Setting your guitar sound
Ok for those who don’t know that much about amplifiers and effect pedals this is a good section to start at. I will try not too refer to any brand of amp or effects in general as they mostly share common features, but different amps do have their own advantages:
- A clean channel
- A dirty or distorted channel
- An Equalizer or E.Q. which consists of bass, middle, high and presense ( sometimes presence is not included)
- Reverb and other built in Effects (F.X.)
- An Effects (F.X.) loop. A very handy in-out link between pre-amp and power-amp that has disappeared more and more on the newer amps such as line 6 models and the Roland cube.
- Pre-amp out to go to Direct Input or Direct Injection (D.I.) box
- Power-amp in; to use amp as stand alone speaker box (bypass pre-amp and power-amp)
- The input jack.
Lets start with the E.Q; bass, middle, high & presence. The bass knob is the low or bottom end the more you push or turn this up the greater the depth of your sound will be
Middle or mid range will give a boost or cut in your sound's definition or to put simply it will be fat or thin. The mid range selected for your guitar is the defining factor whether you will have a rock, blues, or metal sound that will be produced through your dirty channel.
High or top end and Presense adjusts the sharpness of your amp giving you the ability, as the saying goes :TO CUT PEOPLES HEADS OFF. Most guitarists suffer from hearing loss from loud amps when they push the top end to the limit.TRY TO AVOID THIS! By living with the fact that even though 200 watts of top end makes you feel like a god, in reality you just sending yourself and everyone else in the room deaf. You could also get some ear plugs to use during practice, available from most retail outlet, warehouse or your local musician's store should stock them.
How much top end you use will decide how much your sound will cut through the room. The sound should be clear and sharp, being able to hear each note in solos is difficult in a crowded room, so try to adjust according to capacity of the room.
So with the E.Q. you set the tone of your amp, for example:
- ROCK: BASS 70%, MIDDLE 80%, HIGH 60%, Presense to taste or 30%
- HEAVY METAL: BASS 95%, MIDDLE 20%, HIGH 80%, Presense to taste or 50%
- BLUES: BASS 80%, MIDDLE 60%, HIGH 70%, Presence to taste or 50%
Setting your distortion The way you set your amp gain and level / distortion and volume depends on what you want from your sound.
but remember there is no wrong way to set your amp sound, if it sounds good to you use it
If you're after a good rhythm sound, it is best to pull the gain or distortion back to 55-70% and use more volume, this will give you a more clear and less muddy sound and should still be quite crunchy. This is achieved by using less gain and pushing the E.Q. more with the volume. I do not recommend you have your gain set to 100% on any amp as this causes oversaturation and really muds up your sound
A good lead sound is produced by having more gain or distortion and pushing your mid and top end a little bit more to achieve good sustain,using delay and reverb can also get this result but well get into F.X.'s later.it helps if your amp has more then 1 dirty channel (like most marshal amps) again I do not recommend you have your gain set to 100% on any amp as this causes oversaturation and really muds up your sound,and remember there is no wrong way to set your amp sound, if it sounds good to you use it F.X'S AND THE F.X.'S LOOPThere are many types of F.X.'s some are standard some are not so standard.
There are the common stomp box's 1effect per pedal.
Floor multi F.X.'s.higher quality with many effects many button's and pedals in one.
Rack mounted F.X.'s.even higher quality with many effects many button's and A on the floor remote to control the rack unit.
The most common effects you will come across are:
distortion,overdrive,chorus,phaser,flanger,wha wha,E.Q.,delay and reverb
Some more advanced ones:
compressor sustainer,octave,noise suppressor,pitch shifter,tremolo,whammy and the list goes on
Using your F.X.s with your amp
There are two main sets of effects,ones that you plug your guitar into than into your amp,and ones you run through your F.X.'s loop
there are good reason's for this the main one being if you run distortion through your F.X.'s loop you will be sending the pre-amp and E.Q. section to your distortion pedal and not distorting your pre-amp,so there would be no push from the pre-amp and E.Q. to the distortion pedal, the other being if you run your guitar into a delay then to your amp the original signal sounds fine but the delayed signal will sound louder then it should and not be in the actual delayed time set by the
effect,in layman's terms it sounds like crap (please note that if you run reverb or delay into a clean sound there will be no ill effect it's mainly distorted sounds that will be affected)
there are pedal and effects where it does not matter where you place them in the signal path but most sound clearer when placed in the F.X.'s loop, these are chorus,phaser,flanger,,E.Q,compressor sustainer,octave,noise suppressor,pitch shifter,tremolo,.But the wha wha effect should always be placed before the distortion and before input,it's best to wha the distortion and not distort the wha if you run it the other way (and you can do it visa versa,your amp won't blow up) you end up soking up most of the wah effect in the distortion, the same goes for a whammy pedal.
On the F.X.'s loop will be two 1\4 jacks marked send return.the send jack is the signal that comes out of your pre-amp which in turn will go to the input jack on your effect marked in,then coming from your output jack on your effect marked out you would run this to the input in the F.X.'s loop mark return:- send is an output return is an input. or you are really doing when you utilize the F.X.'s loop is placing an effect between the pre-amp and power-amp.
it is also possible to use the send jack to run your amp into a power amp if there is not a line out available.but you may lose the use of the amp unless you use a splitter box or D.I.box to run the signal back to the return in the loop.
to be continued