my Fenders, and 1/16" wider at the nut. It makes a huge difference in what I can play... I could never play the solo to this song on my stock strat or tele!
There... that's all my beans...
Peace!
~Shawn
