famous beagle
Well-known member
I'm curious if every guitar player has this ... what I call the "holy sh*t" moment. Here's my story.
I started playing guitar at 14 (1985 I think) on a borrowed Peavey T-15, which had a built-in, bare bones (solid state, obviously) amp in the case. (See pic. I don't own this anymore, but this is the exact same rig.) I didn't know anything about amps back then, so I didn't realize what "pre-gain" or "post-gain" meant. I was getting a pretty clean tone out of it because I didn't know how to do anything else.
I was teaching myself from a book called Heavy Metal Lead Guitar by Troy Stetina, which came with a (yes, that's right) cassette to demonstrate the licks.
And I was wondering why I didn't sound like the recording, which, of course, was played with a distorted tone.
After a couple of months, I started taking lessons at a music store. At my first lesson, I plugged into the teacher's student rig, which had a few pedals in front of the amp. I can't remember what they all were ... only one. He was showing me the intro power chord riff to "Rock You Like a Hurricane" (Scorpions), and I was hacking my way through it. (At that point, I had only played lead licks because that was the only book I had. So I'd never even played a power chord at that point.) Then he said, "Why don't you step on that Heavy Metal petal there."
HOLY SH*T!!!!
And that was it - the first time I had played with distortion. I was hooked for life.
Does every player have a moment like that?
I started playing guitar at 14 (1985 I think) on a borrowed Peavey T-15, which had a built-in, bare bones (solid state, obviously) amp in the case. (See pic. I don't own this anymore, but this is the exact same rig.) I didn't know anything about amps back then, so I didn't realize what "pre-gain" or "post-gain" meant. I was getting a pretty clean tone out of it because I didn't know how to do anything else.
I was teaching myself from a book called Heavy Metal Lead Guitar by Troy Stetina, which came with a (yes, that's right) cassette to demonstrate the licks.
And I was wondering why I didn't sound like the recording, which, of course, was played with a distorted tone.After a couple of months, I started taking lessons at a music store. At my first lesson, I plugged into the teacher's student rig, which had a few pedals in front of the amp. I can't remember what they all were ... only one. He was showing me the intro power chord riff to "Rock You Like a Hurricane" (Scorpions), and I was hacking my way through it. (At that point, I had only played lead licks because that was the only book I had. So I'd never even played a power chord at that point.) Then he said, "Why don't you step on that Heavy Metal petal there."
HOLY SH*T!!!!
And that was it - the first time I had played with distortion. I was hooked for life.
Does every player have a moment like that?
