Calling Guitar Techs

The sound coming out it very jazzy - It very jazzy. It real jazzy. Chucka like jazzy.

Like "Don't Take Me Alive" by Steely Dan or the Rock & Roll Animal version of Sweet Jane. Something like that. (and by "easy" I meant easy effect, not easy solo.)

Tell us something about your guitar & amplifier. Maybe you need some sort of effect; maybe a different amp. Effects are cheaper and easier, but the proper amp sounds nicer.

Wait, erudite's a bad thing? You mean snobby? sneering? pedantic is actually more derogatory than erudite, i think. and now that i've illustrated how pedantic one can be...

Um.. ok... you might want a chorus pedal--a chorus pedal with a distortion pedal will give you a nice def leppard sound and/or early 90's/late eighties hair metal. if you want that hollowed out, zooming in and out kinda of distortion sound, you might want to get a flanger or a phaser. to get a country kinda sound, you might want a delay pedal ora reverb. delay gets that slap-back, not uncommon to country guitar solos... another great pedal is, of course, the vibrato pedal, giving you that nice Roy Orbison wom-wom-wom thing. And then there's the volume pedal, lending another great trick to your country-repertoire. of course, the mother of all dynamic pedals is the wah, but i'm sure you're well aware of what it does.

the reason your guitar is sounding jazzy is 'cuz jazzdudes usually go "straight"--from geetar to amp. it's a very rounded tone--some people like it and are actually sticklers for it, others hate it.

OK, "Don't Take Me Alive". Basically you'll need some way of giving an artificial overdrive - many amps have this build in - (I used to have an old MusicMan amp that got very close to this sound without extra pedals). If your amp doesn't have that facility you'll need an overdrive or fuzz-box type pedal. They tend to range between the raucous and artificial sounding and the smoother and more natural sounding. You'd need the latter for most Steely Dan stuff. Since I don't play guitar any more (switched to bass years ago) I can't advise you on specific pedals currently available but most music store assistants can advise/let you try out stuff. I'm sure pedals are more sophisticated and versatile nowadays.

You'll also need some sort of echo/delay/or reverb. Your amp may have built-in reverb but you should probably beef it up with something better - most built in units are probably not good enough to reproduce the sound your looking for except at bedroom volume. Again I can't really advise on current products.

Don't listen to those guys. You haven't told us enough to get any good advice yet. "Doctor, I have this rash..." "HERPES!!! No more sex for you, son."

So, where's the rash, and what does it look like? I mean, what kind of guitar do you have, and what are you playing it through?

Here's my rash:

I have an early 60s Silvertone archback, hollow body - three pickups (all parts original - except strings.) Plays through a Silvertone tube amp. Now I know that Silvertone is not Fender, but I was in a music store feeling some guitars out, and the action on the $200 or less guitars was nowhere close to how good mine is. (Keep in mind, I'm not that serious about playing either.) I looked at a Yamaha Pacifica, which for a cheap guitar seemed pretty good - still trying to decide if I need to try a new guitar - the one I've got doesn't seem so bad after shopping though. (The lead guitarist of Jolene plays the exact same guitar.) The amp has volume & tone and it has tremolo volume & speed (So I cold play shit from REM's Monster.)

I am going to pick up a distortion pedal, which may be the main ingredient - but flanger & delay - not real sure what they do. I know the flanger makes an "in & out" effect - but I have no idea what that sounds like. Delay - can't imagine what it might do. Reverb - I know what that does generally... but it's not just that I don't really know what the effects do - it's "what pedals do I need to reproduce the effect of (xyz) song." Not that I want to play covers - I'm just noodling right now. I'm planning on doing originals, but I may want to copy certain voices.

Thanks.

you need reverb, yes you do. to give your sound some character. delay will do the same thing but a touch more dramatically. + distortion, however much or little you want. and off you go!

(NB i think it's probably GRATE practice to just use the non-effected setup you've got for awhile, while you're learning - the "start legit, then get crazy later" approach. at least that way you'll be sure you know exactly what you're playing. i've got some friends who have so many effects pedals that everything - well-played or not - sounds equally vague and whooshy.)

Yeah - I'm trying to learn without effects - but it seems a bit clunky sounding & that's a bit discouraging (because I'm not interested in hearing what I'm playing - even though it sounds better to me than the shit some guy was playing in the guitar store the other day - what a hack.) I think it's because the amp plays exactly what my fingers are doing... a little distortion will certainly help. I think I should play with a rythym track too to cover up even more. (I think the sound of a lone electric is pretty ugly.)

Hey Dave, you mention that you have the three pickups...I don't think anyone upthread mentioned that another thing you should try is switching between the pickups. With three, certainly there should be a switch on the guitar somewhere that will allow you to change pickups. I'm not too familiar off the top of my head with the guitar you mentioned (and too lazy to look it up) but if the pickup near the bridge of the guitar is the double-width pickup, that's a humbucker and is your best option for adding a bit of distortion into the mix even before you head for the effects pedals.

By the way, if you're planning to drop a bundle o'cash on effects, you could do far worse than checking out the Pod by Line 6. It simulates a number of different types of distorted amps and has a lot of the effects mentioned above, and you can edit them. It's all digital (as are most of the pedals) so the sound won't be as warm as with an overdriven tube amp, but if you want to keep it cheap, it's a reasonably good way to get a lot of different guitar effects in one place.

BTW, Pod info here.

Here is the HarmonyCentral review of my git. 'swhy I don't think I really need to buy a new one just yet.

.. And I do have switches for the threee pickups & manage to change the sound with them - but I'm just not able to get the sound I want. But I do get good sound out of it without the effects.

erudite = scary becuz they are always right
pedantic = less so because tho yes yes korrekt they are also prats

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hey!

Dave225, delay basically takes a sample of whatever sound you're pushing through the fx box and then repeats it. you usually control feedback and time, feedback is the number of times the fx repeats the sample, and time is usually how long each sample is. The musical genre of dub uses a lot of delay and reverb. Bill Frisell and David Torn are two frequent users of long digital delay, to the point where they can construct loops. Daniel Lanois uses it as well to create those soundscapes.

Flanger makes a zoomy sound... zoooomy! I think it's probably more fun just to jaunt down to le guitar store and push all the pedals until the storeperson asks you to leave. ooh, envelope filters are neat too--they basically simulate a wah without you having to push the wah pedal with your foot--Bootsy and Stevie Wonder use envelop- filters alot... sniff, reminds me of my pre-driver's license days as a really obnoxious shredfreak, sigh.

I totally know what you mean about discouraging--the naked guitar sound is good for Wes Montegomery, Joe Pass, but not really inspiring for the Eddie Van Halen solo. But for that, a nice distortion, a little reverb, and delay will have you sounding like Joe Satriani in no time. Mind you, I'm not saying that's a good thing. For your taste runs more towards Neil Young or Nels Cline, a nice amp-driven distortion and some occasional reverb/vibrato will do you nicely.

Dave, crank that little silvertone amp up to the max volume and you should get some nice tube distortion (if it is a tube amp). You can try a distortion or fuzz pedal for rawk sounds (they mostly suck tho), or try an overdrive pedal (which basically boosts the signal coming out of your guitar in order to make your ampo distort. I'm not sure what sound you are going for, but flangers have a sort of over the top psychedelic sound when used full on, actually their use is fairly limited IMO (phasers are similar but can be used more subtly). Delay pedals create echo of different length/repetitions. You didn;t say the exact silvertone amp you have but most of the tube ones have a nice warm sound and a mellow tremolo to boot. Playing with no effects can sound good too - doesn;t necessarily have to sound jazzy, experiment, with the tone and pickup settings on your guitar.

Thanks for all the advice, youse guys.

All you need is an overdrive pedal and a reverb unit. That's all I'll ever need.

By the way, if anyone needs a Boss METAL ZONE pedal, please let me know...got one just before I got my Pod and now I don't really need it. Paid $80 Cdn, willing to entertain trades. Email privately.

The Pod is an overpriced toy, and the folks on Harmony Central jut spew back what they read in the guitar magazines, which is mostly the adverts.

Enough vitriol. I agree with g -- turn the amp UP -- but it's entirely possible that it still won't distort. You've got fairly low- output pick-ups in your guitar (not in itself a bad thing), so you could use a nice cheap distortion pedal, like a ProCo Rat. With the guitar that you have, you'll get more 60s fuzztone sounds than Nü Metal Soundz -- but that's a good thing, right?

If I were you -- I'd go amp shopping first, and try to find something little, low in wattage and with tubes and a master volume. What you do then is crank the gain/pre-volume/whatever they call it on that amp up, and use the master volume for actually setting the loudness, and there you go.

You don't NEED reverb, either, although it can sound good in bedroom/recording situations. It does tend to disappear in bands or live situations.

And clean sounds can rock, too -- dig the Feelies, Talking Heads, or even some Wedding Present.

i rekkon half the HCFX posts are by employees of TOSS

The Pod is an overpriced toy, and the folks on Harmony Central jut spew back what they read in the guitar magazines, which is mostly the adverts.
Yeah yeah yeah, of course The Pod doesn't sound like a good amp, Colin, but looking above, it looks like Dave is just beginning to learn all of this stuff and wants some good effects. Compared to the price of a bunch of pedals, it's not so overprices, and if it doesn't sound like something you'd want to use on a professional recording, I didn't think that was the point just yet. For what it's worth, I have the Pod myself (thus my recommendation), and for just goofing around and learning to play using various effects, it's been invaluable.

I auditioned the line6 pod, the johnson j-station and the yamaha DG stomp (BTW these are digital FX boxen that cleverly emulate miced up tube amps) I bought the Yamaha unit. I thought it was noticeably better than the other 2 FWIW

I don't think anyone answered the question about "Delay". This is basically echo.

Whoever said that the ProCo "Rat" is good above I agree with. That is one excellent distortion.

I don't think anyone answered the question about "Delay". This is basically echo.
It was kinda talked about above. And yes, like echo but with an important distinction--it is a very clean digital REPEAT of what you put in, not a generalized bouncing-off-the-walls type of echo (that'd be more like reverb). Digital delay is something you can set up to repeat once, or to keep repeating at a standard interval (while fading out, usually). With a long enough delay you can do Eno- or Fripp-esque things, and play over top of yourself (Frippertronics!). With a shorter repeating delay you can do a pretty good Edge impersonation.

1st off, get a cool guitar and a cool amp, otherwise no matter how many effects you put into the chain it will still sound shit. A tube amp is probably a good idea although they can be expensive - the Marshall Valvestate range, whilst not truly tube-driven, offer a pretty decent compromise and give you a pretty warm sounding distortion.

An overdriven tube amp and a strat/gibson is the basic sound of most rock music.

I love the Line 6 Delay Modeller, the Lovetone Meatball my crappy Lexicon MPX 100 rackmount thingammy (great reverb and chorus sounds), the Electro-Harmonix Smallstone phaser and the Morley volume pedal. The E-bow is an absolute must.

Won't Get Fooled Again. Smash it. :-) -jeff

Eh?