When your trying to get a tone, how do you do it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter 64Firebird
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64Firebird

64Firebird

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When I want to get the tone of one of my fav players, I start by recording a small sample, just a bar or so of nothing but guitar. Then I look at it on my spectrum anylizer and compair it with me playing the same riff. Then I tweek my EQ and look at it again. After a little while, I seem to get fairly close.

How do you guys do it?
 
I have a staff of scientists, engineers, and technicians working around the clock.;)
 
I try to get a good Pulse wave and run that through my Quaser Analysis package. I then use some acoustic modeling algorythms to try and recreate the room sound. Then I use my Reverse Pulse decompiler to simulate the recorded signal path. It usually sounds like shit so I then go to the Line6 website and just download the patch for my Pod.
 
I plug my guitar into the amp... fuck with the pickup selector and tone, then I turn to the amp and fuck with the knobs until it sounds good!

Easy!!

Bruce
 
I think that Bruce has the right answer. But don't forget to line up all your stomp boxes.

Another thing to remember about trying to match the tone of a recording is that a lot of the stuff has had a LOT of compression added to it.
 
Like Eric Johnson, I test all of my batteries, cords, call the power company about my power line, monitor my tube's tempature, blah blah blah.... in the end it never amounts to poop because I play acoustic most of the time ;)
 
Hmmmmmmmm...

You guys seem to be takeing this lightly.

I think that tone is more important that techneque. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you sound bad nobody will stay to hear you.

I study the tones of of all the greats. I look at how there tone differs from one song to another and the way it effects the music.

Maybe I'm going overboard.

Maybe you guys are right.
 
tone

Why would you want to copy someones elses tone anyway.

seems to contradicte the " original" part in original music I would say!!

JG
 
64Firebird said:
Hmmmmmmmm...

You guys seem to be takeing this lightly.

I think that tone is more important that techneque. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you sound bad nobody will stay to hear you.
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You got that VERY backward, tone comes from your fingers... if you are a shit-hot player, you'll be a shit-hot player even on some crappy rig from the Sears catalogue!

Bruce
 
I'll have to call you on that one also. Technique is the single most important thing.

I would go so far as to say you could identify any well known guitarist playing on a completely new rig faster than you could identify an artist's well known rig being played by somebody else.
 
That's probably the main reason why a great player can make a rig that sounds like poop sound professional. Tone isn't just turning knobs on the guitar or amp, I think it's more to do with picking style and varying degrees of attack. Putting all those things together along with pups, amps, mics, DI's, EQ all result in a certain tone. This appears to me like one of those things you always strive to achieve but never quite get there. That missing component is most likely that you are not the player who recorded the sample you made.

Then again, I consider that tone is part playing style and part equipment. I could be wrong, but that's alright. No offense to you 64Firebird.
 
Re: tone

Johnrg said:
Why would you want to copy someones elses tone anyway.

seems to contradicte the " original" part in original music I would say!!

JG
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If I'm playing out somewhere and we're doing an Cream song, I want to sound like Clapton. If we're playing Pride & Joy I want to sound like SRV.

I could never get a sound as good as these guys anyway.
 
If I'm doing a cover of a song, then I'll first determine whether my Strat copy or my Epi will sound closer to the original, or at least, whichever one will get me in the right mindset to express my interpretation of the song.. And that's about as far as I take it in nailing the exact tone. I focus more on how I can make it a more personal rendition...

As for improving my own tone, it's come down to doing hundreds of a/b tests of different amp models and mic positions to determine what the best tone is for the song I'm recording..

Cy
 
Cyrokk said:
....... And that's about as far as I take it in nailing the exact tone. I focus more on how I can make it a more personal rendition...
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Exactly! Who wants to be a human jukebox. I try to capture the general atmosphere of the original usually and go from there. Sometimes I don't even do that. If I'm gonna still be playing and enjoying it after so many years, I have to play in a creative way instead of copying everything.

As for tone versus technique..... I think you have to go with technique because ultimately that's what produces everything you hear, including the tone. I agree that if it sounds like shit, noone will want to hear it, but when have you heard a really good player that had crappy tone? Now, some of them have tones I like better than others, but that's a matter of taste. For instance I don't care for that Nashville processed guitar sound but it does sound good, I just don't like it.

I actually think that spectrum thing of yours is pretty clever and I bet it works fairly good. If that's what works for you...great. I'm pretty happy with turning knobs and seeing what they do. ;)
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
You got that VERY backward, tone comes from your fingers... if you are a shit-hot player, you'll be a shit-hot player even on some crappy rig from the Sears catalogue!

Bruce
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You know... I've been saying the exact same thing when talking about pickups and over priced guitars and everybody has been telling me how wrong I am.
 
TexRoadkill, I am interested in a reverse pulse decompiler. What is the best one under $200? Would I also need to purchase a sonic phase recompiler? ;)
 
people discuss getting their own tones and styles and then rush out and buy the exact same gear as their heroes?!?!?! And we wont even talk about the primary reason I see guys buying PODs: to sounds as close to their heroes as possible, by downloading a file for their little red bean.

As far as who wants to be a human juke box? Not many of us, BUT if you wanna play covers in public, most people expect you to sound close to the original. I dont think a Metallica Scoop V tone would go over too well when trying to play CCR tunes for guys at the local watering hole...

Me, when I try to get a tone, I start with the guitar. I choose which of my guitars has the right tone from it's build and hardware to get as close as possible. Then I go to the amp stage. Then I cheat and fire up my v-amp for a little extra approximation. I never sound exactly like the tone I'm trying to copy, but it's close enough to fool the beer drinker and dancing chicks.
 
NobleSavage said:
As far as who wants to be a human juke box? Not many of us, BUT if you wanna play covers in public, most people expect you to sound close to the original. I dont think a Metallica Scoop V tone would go over too well when trying to play CCR tunes for guys at the local watering hole...
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Well hmmmm...that's certainly true, but that's also a pretty extreme example. I've been playing a long time and I've rarely seen anything that makes me think the audience has much of a clue. If they hear the "hook" line they associate the song with, they're happy. An extreme example of that would be the time two friends of mine who did a jazz gig (piano and guitar) played Misty a half step apart. He did it in E and she did it in Eb. Now nothing could sound worse than that right? But as hard as it may be to believe, not one person in the club even looked up except for the musicians. We were rolling on the floor but the audience? Never even noticed. Usually I will try to capture the "feeling" of the original including the tone but I think that's as far as you need to go.
 
yo bob

hey lt. bob, i think ur right in saying that as long as the audience hears the hook of the song they're happy... another thing though, the majority of the audience is listening to the singer as the focus of the music, and not so much the rest of the band. As far as tone goes I use a les paul standard with those nice vintage pickups; they sound amazing on the clean channels. I let my preamp, and stomp boxes (sometimes i run the signal hot into the preamp) do the work for leads. But what do I know?
 
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