The New Tone Thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter Telegram Sam
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cool .... that actually makes me feel better ..... I did run the truck last night a few miles with the temp all the way on hot hot hot ... but it never even missed and occasionally the temp would back down some ( I assume a bit of water still around got circulated) but there were no outward signs of anything so maybe it's ok.

Not that I'm sweating it ..... could've been worse and I'm already broke so it's not like it's gonna make me broke!

I was thinking of getting a git but not now!

:)
 
Haha, but you can't drive a guitar to go play it somewhere.

Some engine designs are more forgiving than others. Like when the head and block are the same material - aluminum/aluminum or iron/iron - they can expand and move at the same rate and they tend to be more tolerant to overheating. But when you have an aluminum head and an iron block, or vice versa which is worse, that can be bad. The Chevy Vega and Cadillac 4100s damn near put GM out of business because they used dissimilar materials for heads and blocks and those things blew head gaskets right off the showroom floor. That was the 70s though, when no one knew anything.

In the racing world we use aluminum heads almost exclusively and often still use iron blocks. Aluminum heads are way better than iron heads. But they require some attention to detail. In the race world we use way tighter tolerances and better assembly than mass produced shit so it's not a problem.
 
Late-Happy-New-Year guys.....I'm hangin' in here, but my health problems are still fuckin' with me, not going into any details, but I have good days & bad days....

Lemmy's passing truly sucks, but the guy lived a hell of a life...RIP

I brought the new year in laying down some bass tracks for a couple of songs, & I have to say, I've got a new outlook/appreciation for bass players now. Those Rock Band multi-tracks are an invaluable little tool for learning. Where I'm mainly a guitar guy, I'd just been plopping down shit that had some low end & seemed to "fit" since I started recording (been at it about 5-6 years now), lol, but the past week or so, I've really been trying to make my bass lines better...

The bass I have is a cheap, pawn shop special, not completely terrible, but not great either. I've actually been thinking of trading some of the shit I have for a better bass...I've heard/read good things about the Squire Vintage Modified series, & one of those would probably be a big improvement over what I'm using now....Any of you guys have any experience with the Squire basses I've mentioned???? I'd kinda like a 5-string because of the bottom the lower string would add...
 
I don't have any Squire MM but I do have the one 5 string bass. I can't get my head around it. Too many years playing 4 string bass and guitar mean I can't accommodate the concept I suppose. The 5 is an acoustic bass. The thing sounds fairly good & the bottom end is VERY bottom and VERY hard to capture in recordings. If it would tolerate it I'd like to tune it so that the bottom string is E and the top is B like a guitar but it doesn't like that tension much.
Bummer truck n tree story Lt. Bob. I'm glad you weren't damaged - that would've been and end to me on my m/cycle!
 
Welcome back miner. Glad you're doing OK.

Still no recording for me, surfs been pumping. Got bounced off the slab hard today. By back is fucking killing. Surf was awesome though.
 
Ray: Thanks man, I drop the low E to D sometimes, & it really helps fatten the bottom end up doing this, that's why I was considering a 5-stringer....Still weighing my options & not in any hurry at all so I'm gonna dig a little deeper on this....

JDOD: Thanks man, I'm hangin' as tough as I can over here...I've actually been getting some things done recording-wise the last little while...
 
Miner dude. Happy new year sir. Sorry to hear your body is still screwing with you. I will offer up my two cents here. And given my creepy upside down left handed wonky playing this may not mean anything. But i played a 4 string and a 5 string years ago and i kind of found the 5 string a hindrance. It was just sort of overkill for me. I rarely played the b string. I actually made a bit more use out of dropping the e to d on the 4 string? I ended up selling the 5 to some goth kid. I know you are more of a metal guy so maybe that b string would be great but i think for every day rock and stuff it may not make much a difference. On the other side of the coin i was like, 15 years younger and i thought i knew everything so i may have missed the boat entirely on the 5 string? But to this day i do not miss the extra meat and potatoes of a 5 string.

Only my experience though and i am not so much "heavy" guy.

As far as squire goes i have heard some great bass tones come out of a squier bass. Ernie Ball basses also have fantastic tones but i have no clue where they fall in the price spectrum next to a squire.

Feel better already sir!
 
5 strings are worth it if the only thing you use the B string for is to play low E on the 5th fret.

But then, I'm a full fledged bass player.

However, I switched to a 5 string about 12 years ago and find 4 strings to be very limiting.
 
ShanPeyton said:
Miner dude. Happy new year sir. Sorry to hear your body is still screwing with you. I will offer up my two cents here. And given my creepy upside down left handed wonky playing this may not mean anything. But i played a 4 string and a 5 string years ago and i kind of found the 5 string a hindrance. It was just sort of overkill for me. I rarely played the b string. I actually made a bit more use out of dropping the e to d on the 4 string? I ended up selling the 5 to some goth kid. I know you are more of a metal guy so maybe that b string would be great but i think for every day rock and stuff it may not make much a difference. On the other side of the coin i was like, 15 years younger and i thought i knew everything so i may have missed the boat entirely on the 5 string? But to this day i do not miss the extra meat and potatoes of a 5 string.

Only my experience though and i am not so much "heavy" guy.

As far as squire goes i have heard some great bass tones come out of a squier bass. Ernie Ball basses also have fantastic tones but i have no clue where they fall in the price spectrum next to a squire.

Feel better already sir!
Click to expand...

I agree with this. I don't like 5 string basses. Unnecessary for me. I'm not into anything so heavy and don't need extended lows.
 
Tone Threaders - First tones of the new year:

View attachment B10 M10 T2.mp3
View attachment B10 M10 T2 Wider Mic.mp3
View attachment B10 M9 T2 Wider Mic.mp3
View attachment B10 M9 T2.mp3

The B, M and T positions are "O'Clock positions" i.e. 12 would be the midpoint.
On all of these the master is at 12.
The "Gain" is low (as low as it'll go without silencing the amp!) but the preamp vol is very high ~3:30.
Reverb is at 9.

The difference is that I have an SD1 (L10, G0) in front of the amp.

My personal favourite is the slightly scooped one with the mic in the normal position (i.e. edge of the cap) - I also think these sound a lot better than my previous set.

EDIT: another quick listen - there's too much reverb - but thats not what I am trying to straighten out.
 
I like the last one the best. B10M9T2. Put it in a mix and see what happens.

So what's the difference between "gain" and "preamp" on your amp? I'm wondering if the gain is SS clipping, and maybe the preamp is natural tube overdrive. If that's so, it'd make sense to me that the gain being very low yields better sound.
 
Ignoring EQ for a minute, this is what I have.

Clean channel - just has a vol. Gets just to the edge of breakup when maxed.

Crunch channel - has a vol. and a gain knob. Vol is tube cooking (i'm not quite maxed on this with those clips), gain is "distortion" so its used just a little to add a touch of fur.

On top of that there's the master - but I think it tends to sound a little muddy when maxed.
 
Just tried again with a little more preamp vol and a little less preamp gain. Personally I preferred it in the previous clip, sounded a little tighter, was starting to lose the plot a bit with the preamp vol maxed.

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

Greg_L said:
Uh, what amp is it again?
Click to expand...

Studio 20
 
Here's an example with the Preamp Vol set to 12 and the Preamp Gain set to 12.

I've lost a bit in total volume (in the room) here as I didn't nudge up the master vol enough to compensate for the reduction in preamp vol.

To be honest - I think it sounds quite nice - not quite as angry as I was after but pretty good.

View attachment B10 M10 T2 G12V12.mp3
 
JDOD said:
Here's an example with the Preamp Vol set to 12 and the Preamp Gain set to 12.

I've lost a bit in total volume (in the room) here as I didn't nudge up the master vol enough to compensate for the reduction in preamp vol.

To be honest - I think it sounds quite nice - not quite as angry as I was after but pretty good.

View attachment 95636
Click to expand...
This one ^^^^^

JDOD said:
Sorry about the SPAM tones for now (this'll be my final tone test of the day) but I've nudged the preamp vol up a bit and the gain down a bit.

I think I've made some progress with what I'm after though.

View attachment 95637
Click to expand...

Sounds better than this one ^^^^^ to me.
 
Greg_L said:
This one ^^^^^



Sounds better than this one ^^^^^ to me.
Click to expand...

Cheers, how do you think they compare to the earlier ones?

Its very strange and quite hard to judge in the room (it all sounds pretty good from where I am sitting) I've actually got some time this evening though to fuck about with tones for the first time in ages!

I've been trying to find some info on the overdrive circuit design - its not that easy to come by.
 
JDOD said:
Cheers, how do you think they compare to the earlier ones?

Its very strange and quite hard to judge in the room (it all sounds pretty good from where I am sitting) I've actually got some time this evening though to fuck about with tones for the first time in ages!

I've been trying to find some info on the overdrive circuit design - its not that easy to come by.
Click to expand...

Blackstar is very secretive about their "design" :laughings:

I don't understand it. Maybe they don't want people fucking around in there? I don't know. It's not like they invented tube amps. Fenders and Marshalls have been reverse engineered down to the last resistor. Everyone knows everything about those things. They're simple and open and still have yet to be beaten IMO.

Anyway, I'm trying to separate what I hear from what I think is happening. A lot of times I try to understand why something sounds the way it does instead of just accepting it. So I'm trying to figure out why maybe I like certain clips of yours better than the others, and I don't have an answer besides I just do. Usually less gain always sounds better to me, but it would appear that jacking the gain up on yours makes it sound better.

I definitely think you're on the right track with the bass and mids rolled back a little. Get that gain vs vol thing sorted and you're almost home. None of them sound bad, but those last two sound better than the first four to me.
 
Thanks guys, the last band I played in, our bass player used a 5-string, & it just had an enormous bottom end compared to any 4-string I'd heard, so that's the reason I'm wanting a 5-string. While I'm not a bass player by any stretch, I do ok, & probably could learn to utilize the lower string pretty easily....Still looking around at some options, & not in any kind of hurry at all...

JDOD: I like the last clip best of all dude, but it all depends on how they sit in a mix too, so....My experience with the master volume is there's a certain point on the dial, if you go past that, it muddies up, & looses clarity. But, this is obviously not your amp I'm talking about either, so, YMMV...

One thing about Blackstar amps I don't like is they won't give their customers a schematic of any kind, ever. I've read about people trying to get a schematic (a guy who runs a guitar/amp shop), & they wanted him to school up (take training, from Blackstar), but they were gonna charge him for the training, so he just completely quit fuckin' with 'em, & doesn't carry their amps at all....Now, I don't know how true all that is, but I have heard from several people a schematic is about impossible to come by for any of their amps....YMMV....
 
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