Tips for making a low-end amp sound better

  • Thread starter Thread starter dsideb
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shellofme said:
he's not asking how to fix his rig. he wants to know how he can get the best sound out of the cheap ass amp he has to work with right now.
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Who is he? Oh, the OP?

Well, there is only trial and error there. Every amp sounds different. Add one stomp box, and everything changes.

If I were to give straight advice, I would say start with as little gain as possible. Double the track, and see if it works.

I am a fan of PSP Vintage Warmer for getting some tube-ish sound out of solid state amps. Not perfect, but I have gotten reasonable results from bands that I didn't have the choice to record other amps.
 
Yup.

Though, I have found that using the effects loop, holds the tone much greater. I think many think they need to run the pedals before the preamp. Best done after the pre, and before the power amp. Marshalls sound much better this way anyway, in my experience.

Any time you add a piece of gear before an amp, you lose a bit of that 'string' sound that I keep talking about. Once that is beaten into submission by effects, it just seems washed out to me. I guess I would consider myself a bit of a purist, but that is only because I am so tired of hearing notes that sound synthetic. AC/DC has almost clean tone, yet sounds heavy. Pantera had heavy tone, that had a clean edge. Dime had his own style, and heavily distorted, but you could hear every string. Try that with a Heavy Metal Pedal. Not gonna happen. Pure MUD....
 
ok this is gettn to heated. I'm dont mean to offend you. I just think we got off course. I thought we were talking about recording tricks not amps. I record with a triple rect tube screamer protools 2-3 tracks layered and EQ'd differently and panned differently. sounds like lamb of god. Im happy with that. I dont play solid state amps but I dont think its fair to trash them.
 
shellofme said:
ok this is gettn to heated. I'm dont mean to offend you. I just think we got off course. I thought we were talking about recording tricks not amps. I record with a triple rect tube screamer protools 2-3 tracks layered and EQ'd differently and panned differently. sounds like lamb of god. Im happy with that. I dont play solid state amps but I dont think its fair to trash them.
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Not heated at all man. I am just saying that I myself have not found an easy way to get the tone out of a solid state amp, as easily as I can with a tube amp.

There is no argument from me, though I may come across that way. Sorry.

We all try to find the same thing. Guitar tone nirvana. Not the band....
 
I agree. I am a metal head but believe less is more. the more you add to your signal chain the more diluted it sounds. I've never tried to run any pedals after the preamp. would that work with a tube screamer?
 
I have seen it done with good results. Tough, tube screamer is usually used to add a bit of drive before the preamp. Try it. Let me know if it works for you.

I am just another guy in search of the secrets. Guess we all will never find them. But trying is where the fun is right? :D
 
shellofme said:
whats your gear, style?
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Gear? I play bass and drums mostly. PDP 'Rev' sig kit, with a Pearl rack. Old school Trace Elliot GP12 through two EV1810's for rehearsal. As far as recording stuff, well some of that is in my sig. Style, well, anything from straight forward rock, to progressive metal. My days of pushing forward to metal stardom have past. Now I record other bands broken dreams. lol! Just kidding. :)

What do you do?
 
That was nice. :facepalm:

My ability to listen has changed dramatically over the past couple of years.
I own a Vox Pathfinder ($99 solid state amp) that everyone raves about.
It has a nice clean tone, and I used to like the high gain tone, but for some
reason I can't stand the distorted tone anymore. It sounds almost recorded
it has no dynamic quality, it's like you said Jimmy, can't hear the strings.

I still enjoy the clean tone very much.

My Axe FX II has opened my eyes with respect to tone, it proves that
you can do it with solid state, it just takes some extra cash and effort.

I got into Astronomy some years ago and bought a cheap telescope.
Same exact process, several years (and thousands of dollars later)
I can take the best telescope that I own and point out its glaring deficiencies.
Shortcomings that the uninitiated would scarcely recognize even if they
were pointed out. Very fine, well near perfect optics,
and amplifiers for that matter, still have to push against the limits
imposed by physics.

Training the ears (or eyes for that matter) is an important part
of getting where you want to go, and once you do, you
can't really go back...
 
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First things first, double-track all the rhythm parts and pan them some percentage to each side (40-50 percent to each side to start, and then adjust to taste. Hard-panning will expose flaws in the parts). Next, does the amp have a headphone output jack? This sounds ridiculous, but you may want to try recording the headphone signal at line level instead of mic'ing - I had a Peavey Vypyr amp (the 100 dollar one) for a while, and when you recorded the headphone signal straight in and double tracked the parts, it actually sounded good (well, to me and a few others).
 
jimmys69 said:
What are you using to record it with?
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I've got two cheap condenser microphones (CAD CM217's) running through my Saffire 6 USB interface onto my macbook into garageband. Yeah, I'm taking the cheapest route possible to recording my demos.

jimmys69 said:
What type of sound are you after anyway?
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I'm not trying to really stick to any genre, as most of what I'm doing now is recording songs I write/progressions I come up with that could be either used by my band or just for myself. I will probably be leading more heavily towards a 90's alternative sound (think Pixies, smashing pumpkins, etc), but also a mix of some older punk/hardcore punk (Ramones, Black Flag, etc) modern surf punk, blues punk, indie rock, and various other genres I feel like dabbling in.

I also really like to incorporate reverb into my recordings (the band Youth Lagoon would be a good example), and the reverb on my amp is absolute shit so all of that would have to be EQ'd in after the fact or achieved through mic positioning or something like that.

Again, I'm not expecting any miracles here. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks.
 
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