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tone junkies.. critique!

T

TechBoyJK

Lifer
I'm not a blues player.. Played bass in jazz band and such.

I'm falling in love with the blues, especially now that I'm older and I 'get it'.

Here's a vid of me jamming, totally improv, in an attempt to study how I react to playing to a blues track.

Question is.. tone? What do you think of the tone? I'm not sure if I like it. Not sure what to change though.

I'm playing a Carvin TL60 with the pickup switched to the bridge. I was getting some funky line noise with it on the bridge. I probably need a noise suppressor as I think it would have been warmer set to the neck pickup.

http://www.carvinguitars.com/catalog/guitars/index.php?model=tl60

03_tl60-large.jpg


Then I'm running through a carvin MTS 3212
222740.jpg


I had the drive set to about 65%, and the eq pretty much flat. Reverb was at about 15%

I then had a mic setup to the amp, and ran through my Presonus Studio Channel.

http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=57

studio_channel-front.jpg


From there, I captured it to my mixing program, MixCraft. I added a slight bit of additional compression, reverb, chorus (like 5%), and eq'd out 200 and below, and swept out a bit below 400.

Here's the vid. Criticism is welcomed! Don't just the playing.. as I'm just goofing around trying to capture the sound. What would you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waSSbr56w2E
 
Hmmmm... it's not really processed though. Pretty raw, minus a little bit (mild) compression and the slight addition of some standard effects. Any other thoughts? EQ? Maybe just too loud in the mix?
 
I dunno. I was never really a tweaker as far as tone goes. I'd just yank some knobs around, and turn it up :^D

Were you using active pickups by any chance? I have a hard time explaining what I mean by processed. Everything is a little too smooth. I've always preferred a more raw sound. I also prefer single coil pickups, and heavy strings. I'd say turn everything off, turn the amp up, and add a bit of reverb.

I haven't played in ages, but I'm sure they still make them. Give Dean Markely 11s a try. Replace the 3rd string with an unwound. They should do that for you at the shop. What's nice about them, is it's an unbalanced set. The bass strings are HEAVY, and palm mutes and pops will shake your chest. They give a rich tone throughout their range.
 
Sounds too compressed. I'd roll back on the gain a tad and play around with the EQ. There's a real nasally sound in there I'd locate with an EQ sweep and attenuate.
 
dwell said:
Sounds too compressed. I'd roll back on the gain a tad and play around with the EQ. There's a real nasally sound in there I'd locate with an EQ sweep and attenuate.
Click to expand...

Cool and thanks. I'll play around with that tonight. I'm going to keep jamming to this track until I find the right sound.
 
You're going to run into that compressed sound when running all solid state equipment. My best advice is to turn the treble up, the bass down, middle mids, and add a touch of reverb.

I've been playing with out of phase pickups and did a quick take. Here's a BB King-esque tone I came up with (please forgive the clipping, I did this with an improvised setup).

Critique is appreciated--------> Slow Blues
 
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Your tone is all wrong, for blues.

Unplug and use a different guitar as blues tone is more in the fingers and less about the post processing you slap on it...Son House used a metal guitar and crappy mic and got awesome sound off that.

If you need to be plugged in, try a P90 pickup for good blues tone.... Another trick you can try is to refinish the guitar with nitro (except the neck, leave the neck finish free) ... It really opens things up and creates a warmer sound.
 
TBJK, your tone should be more along the lines of this. Your pickups and guitar can play a huge role. This is a shitty solo I recorded through a Custom 24 with the gain turned up on the amp, but the volume turned down on the guitar a little bit. The backing track I ripped from YouTube.

short shit.

Backing Track
 
Fritzo said:
You're going to run into that compressed sound when running all solid state equipment. My best advice is to turn the treble up, the bass down, middle mids, and add a touch of reverb.

I've been playing with out of phase pickups and did a quick take. Here's a BB King-esque tone I came up with (please forgive the clipping, I did this with an improvised setup).

Critique is appreciated--------> Slow Blues
Click to expand...

Sounds good, I like it.
 
Fritzo said:
You're going to run into that compressed sound when running all solid state equipment. My best advice is to turn the treble up, the bass down, middle mids, and add a touch of reverb.

I've been playing with out of phase pickups and did a quick take. Here's a BB King-esque tone I came up with (please forgive the clipping, I did this with an improvised setup).

Critique is appreciated--------> Slow Blues
Click to expand...

i like your tone for blues much more than mine lol
 
TechBoyJK said:
i like your tone for blues much more than mine lol
Click to expand...

It's very simple. Like I said before, back off the bass, crank up the treble (use the tone knob on your guitar for bass), put your gain around 70% or so. Take off any distortion or fuzz, add a touch of spring reverb, and add a boost compressor if you have one.

From there, play around with adding distortion or overdrive.
 
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