The Guitar

should I use guitar effects?

I’m really trying to decide how I should get my guitar tone. My two choices, go with a marshall vintage modern and add a wah. So a real simple vintage style setup. Or get a great clean sounding amp and add a bunch of pedals for my main tone. Eventually moving on to a rack system. My main reasons I personally think the vintage method will sound better (maybe I’m wrong) because everybody says amp distortion sounds better than any pedal distortion even tube distortion pedals. But at the same time I like the flexibility and convinience of using effects pedals, also can anybody tell me how I could plug my electric guitar after all my effects into the PA? Maybe a DI box?

This is my perspective. After playing live for a couple of years, through a lot of gear changes, and having pretty much everything that could go wrong go wrong, my final conclusion is that it’s best to keep things as simple as possible.

Anticipate things getting bumped. Anticipate batteries dying, power supplies failing, cords shorting out. If you assume that just about anything can go wrong, and prepare for it, you’ll be in a lot better place than many others.

Don’t use a DI box at the end of a path of guitar pedals – it won’t sound very good. Part of the function of the amp/speaker interaction is that they not only give you your volume and flavor your tone, but pumping your signal through speakers rolls off high-end frequency that would otherwise be hissy, shriekey, statickey, etc. Roll of that high end and you’re left with that great sound we all love.

I’ve heard at least a few different ways of getting great tone without having to lug around a big ol’ tube amp. (i own a mesa boogie tremoverb, they are very heavy!)

One, you could use a smaller tube amp. This would help you crank those power amps to get that thick saturated sound, but you could still use your fx pedals. The epiphone valve jr can push a 4×12 stack, and it’s only 5 watts, for instance. By limiting your watts you decrease your max volume, but you also lower the point at which you start getting that cranked tone. Try a couple, but you shouldn’t need more than 50 watts of tube amp for just about any gig – the larger ones are all mic’d anyways.

Two, you could use a solid state amp. Look, Dimebag did it, so could you. Tubes can break or blow, solid states are usually pretty durable. A buddy of mine plays a Marshall MG… while I don’t think it sounds as good as my mesa, it’s a *lot* less complicated and easy to use. No tubes to worry about…

Three, you could use some form of digital modeling. I’ve used a couple, myself, umm… Boss Gt-3, Line 6 Pod and Pod 2, Behringer Vamp Pro, a Digitech from back in the day… Usually these things sound best when put through a power amp into a full-spectrum speaker, not a guitar speaker. I’ve had some success putting them through my amp’s fx return jack, too, so they aren’t colored/cramped by the preamp.

You can use a combination of a few of the above ideas – a multifx into a tube power amp, or a solid state into a speaker simulator. SS into a spkr simulator into a tube power amp… hmm…

I mention tube power amps because the best heavy guitar tones I’ve ever heard came from a Helmet concert – they’ve got multiple amps and effects going into tube power amps, and it sounded soooo sick…

Personally, I may just end up having to build what I want myself… homebrew myself a preamp and cab simulator…

Good luck, no matter which way you go! Don’t forget to test drive a few different rigs so you know what you like and don’t like!

Saul

(OLD) EFFECTS AND MY GUITAR SETUP IBANEZ JS1000 JOE SATRIANI TONE

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