Playing with more gain

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VikingBlues
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Playing with more gain

Post by VikingBlues »

In his post on the thread by Michael of 'Can't You See WhatYou're Doing To Me' tytlblues said about my interpretation "VB, not sure i have heard u Play like that before!". That made me think :think: that i could do with some free advice from any of you that are good at using a higher level of gain than that old mellow fellow called VB.

The main question is what do you generally feel is the best balance tonally between bass mid and treble when using single coils / P90s with a higher level of gain. Though obviously this will vary with pickup combination - I tend to favour neck, both pickups, or neck and middle on either two or three pickup guitars. I notce the virtual amp set up for overdrive in my DAW has controls for how much the sound is shaped to favour mids, or favour bass and treble.

It also has virtual microphone settings for both a dynamic and condensor microphone including distance from speaker and position compared to speaker cone - I will admit to preferring the sound when the virtual condensor mic is brought more into play.

Rather than refer to the other thread - this was my recent attempt tytl referred to - any thoughts on whether any particular change in tonal balance on the guitar sound would tend to be helpful. :thumbsup:
Box.net - VB tries gain : http://www.box.com/s/3f5jmslczhurvyu7i12q
It's the closest I've got so far to 'that' sort of overdriven blues sound - but I'm uncertain of my judgement in an area of blues playing that I've not really tried. :icon_whoknows:

Hope you're able to help. :fingerscrossed:
Last edited by VikingBlues on Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Blindboy
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by Blindboy »

First, let me say that I thought that this sounded great! Your tone was excellent (P-90?), and your bends are killer. :thumbsup:
Your reverb was better on this one, but I still prefer a straight tube/spring reverb at about 3 or 4, max (on my amps, anyway) to the digital hall and plate reverb sound.
VikingBlues wrote:The main question is what do you generally feel is the best balance tonally between bass mid and treble when using single coils / P90s with a higher level of gain.
This is a tough one for me to answer... The settings will vary from amp to amp, and room to room, as well as from Strat to Casino. I do tend to pump the mids. Some nights I can plug into my amp at the bar, and the tone knobs will be set the same as the previous Monday, but when I play, I have to tweak the highs or bass. Are my ears hearing different, or is it another factor? I don't know... I just tweak them until it sounds OK to me. When I switch guitars, I sometimes have to adjust a bit of treble and volume, but as both of my stage guitars are single coils (Strat and P-90) it isn't much.
Keep on working at it VB, I like what you're doing so far. :thumbsup: If you can find a time when you can do it without disturbing the neighbors or (more importantly) the wife, try turning up the tube amp for some gain. It sounds different when you are actually pushing air, and it may help find a sound that you like.
"Throw yo' big leg over me Mama, I might not feel this good again!"
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VikingBlues
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by VikingBlues »

Blindboy wrote:First, let me say that I thought that this sounded great! Your tone was excellent (P-90?), and your bends are killer. :thumbsup:
Thank you Bb - your advice (amongst others here) was vital in getting those bends to where they are now.
You're right BTW - P90s on this - that PRS again. I can see why the SG special was so popular way back when (Townshend, Kreiger, Iommi, etc). I hadn't really thought of it as a blues guitar when I got it, but it's serving me well in that diection as well as having killer tone for the melodic stuff. :big_smile:
Blindboy wrote:Your reverb was better on this one, but I still prefer a straight tube/spring reverb at about 3 or 4, max (on my amps, anyway) to the digital hall and plate reverb sound.
Blindboy wrote:If you can find a time when you can do it without disturbing the neighbors or (more importantly) the wife, try turning up the tube amp for some gain. It sounds different when you are actually pushing air, and it may help find a sound that you like.
There's the rub - on a normal weekday there's maybe a window of 20 minutes maximum that I can hit the sort of volume required to do that with the amp - if I have nothing else I need to do at that time. It's a major problem wth combining an interest in guitar playing with living in a flat - the two sets of neighbours are not very far away. :sad:
So I sort of have to make do with the modelling option. On this occasion I had been practicing - BTs fed from the PC plus guitar fed into the Vox Tonelab ST (The Tonelab LE I prefer to use for recordings doesn't have an aux in) and listening on headphones. I think it was hall but at a low setting. I had found a sound that sounded a possible match so I just recorded using the ST on those settings with a bit of tweaking on the DAW virtual amp settings.

It seems to have been a long journey to try to get a decent sound (particularly overdrive) using modelling / pedals / DAW. Overdrive in particular - it seems so easy to just get that terrible unmusical bee buzzing dementedly in a bottle! :wall: I hear HBLs recent Okko Diablo demos with great interest - I have to take account of how much of the quality is down to the player, but it does seem to come back to having to shell out extra cash for good quality - I'm afraid I've been very much a low budget buyer for many years. I'm trying to use the second hand / ex-demo / discontinued discounted lines approach now to inprove the quality without breaking the bank.
Blindboy wrote:
VikingBlues wrote:The main question is what do you generally feel is the best balance tonally between bass mid and treble when using single coils / P90s with a higher level of gain.
This is a tough one for me to answer... The settings will vary from amp to amp, and room to room, as well as from Strat to Casino. I do tend to pump the mids. Some nights I can plug into my amp at the bar, and the tone knobs will be set the same as the previous Monday, but when I play, I have to tweak the highs or bass. Are my ears hearing different, or is it another factor? I don't know... I just tweak them until it sounds OK to me. When I switch guitars, I sometimes have to adjust a bit of treble and volume, but as both of my stage guitars are single coils (Strat and P-90) it isn't much.
Keep on working at it VB, I like what you're doing so far. :thumbsup:
Thanks for the encouraging words. :thumbsup: I'm interested to hear how the same settings in the same location can sound different to you on different occasions. I had that recently - a really good "alive" sound I had on the LE in the morning just sounded flat and dead in the evening - no change of settings. I do sometimes get this with recordings on an audio system too - so it could well be my ears. That's the difficulty of giving advice on tone of course - what one person hears as too much treble balance another will think is too bassy. Interested that you pump the mids - I've noticed when I've adjusted the virtual amp settings on the DAW I've tended to turn the knob up that shapes the tone for more mids - but I guess that might be different if I was using humbuckers! Anyway I'll keep at it - I'm encouraged you feel I'm heading in the right direction.
An improv a day keeps the demons at bay!
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HalfBlindLefty
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by HalfBlindLefty »

I use mids only when I want lots of sustain and drive, as f.i in Alone in the crowd
(Greg Bennett Avion AV3 bridge humbucker On the amp compression,reverb, echo and chorus are involved to)

Remember that f.i reverb can influence some frequencies so they seem to be more present)

7403427

For reflections the Cybertwin was in tweed mode, clean is can be :)

Okko :

Image
Roughly :
Feed, controls the input + it's bass
Body, controls the amount of mids
Gain, yeah uhm
Level, another yeah uhm... output :)
Tone, controls the treble.
A long time ago, in the old forum : Registered: Mon, 27 Nov 2006. Wonder were the other old members all went....
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VikingBlues
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by VikingBlues »

Thank you for that information HBL. :thumbsup:

It's all useful, knowing some of the ingredients of peoples sound and their equipments sound. Not that you can ever 'know' how the individual player puts their sound into it though.

As I've been on a days holiday today I've had a bit of a chance to play about after reading Blindboys post.

Though due to neighbours also being at home it hasn't been trying an overdriven amp. :thumbsdown:

Taking on board the comments on reverb and preference for straight tube/spring reverb, and bearing in mind my peference for the Tonelab LE - I've had another go, and produced a sound that, while not hugely different is, I think, an improvement. Please note I wasn't trying so hard on the music and notes side this time - one take - just for analysing the sound.

So - this is the same PRS - neck pup this time - Tonelab LE (Vox AC30 treble Boost emulation: AC30 cab emulation: spring reverb nearly half way up in the mix: tube od emulation with drive 5/10 and skewed to treble a bit: Analogue Delay time 64ms, minimal feedback). No tweaking in the DAW with the Vandal amp simulation this time.

Box.net - VB tries gain again : http://www.box.com/s/lc3nkfneyq0zenhh3z7a

I think this picture shows why I prefer the Tonelab LE:-
DAW screen - Can't You See VB_LE
DAW screen - Can't You See VB_LE
100_0186.JPG (157.73 KiB) Viewed 9257 times
The Tonelab ST track from yesterday is the white coloured one - todays LE track is the blue/yellow one at the bottom. See how much more spiky and the extra dynamics through the LE.

If anyone can spare the time to lesten / comment I'd be most grateful. :D
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vancouverois
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by vancouverois »

Getting a good overdriven sound from an amp simulator like the Vox ST can be tricky.
A real amp with the gain cranked up is going to sound much better, due to more natural compression.
I think that compression is what lacks the most when recording to a PC.

I am not talking about the compression that squiches the sound that most pedals can produce.
It's more a matter of a balance between volume and compression by itself, I guess that sometimes
pedals can help by adding some gain even if in most cases what you score/earn on one side is a
loss on the other, this blanket on top the amp feeling ;-) The pedal usually colors the sound, like
a tube screamer that cuts off bottom and highs.

The weakness of the signal can be a tone problem, a guitar with an onboard preamp or preamp pedal
can generally add gain and sometimes compression to the overall sound. There are many demos that
let you hear a huge difference with and without preamp. Some "combo pedals" of equalizers and
clean boost can sometimes sound more present, warm and "alive" than the same rig with an OD pedal
instead.
Jan 15th 2007
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VikingBlues
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by VikingBlues »

Thanks vc - more food for thought there. I'm enjoying this journey, despite its difficulties and frustrations. :thumbsup:
vancouverois wrote:Getting a good overdriven sound from an amp simulator like the Vox ST can be tricky.
A real amp with the gain cranked up is going to sound much better, due to more natural compression.
I think that compression is what lacks the most when recording to a PC.
It's very frustrating! :wall: But unfortunately it's a fact of life for me where I'm living at the moment - I can't use the amp in driven mode very often, and don't have enough opportunities even in small time slots to have the proper practice time to even try to explore that avenue. Rats! Drat, double drat and treble drat!
vancouverois wrote:I am not talking about the compression that squiches the sound that most pedals can produce.
Yep - I know what you mean - that's a type of compression I hate and has caused me to get rid of a lot of pedals. The ST has that compression a deal more than the LE - but it's still an issue and a compromise to a (lesser) degree with the LE. I can certainly hear more of that squiching in the ST recording I did first - just a slight edge I don't really like so much.

I'm just needing to try to reach the best compromise I can using direct to PC recording to avoid too much grinding of teeth and un-necessary stress. :yikes:

The LE is by streets ahead the best unit I've yet found for responsiveness and purity - though not up to a good tube amp standard of course.

But on the plus side I think back to the sounds I had using a budget Pacifica, a bottom of the range Zoom multi fx and a four track cassette recorder. Suddenly I feel a great deal happier about where I've got to. :banana:
vancouverois wrote:The weakness of the signal can be a tone problem, a guitar with an onboard preamp or preamp pedal can generally add gain and sometimes compression to the overall sound. There are many demos that let you hear a huge difference with and without preamp. Some "combo pedals" of equalizers and clean boost can sometimes sound more present, warm and "alive" than the same rig with an OD pedal instead.
I have the option - which I've used - of maximising VR Gain, that it the pre-amp signal passed to the Valve Reactor Power Amp Stage in the LE, when the on board tube kicks in. Again it's not the real thing - but it does seem to help (a lot) compared to the sound if I don't do this.

I guess the speaker emulation element of any modelling gear is going to let the sound down compared to the real thing too. But there we're back to the fact I can't play acoustically loud. Hmmm ... if I'm still capable physically of playing a guitar when we move house next i must keep an eye open for somewhere where noise wouldn't be an issue.
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VikingBlues
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Re: Playing with more gain

Post by VikingBlues »

Somethings working a bit differently this time. :think:

Previously when I've tried to set up higher overdriven settings I've found them less than I wanted for the the more aggressively played somgs. And I've also found those same settings horribly unusable for lower intensity, quieter pieces - the tone has just been inappropriate. :eye_rub:

This new set up on the Tonealab LE I have now as used on my last post on this thread - on that same setting if I just play more gently (no real change to guitar volume knob setting) and use a mellow BT - it sounds good and not too unlike my normal VB sound. Guess it shows the set up is responding to playing dynamics at least to some extent. I know that's what it should do - but I've not managed that before with any od pedals / mult fx where the settings have dictated the sound rather than the player being involved. It's well short of what the Okko Diablo does with dynamics but I'm pleased to have moved at least one step in the right direction.

VB gently on the same settings as the higher gain recordings : download/file.php?id=1566
Attachments


I forgot : VB goes gentle with the higher gain setings
I Forgot.mp3 - (3.77 MiB)

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