The New Tone Thread

Thanx man. I'm looking at the DSL's now.

I can crank it up here. But I still can't see myself using a 50 watt set up. Even with this 15 watt Fender, I put the volume at 7 and my cats are running for cover. It's loud.

I need something simple. I don't get these modelling amps. I mean, Fender isn't some shit fly by night company. You'd think that they'd have top notch programmers that know what they're doing. If they call a pre-set "Marshall JCM800", it should sound close to that. But every pre-set has a weakness, or needs to be tweaked to the point that it doesn't sound anything like it started.

This sound that you heard was supposed to be "Mesa Boogie Rectifier". You'd think it should at least sound pretty good right out of the box. But no.
 
RAMI, for similar reasons that Greg recommends the small Marshalls I would recommend the smaller Blackstars. As Greg says though, if you can stretch the budget get a head and cab so you have more speaker options. The Studio 20 is a lovely sounding amp now I have it dialed in but it is very bottom heavy - you need to ignore what the knobs are telling you and really go with your ears - I have the treble on nearly full now!

The Blackstar Club 40 is a great amp and they do an optional version of this with a V30 speaker - I completely fell in love with this when I tested it but didn't want to stretch the budget (in hindsight a bad choice) and thought that a 20W would be more useful to me than a 40W (in hindsight this was the right choice). It also appears to be a pretty rhobust amp.

I would recommend a Studio 20 Head but with a separate cab although if noise level isn't an issue for you and you can afford it try and find a Club 40 SE (SE is with a V30). Personally I find the smaller Marshalls a bit fizzy. I tried a smaller DSL and didn't like it at all.

A Tiny Terror could be another great option - I absolutely loved the tone of this into a V30 but it just wasn't versatile enough for me.
 
RAMI said:
This sound that you heard was supposed to be "Mesa Boogie Rectifier". You'd think it should at least sound pretty good right out of the box. But no.
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Rectifier sims are odd. They always sound shit. Whenever I've used a rectifier sim I've been expecting instant Metallica but they always sound really boomy and completely lack any definition. I tried a real Duel Rectifier a few months ago thought and it was brilliant. Not the sort of tone I am after these days but it was "instant metallica" - loads of gain without loss of clarity and everything decending into mush
 
RAMI said:
This sound that you heard was supposed to be "Mesa Boogie Rectifier". You'd think it should at least sound pretty good right out of the box. But no.
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What you had did kind of sound Mesa-ish. Those "Rectifier" Mesas are favorites of metalheads for a reason. Lots of gain, lots of low end, top end, and weak midrange.

Those DSLs are Marshall's most versatile for the price amps they have. They're pretty dang good. They're all-tube, no modeling. If you want Marshall sound, that's an easy way to get it, although it's not exactly "classic" Marshall sound. They don't sound like 800s or Plexis. They do sound good though.

If you want a different sound, Orange, Egnater, Blackstar, etc all make little watt tube amps.
 
Thanx for all the help and suggestions, guys. I was going to ask about Orange, too. I played with a guy that had everything from a small Roland Cube to 100 watt Marshalls, but my favorite sound out of everything he played was the Orange. Thick, syropy sound.

I'm a little stubborn, so I'm going to keep playing with this Fender. I have gotten pretty good sounds out of it in most of my songs. I was just going for something different this time around. Like I said, I would have never bought it if I knew it had a bunch of pre-sets.

Anyway, I'm going to re-post this using the same sounds I've used on previous tunes and see what happens.

Thanx again.
 
Greg_L said:
I think the best amps are usually that way. Do one thing really, really good instead of a bunch of things half-assedly.
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That's why I went for the Blackstar in the end - they have two channels but are really simple to use - just a tone control on the clean, a normal EQ, ISF and Gain on the dirt channel.

The Orange was just too limited with only one channel - would be almost unusable live for me.

I tried a Bognor with about a million buttons on it - couldn't get a tone out of it.
One of the Marshalls I tried had loads of buttons on it too.. DSL?

I tried another Marshall with two rows of knobs - I'm too lazy to learn how to use them all!
 
JDOD said:
I tried another Marshall with two rows of knobs - I'm too lazy to learn how to use them all!
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I'm the same way. Too many knobs sometimes. Just give me Gain, Bass, Mid, and Treble and a clean channel. I'm not asking for much.
 
JDOD said:
Yeah, they sound great! They're just very limited for the money. Great tone, not a lot of options.
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I've got a little Orange TH30 combo that can do anything you want; it's got 2 channels though. The only problem I ever had when I first got it was figuring out what the knobs did, they are marked with symbols instead of words. But, out of all the amps that I have - all combos - it's one that I would say is top 2 in diversity only behind my Marshall DSL40C.
 
RAMI said:
I'm the same way. Too many knobs sometimes. Just give me Gain, Bass, Mid, and Treble and a clean channel. I'm not asking for much.
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This is what i like about Orange. They approach tone really simply. For someone like me, the less i have to fuck around with the better. ADD+100's of Knobs is not good math.
 
ShanPeyton said:
ADD+100's of Knobs is not good math.
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For sure. I used to have ADHD, but I didn't even have the patience to keep the H, so now I just have ADD.:D

I took a quick look at some Orange amps. Holy shit are they expensive.

Anyway, I did a new clip, going back to the sounds that have worked for me for most of my tunes. Hopefully this isn't too saturated like the other ones were. This is with no EQ'ing or any processing on the guitars.

Again, don't mind the drum machine. I did a half ass job of programming since I'm going to replace them with real drums eventually.

Let me know if I'm getting closer to something acceptable.
 

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pikingrin said:
I've got a little Orange TH30 combo that can do anything you want; it's got 2 channels though. The only problem I ever had when I first got it was figuring out what the knobs did, they are marked with symbols instead of words. But, out of all the amps that I have - all combos - it's one that I would say is top 2 in diversity only behind my Marshall DSL40C.
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Yeah, Orange is stupidly british with it's pictures instead of logical names and numbers. The TH30 is a great amp though.

My Marshall JVM410 is the most versatile amp they make. Four channels, three gain modes per channel, EQ per channel, dual master volumes, series/parallel effects loop, four reverbs, power amp in/out, programmable footswitch, 28 fucking knobs, etc. It does everything. It does everything really well. The one thing it doesn't do? Come to gigs with me because it's option overkill. Any one of my ancient style single channel Marshalls is better. Turn em on, dial it in, let er rip.
 
RAMI said:
For sure. I used to have ADHD, but I didn't even have the patience to keep the H, so now I just have ADD.:D

I took a quick look at some Orange amps. Holy shit are they expensive.

Anyway, I did a new clip, going back to the sounds that have worked for me for most of my tunes. Hopefully this isn't too saturated like the other ones were. This is with no EQ'ing or any processing on the guitars.

Again, don't mind the drum machine. I did a half ass job of programming since I'm going to replace them with real drums eventually.

Let me know if I'm getting closer to something acceptable.
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I think they're better than the Mesa-ish clip, but they still sound kind of hollow. Lots of low end resonance like the mids are still missing and/or low volume. It's strange. I've never heard your guitar tracks sound like that before. It's not terrible, but they don't have the crisp punch your guitar tracks usually have.
 
Greg_L said:
I think they're better than the Mesa-ish clip, but they still sound kind of hollow. Lots of low end resonance like the mids are still missing and/or low volume. It's strange. I've never heard your guitar tracks sound like that before. It's not terrible, but they don't have the crisp punch your guitar tracks usually have.
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OK, thanx. I have to see what I'm doing differently. It might just be mic placement. I'm going to go back to a 57, too, just to see if that's the problem. I've been using a condenser for the last few tunes, and maybe that's the problem. I need that throatiness that only a 57 can give. It might not even be that, but I'm going back to basics and starting over.

So it could be mic placement or mic choice....or both. Back to the drawing board.
 
RAMI said:
OK, thanx. I have to see what I'm doing differently. It might just be mic placement. I'm going to go back to a 57, too, just to see if that's the problem. I've been using a condenser for the last few tunes, and maybe that's the problem. I need that throatiness that only a 57 can give. It might not even be that, but I'm going back to basics and starting over.

So it could be mic placement or mic choice....or both. Back to the drawing board.
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Ha, I knew it! I didn't want to venture a guess, but I suspected it was a condenser recording a moderately low volume tone. It totally has that sound to it.

Go back to your 57 and turn it up. :)
 
Greg_L said:
Ha, I knew it! I didn't want to venture a guess, but I suspected it was a condenser recording a moderately low volume tone. It totally has that sound to it.

Go back to your 57 and turn it up. :)
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OK, well you should have guessed out loud!!!!! :D

One out of two, actually. It is really loud, volume isn't the issue. But it must be the condenser. Problem is, I've tweaked so much that I'm sure just changing the mic won't be the only solution right now. I have to go back to the 57 but also play with the sound a lot. But I'm recording right now with the 57, so we'll see what that does as a first step.
 
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