How to get amazing guitar tone

In an endless sea of lifeless, uninspired, washed guitar sounds, do you want a rich, organic, vibrant tone that will turn heads at your next gig? Look no further. I will share my 10+ years of guitar experience with you and help you start on the road to finding your perfect tone.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A guitar
• A tube amplifier
• An overdrive pedal
• A delay unit

1. Get that guitar in shape! Needless to say, the guitar is where the tone begins. No matter what condition your instrument is in, most do-it-yourselfers will be able set up any guitar to achieve a reasonable amount of sound and playability. http://www.projectguitar.com offers a huge selection of tutorials to teach pretty much every aspect of electric guitar maintenance.

2. Amplifier selection is paramount to good tone. I've found that the best tone comes from a 50 watt tube amp with class AB circuitry and 2 EL34's in the power stage. It is also critical that your amp have an effects loop. If this jargon sounds foreign to you, take these specs to a guitar store; the salesman there will know what it means and help find the right amplifier for you. I also recommend purchasing a separate amplifier and speaker cabinet. It may be slightly more cumbersome and more expensive, but in the end this setup will be more versatile. Plus, you can try different speaker cabinets over time to see what you like. My preferred setup, just for reference, is a 50 watt early 70's Marshall head modded with an effects loop, with a custom 2x12 open-backed speaker cabinet loaded with Celestion Greenbacks. I feel that two speakers makes the sound a lot clearer than four, and that the open-backed cabinet gives me better response and clarity in the upper mid-range. I'm not too picky about my tubes, but I prefer older (1960's) Mullard ECC83 tubes in my preamp. For the power amp, investing a lot in power tubes is somewhat of a waste; I just stick with Sovteks.

3. You're not going to be relying on your amp to create a lot of distortion; that's what your overdrive is for. The overdrive will work with your tube amp to give you a pleasant, smooth distortion. Most musicians look no further than the Ibanez tube screamer to fill this role. The TS-808 is the vintage reissue that I recommend. It's rather pricey, but worth every cent. DON'T be enticed by the economy of the TS-7, the cheaply made approximation. (Note: this isn't a distortion pedal. It will likely not sound very satisfying if it's plugged into anything other than a tube amp.) Another wonderful overdrive is the Chandler tube driver. It isn't made anymore, but in my opinion it is the holy grail of tube amp overdrives. They're occasionally available on Ebay for about the price of a new TS-808, so it's definitely worth the effort to find one.

4. The last crucial piece of your ultimate tone rig is a delay unit. Delay will fatten up your tone and take it from good to euphoric. There are three main types of delay units: tape delay, analog delay, and digital delay. For our purposes here, digital delay is unacceptable. It's capable of a few tricks that analog and tape delay can't do, but in general it's too sterile sounding. Tape delay is a great choice, but unfortunately it's rather unreliable and expensive. That leaves us with analog delay. Fortunately for us, there are a ton of great delay pedals out there. The Ibanez AD-9 is a great choice. Boss makes the Giga-delay which models many types of delay pedals, and is a wonderful piece of gear, but is overkill for our application.

5. Time to put it all together! Connect your guitar to your overdrive pedal, the pedal to the input jack of the amp, and the delay unit to the effects loop. Set the delay period to about 300ms feedback to about 50%. On the overdrive, dial in the volume at 100%, the tone at 100%, and the gain at 50%. Dial your amp's tone controls all to about 50%. Fire up the amp and play, tweaking all of these values until you find your tone.

Tips & Warnings

• Expect to spend a significant amount of money on your gear. (This explains how to get the best tone, not the cheapest!)
• There is really no "right way" to set your controls. Each musician has to find his or her own settings.
• When using tube amps, there is a very real danger that you could receive a 400 volt zap if the amp isn't grounded properly. A $5 ground tester could save your life.

[lynnhsmomof2]

on 1/6/2009 Looks like you know a lot about this subject! 5*

[Yevgeni]

on 11/10/2008 Agreed, Thims. It's certainly possible to coax amazing tone out of a cheap rig; I used to do it at as a guitar salesman all the time, sold more gear that way.

It's certainly possible to sit and discuss the elements of tone all day. I find that those guys who say "tone is all in the fingers" are full of themselves. IMO, "style" is what's in the fingers. Eddie Van Halen may still sound like Eddie Van Halen playing a rusty guitar through a practice amp, but that's because he has his own style. You can slightly color your tone by changing your playing style, but tone is mostly governed by the gear you're using.

[Thims]

on 9/16/2008 So obviously a good tone cost! Makes sense, but I've seen guys and gals get some of the best tones I've ever heard out of cheap instruments with old beat up equipment. Good article.