The New Tone Thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter Telegram Sam
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Does the Blackstar have an effects loop?

Wait, why the fuck would you want to do that anyway?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, send from the Blackstar - Return into the Bandit. Could this be a disaster zone?
 
Maybe. But why? What are you trying to gain from doing this?

1. The Bandit is a lot louder than the Blackstar
2. I just thought it would be an interesting experiment and I have some time on my hands in a week or so.
 
There's really not much way to tell without taking them out and/or measuring their resistance. As you can see there are no brand logos or identifiable markings. Like Bubba said, Standards usually come with nickel covered pickups, but Gibson regularly makes runs of guitars without the usual options.

They kind of look like maybe they've had covers removed, but again, no real way to tell from pics. I'm thinking they're not original. I doubt Gibson would make a Standard with white pickup rings and black open buckers.

Fair enough... the strings are getting a bit scratchy so perhaps when I change them I'll get the screwdriver. Although I'm actually thinking of putting all my electrics in for a decent set up, one at a time, seeing none of them have been near a luthier since they left the shop. He can have a look for me! :)
 
Louder in total - the Bandit is a much louder amp - I think its 60W. EDIT: Just checked, I think its 80W

What is it with Peavey and 80w? I used to have a Renown when I was a kiddie and that was 160W for some reason that escaped me at the time. It had some special smoothy overdrivery tuby emulatory knob, from memory, and sounded absolutely awful. But fuck it was loud.... I think I thought it was cool because it had 60 more watts than my friends' amps. How little I knew... :laughings:

The only photo I still have of that time - here's me with my Peavey Renown and my Burns Bison in the covers band when I was about 23 or so... that's my "Do you HAVE to play EVERYTHING 'country'?" special look for the bass player.

White.webp

:laughings:
 
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What is it with Peavey and 80w?
Yeah, I had no idea what "loud" actually was then and didn't know what I needed to rehearse and play in pubs and clubs so I just got the loudest amp I could afford which had a decent sounding distortion sound (which was obviously investigated at TV volume in a shop). I remember rehearsing with the amp on 4 and thinking.... ah maybe this was overkill. The loudest I ever got it in a gig was 6.

Armistice - you look a bit like Andy Murray.
 
Fair enough... the strings are getting a bit scratchy so perhaps when I change them I'll get the screwdriver. Although I'm actually thinking of putting all my electrics in for a decent set up, one at a time, seeing none of them have been near a luthier since they left the shop. He can have a look for me! :)

If they're actual Gibson pickups there may be a sticker underneath on the baseplate. You could look yourself in just a few minutes. Just remove or detune the strings, remove the 4 pickup ring screws, and lift the whole thing up and out. There should be enough slack in the wiring to make this happen.

Sweet Bison, btw. You still got it?
 
Ok, I did the LP/SG comparison thing today, & I was way off....These guitars sound pretty similar, & the gain seems about even/normal between 'em too...Maybe I was just excited about the new guitar....lol...Anyway, here's the clips:

Signal chain:
SG > DSL > '65 >i5

DSL:
100w mode
OD1
Resonance: 0
Presence: 4
Bass: 5
Middle: 5
Treble: 2
Gain: 2
Vol: 3


SG>DSL>65>i5

LP>DSL>65>i5

Exact same settings as yesterday's clips, same mic & position, only thing different is the guitars....
 
The SG sounds tighter to me, or maybe the palm muting/picking is just cleaner. They both sound great to me.

How close is the mic to the speaker? Something sounds a little filtered or phasey to me. But I'm listening on a consumer 5.1 system right now, so could be something weird on my end (wouldn't be the first time).
 
WHOO! HOO! After several months of waiting my Electronic Orange Moon Vibe II finally arrived. As promised here is a short demo. Disregard the crappy playing.

View attachment 96399

Which element does the moon vibe add? I'm not familiar with that unit. I hear lots of reverb and some modulation. Cool tone, I like the heft of the distortion and the overall character. Sounds a little sludgy and stoner-rock kind of, I like it.
 
The SG sounds tighter to me, or maybe the palm muting/picking is just cleaner. They both sound great to me.

How close is the mic to the speaker? Something sounds a little filtered or phasey to me. But I'm listening on a consumer 5.1 system right now, so could be something weird on my end (wouldn't be the first time).

Thanks dude, it's just gonna take me some time to really learn this guitar, as the LP has been my main guitar for about 2 years now....

The mic is right up on the grill, but not touching it, maybe 1/4" away from it...
 
Tapudi,
& anyone else....
Kustom Defender D5 5watt.
It's not particularly loud and is mic'd with a 57 & an e609 - blended.
Maybe I need to work on that.
he bass has a whole pile of bottom end that may be masking/muddying.
Oh, it's all power chords with the octave added so not much top end to start with.
Thanks for the response as it'll give me something to work on.
Here's a tweak - everything's the same except:
I cut off a fair bit of bottom end on the bass
I scooped a few dBs from the guitars at 100khz &
I tweaked the balance between the mics opting for the brighter ones.

I think that it's a step in the right direction. There's still some dullness to the guitars, kind of a haze over them. Could be SoundCloud, could be the mp3 encoding, or could be something in the miking/recording process. I've read your comments about your troubles with your Focusrite inputs, hopefully it's something simple to remedy.
 
Ray, I've listened to all three versions, I'm not really qualified to comment in detail but the 2nd version was my favourite.

I'm a big fan of sticking and SD1 with no gain in front of a crunched amp but I don't think it works here - I think it causes the guitar to have a slight "generic rock overdrive" feeling as opposed to the raw punk tone you had before - that's just subjective though.

Drums - fuck me, I need to know more about where you got those. I have to struggle with fake drums and I wouldn't have known they were fake if you hadn't told us.

I have to agree with the other comments, the V30 is an obvious upgrade. So much more clarity and dynamics to it. It's pretty boxy sounding overall, but I suspect that you'll get that ironed out as you spend more time with the new speaker. Nice improvement, I like it.
 
Ok, I did the LP/SG comparison thing today, & I was way off....These guitars sound pretty similar, & the gain seems about even/normal between 'em too...Maybe I was just excited about the new guitar....lol...Anyway, here's the clips:

Signal chain:
SG > DSL > '65 >i5

DSL:
100w mode
OD1
Resonance: 0
Presence: 4
Bass: 5
Middle: 5
Treble: 2
Gain: 2
Vol: 3


SG>DSL>65>i5

LP>DSL>65>i5

Exact same settings as yesterday's clips, same mic & position, only thing different is the guitars....

Haha! That's exactly how I expected to hear it. I love being right in my own mind. :D

To me, the SG is a little thicker in the mids, the LP is a little snappier and more balanced.

Both sound great. I'm thinking your SG pickups are a little hotter than the LPs.
 
Haha! That's exactly how I expected to hear it. I love being right in my own mind. :D

To me, the SG is a little thicker in the mids, the LP is a little snappier and more balanced.

Both sound great. I'm thinking your SG pickups are a little hotter than the LPs.

Lol....yeah dude, I think the "new" thing was just playing into my mind....:D.

Both tones have minute differences in 'em that most people wouldn't even notice, but people like us here in the Tone Thread do, so I'm gonna keep the 'buckers in this thing for a while & get more used to it...

The neck p'ups in those are identical, except for the year they were made (I suppose...), but the bridge in the SG is a 498T, so it is a little hotter, but not a lot...

I may still put some P-90's in the SG, still debating, but that'll be later on anyway, as I've shot my wad spending $125 on the SG this month....But there is an upside, I still have $$$ coming that I can count on (or I hope), from now on, I'll just be on a fixed income, but, that's a shit-load better than no income, like last year...

I really like the idea of the quick-connect thing, but I'll need to get some of the same connectors, & a crimping tool for them. From what I've read, it takes some practice to get the connectors on the wire right, so I'd probably need a few extra connectors for my fuck-ups, because I know that'll happen...


Ray: The last clip Tad posted/quoted sounds pretty good IMO, it's got enough bite with the low-end chunk that sounds good to me...I'm wondering what's going on with your interface man, as something just doesn't seem right to me with it chopping off the top end like that...Keep us posted on your findings about this Ray, as someday I wanna upgrade my interface so I can record more than 2 mics at a time...I can technically right now, but I'd need pre-amps to run into the line inputs, so it'd be a lot simpler if I just got another interface that has more pre's...
 
I may still put some P-90's in the SG, still debating,

Lol. Let me end that debate for you - you can't.

Well, you can, but you'll have to get the router and dremel out because you're gonna have to do some cutting. I told ya, P-90s don't swap in place of humbuckers. You'll have to get a P-90-ish humbucker sized pickup like a P-94, or the P-Rails, or any of the other plentiful humbucker sized P-90 clones.

I can vouch for the P-Rails. Pretty good. Don't get the "hot" ones though.

Rio Grande pickups makes a nice humbucker sized P-90 too. The Bastard and Fat Bastard. Lol. They're a local Houston company.
 
If they're actual Gibson pickups there may be a sticker underneath on the baseplate. You could look yourself in just a few minutes. Just remove or detune the strings, remove the 4 pickup ring screws, and lift the whole thing up and out. There should be enough slack in the wiring to make this happen.

Sweet Bison, btw. You still got it?

I may have a go on the weekend, maybe. Yep, still have the Bison - a local music shop imported exactly 2 new Burns guitars into Australia - that one, and a black Marvin which has the rolled headstock I hate. I bought that one. Almost sold it about a decade ago but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I got it out of its case after about 2 years the other day and it was pretty much still in tune. Rock solid and very, very heavy. :D

---------- Update ----------

Armistice - you look a bit like Andy Murray.

The tennis player? There's no need to be insulting... :laughings:
 
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