common mistakes that make your tone suck.

Hey!!! I like chorus. Just not as much as in the 80s. :D
I still have an original Boss CE2 unit. Still the best chorus I've heard. And the Roland jazz chorus amp is still great! That clean shimmering sound cant be beat.
:thumbs up:
 
jimistone said:
Isn't the "brown" sound Eddie Van Halens tone? Man, he is a phenomenal player but I never thought his tone was very good.

It's kind if ironic that the "brown" tone sounds like shit isn't it?
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You don't like van halen's tone? Of course, I'm talking the original 70s one, not the over choruses 80s and 90s tone.
 
I'm as much a Marshall fanboy as there is, and I'm not super-crazy about the early EVH tone. I mean, it's hot smoldering Plexi set to destroy, and it sounds cool, but for me those songs are so cheesy I can't even enjoy it.

That Van Halen 1 "Brown Sound" is pretty iconic though, and people to this day are still trying like hell to copy it. It's kind of like Slash's AFD sound. It was a once-in-a-lifetime recorded tone and even Slash and EVH themselves have never again sounded like their debut albums.
 
Farview said:
You don't like van halen's tone? Of course, I'm talking the original 70s one, not the over choruses 80s and 90s tone.
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Well, I can appreciate it more now I guess, but at the time when the first van Halen album came out....no. I thought the playing was mind boggling but I wasn't crazy about the tone. In my opinion there was too much pregain .and flange. It was too processed sounding for my personal taste.
 
jimistone said:
Well, I can appreciate it more now I guess, but at the time when the first van Halen album came out....no. I thought the playing was mind boggling but I wasn't crazy about the tone. In my opinion there was too much pregain .and flange. It was too processed sounding for my personal taste.
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Except that definitely was not your typical amp pre-gain. There was no preamp gain on the VH amp. That was cranked amp near meltdown gain.
 
Greg_L said:
Except that definitely was not your typical amp pre-gain. There was no preamp gain on the VH amp. That was cranked amp near meltdown gain.
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you're right. Like I said, I can appreciate it more now. I thought Eddies chops were awsome, but the tunes were kind of lame. The best tune on the album was "you really got me" and it wasnt even theirs. I have heard EVH get excellent tone. I just wasn't crazy about the guitar tone when I first heard it. But, I think the tone was pretty much irrelevant because I was blown away by his chops In no time music stores were full of dudes sitting in front of amps...with the pre cranked...finger tapping "Eruption". Every hair band had a neck tapping soli in every song (except their sappy love ballads). It was the Era of the pre-gain. Most of those music store neck tapping guitar heroes couldn't get good tone on stage in a live band situation if their lives depended on it
lol
They would take a guitar solo and it would be so scooped and distorted it sounded like they were micing a pan of bacon frying.
I wasn't crazy about any of that.
As far as tone goes, I liked the grunge stuff better than the hairband stuff.
And blues. The blues cats always got the best guitar tones IMO
 
Jimi, I think you have your timeline messed up. Van Halen 1 came out in 1977. The hair band thing didn't start until '83.
 
I know one mistake that will make your tone suck for sure. Micing the grill cloth of your head. :D
We've all seen those pictures before. You know thats funny!
:D
 
Farview said:
Jimi, I think you have your timeline messed up. Van Halen 1 came out in 1977. The hair band thing didn't start until '83.
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you may be right. Wasn't Van Halen considered a hairband?
Hell, I dunno. I got into outlaw country music in about 1979. Hank Jr, Waylon and Willie, Coe...
I loved that shit and wasn't really into, or paying much attention to, the rock and disco that was happening at the time. I do remember seeing neck tappers in every music store when I was living in New Orleans in '81-83. I also remember most of them were terrible...a few were really skilled.
 
No, I don't think they got lumped in with the hair bands, since they were on their 4th or 5th album by the time Quiet Riot and Dokken hit. That was the genesis of the hair band thing.

For that matter, half the band didn't even have long hair in the 80s. They were a 70s band that survived, like Kiss, Kansas, Journey, etc...

The neck tapping thing didn't go away for a really long time. Especially after the wedding Night Ranger album when Jeff Watson did the two handed, 8 note tapping/hammer on thing.
 
Farview is right about VH. They were not technically a hair band, though EVH surely influenced all those spandex guitar goofs that came after him. VH had lost all of it's edge and gone synth pop crap by the time hair metal took over.
 
Don't know about the origins of Hair though I'm sure Van Halen must have been among the inspirations. But Hair was, or quickly became, a formulaic genre. If you heard one, you've heard them all. When Van Halen emerged, they were true originals. Those old enough to have been young in 1978 can attest to the "holy shit...WTF?" response that they inspired. That first album, and especially side 1, was among of the strongest musical statements I've ever heard in my life. "Eruption" was a musical manifesto in under two minutes.
 
Robus said:
Those old enough to have been young in 1978 can attest to the "holy shit...WTF?" response that they inspired. That first album, and especially side 1, was among of the strongest musical statements I've ever heard in my life. "Eruption" was a musical manifesto in under two minutes.
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Yup. I remember thinking WTF very well. Went to see them thinking no way they can do that live. Surprise, surprise... I saw them in August of '79 and they were all that.
 
VH had already sunk deeper into their cheese phase by the time I was old enough to pay meaningful attention to them. Jump and Panama were all over MTV. Hot for Teacher. What album is that? Ah, 1984. Yeah I wasn't too into it.
 
jimmys69 said:
Depends on the genre and placement. Chorus on heavy grind guitars can make shit muddy as hell.
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Eh, it doesn't have to. Alexi Leiho from Children of Bodom uses chorus all the time, and he plays death metal. Not a ton of gain on his sound actually. So I'm not completely contradicting you or anything.



His tone is killer. Zak Wylde does it too.
 
Anyway, my point is this: Why rule anything out? I know a guy who said he hated the banjo. Then I played him some awesome banjo tunes and he was like alright this is pretty good.
 
jimistone said:
I know all of us have seen and heard things that cause shitty guitar tone.

One thing that is very common that I see is using too much pre-gain or "crunch". It's like brill cream...a little dab will do you. Nothing, IMO, ruins tone as much as too much pre.

Anyone else have any tone destroying pet peaves?
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A friend of mine drives his preamp gain like crazy. I won't even let him use my amp anymore because I think he screwed up my Mesa once. He sounds great though IMO. He's tracking at my place in a week. I'll post a mix in the clinic so we'll see if you like his tone. Doesn't hurt that he's a great player though.
 
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