Show me with an oscilloscope... and we'll eventually end up agreeing about why we are hearing what we are hearing.

all the best,
mike

Is this a great country or what? You get to say all that stuff you want to say... and I don't have to take any of it seriously.

:-)




best regards,
mike

Hi Steve,
 
 Do you have any personal thoughts about "reactance" or are you just going with what someone tells you to think?


 :-) 

best regards,
mike

mike_mccue


Hi Steve,

Do you have any personal thoughts about "reactance" or are you just going with what someone tells you to think?


:-) 

best regards,
mike

A real guitar player that has a clue could really care less about reactance. If something sounds good...it is good. It matters not whether reactance plays a role in anything. Again, you're so lost and clueless you're starting to believe you really are on to something.
 
A player with any sort of skill could play into an amp like an Ampeg SS-150 which is completely transistor....and create a great sound. No one cares what a graph or scope tells them, Mike. They plug into something....they either get a good sound that they like and can play with, or they don't. Some sounds are easier to play through than others. Some tube amps are absolute garbage too....so you can't always use that as an excuse. Just because an amp is tube doesn't mean it's good. I can name 6 tranny amps that will blow the doors off of some of these supposedly great tube amps.
 
Why do you have to try and make this more difficult than it really is? Sure tube amps have different characteristics than tranny amps.....put Frank Taunton into a tube amp or a tranny amp....you'll hear one thing....the sound of "greatness" and no one but Frank will know if reactance is playing a role in anything. Who knows if he'll even notice with the right tranny amp? Do you really think the majority of players think about that stuff? Not everyone is a purist...and not everyone gives a crap. If you spent more time learning to play instead of wasting time on technical mumbo jumbo that is meaningless in the real world, you just might amount to something in this field someday.
 
Finger tone is the finger PRINT of sound. Reactance and all that other happy horsesh!t is nothing but an element. Though some will claim it is a necessity, a great player sounds good on anything he plugs into on any guitar he plays and knows how to dynamically tame and control his guitar. Fact!
 
-Danny

They plug into something....they either get a good sound that they like and can play with, or they don't.


That's is it in a nutshell. I'm sick of kooky mumbo jumbo and when all is needed is to plug in and play. It's obvious after half a second whether it sounds good or not.

BTW, the guy that designed that '75 Princeton amp didn't actually play electric guitar... he just invented them.

:-)

Did I suggest that the Princeton was an example of high gain?

That's just the raw hatred getting you confused and grasping for what ever you can get your sights on.






I didn't suggest anything about the Princeton other than the fact that I plugged in and instantly enjoyed it. 

Your use of it as an example once again suggests that you don't even know why you use the word "gain"... you just mimic the last guy that borrowed it from a conversation they heard and started using it wrong. The guys that design the amps you love... they know what it means and they just don't care that you don't. I don't really care either.... you're the one that seems real uncomfortable with it.



I'll bet you'll be real interested in reactance once it's your idea. It's fascinating stuff and you have a mind for that kind of detail. Your curiosity is going to get the better of you and you'll be caught up in it soon enough... in your own good time.


best regards,
mike

Did someone say "high gain?"

I tried this but it didn't deliver on its promises...

Starise


 
  I sure didn't mean for this whole thing to turn into something bad. 

It's just a matter of context (if it's anything more than that, then I chose to ignore it).  If you've read the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement manual (a great reference book) and want to run sound at the FOH, then you'll need to know some of what Mike was presenting.  However, if you're just trying to juice up your guitar tone, then you don't need to know any of that.
 
To drive a car you need to know how to add gas, turn the ignition key, use the parking brake, transmission shifter, pedals and steering wheel.  You don't care about how many amps from the battery are needed to kick over the starter and defeat the indent torque on the crankshaft of the engine.  Context is everything here (with apologies to Mr. Parsons).

Starise


 
  I sure didn't mean for this whole thing to turn into something bad . I was really glad when Danny and Zungle showed up to offer their opinions/advice because I know these guys are all about metal and have played a guitar or two and a few amps.

  I am the type to understand laymans terms a little better than raw electronic theory and this is coming from a guy who once serviced electronics. I think a lot of the approach comes from the way a person thinks. I think Mike was offering help in a way he understood things which were different than the way many other seasoned metal players look at them. The guys who invent and design the equipment we use must take to this kind of logic in order to put a design down on paper and make it work. Almost nothing technical would ever be achieved without someone who is all about numbers theories and mathlematic calculations. 

  I usually only go to anything associated with the theory on how something works if I absolutely need to. Most other times I am more concerned about doing something with the thing. Knowing a little background theory is always helpful in getting a better understanding on how something works but like I said...not really my forte'. I still appreciated looking at what seems to be happening from Mikes technical vantage point.
 
 Distortion is clipping... no way around that.  In metal music it is about using the distortion and clipping or as Mike says, square wave and/or feedback as tools in the actual music making process and I can't think of anyone who is probably better at that than Danny and others like zungle who record and play metal music,have experemented with various techniques and determined which ones work best with what types of equipment.

 Zungle, you are right here, the pickups are actually EMG 81TX bridge and 89R in the neck. At least some of my problem with my first impressions was with me not knowing where the volume controls were exactly. A quick look at the manual revealed that they put the bridge volume as the first pot(the one closest to the neck). Seems kind of assbackwards to me. When I figured this out I knew better what to do. I tried a few licks with drop D and after a few adjustments had things sounding pretty sweet. You'll need to pry this guitar away from my cold dead fingers now lol. Both pickups are tapped so there is an incredible amount of flexibility here in the kinds of sounds you can get. This guitar seems to be out there in several different configurations. In one version there is an 81/85 setup in another version there are seymour duncans instead of EMGs....my particular guitar was made in 2011 according to the SN and I think I got a pretty good setup here. I know these are mass produced but they made the abalone cross and body inlays look custom,they even inlayed the headstock.

 So Danny I tried the GHS  strings out on my other guitar and they are working great. I have a set of cobalt 9s I am thinking about throwing on the Schecter as I'm not sure what strings are on  it now. A new set of strings will probably make a huge difference. The Schecter manual recommends Ernie Ball 2221s which I also have a pack of. Too many choices here!

 From what you guys have said it looks like I need to seriously learn a little more about what happens after the guitar . That track Danny made of the tube preamp minus the power amp and cabs was sweet. So I have a decent start thanks to the help I got here. Thanks guys!

 FWIW here are the results of the tracks I posted. You might be surprised!

The JTV 69 settings are using a Les Paul 1958 standard emulation.

1 JTV69 bridge

2 Schecter C-1 Hellraiser bridge EMG 81TX

3 JTV69 neck

4 Schecter C-1 Hellraiser neck

5. Laguna custom alinco humbucker bridge

6 Laguna custom alinco single coil neck

Power chords-

7 Schecter C-1 Hellraiser neck

8. JTV69 bridge

9. Laguna bridge

10 Schecter C-1 Hellraiser bridge

It's my fault it turned into something bad, Starise. And to you my friend, I apologize. I just seriously get tired of reading stuff on here that comes in the form we saw. Some of this stuff gets so bad, there are members of this forum that contact me in private because they get so lost with all the comments that are totally off the mark and confusing to them. Feel free to do that if you ever need to as I probably won't be taking part as much here. I'm just not in the right frame of mind to handle people that treat forums as a source of entertainment that hide behind screens while adding sarcastic insults, fallacy and the lack of leading by nothing but their mouths. Now *I* as a metal guitarist, need to show proof of high gain on a silly scope to a dude that plays acoustic so we can agree what high gain is? C'mon...someone has to be laughing hysterically here.
 
Some people can handle it and blow it off, I can't...what can I say? I would think/hope that those that know this, would just leave me alone or ignore me. But it doesn't turn out that way. I did the lashing this time though as Mike has no business corrupting a guitar thread or even any engineering threads that don't have anything to do with wood or cameras. Our last blow out was due to this same subject...but this time, I took the initiative. So to you Starise, again I'm sorry. I just can't read this crap any longer knowing that there ARE some people who will read it and waste loads of time doing absolutely nothing because of it. If someone doesn't know something when a person is in need, they should simply go fishing and leave it to those who really know what they're talking about.
 
As for giving you a few more answers...strings are important for sure, but more so for certain situations. For example, if you were to use a guitar for tuning down....it's best to go with a custom set using thicker strings if you want that "chunk". Any strings with a coating will sound darker...thinner strings will sound brighter of course. Some guitars may need special stings to fully get what you're looking for out of them. I'm glad the GHS's are working for you. If you keep them clean, they will last a little longer...but "long lasting" isn't really an asset of those. They just sound good and feel good to me.
 
As for the Shecter, be careful of what a company may recommend. The strings guitars come with when they are new are usually a deal between the guitar company and the string manufacturer. This means they will always recommend whoever they have a deal with. I would say try a few different sets to see which may be the best for you. I would think the GHS strings would work fine, but who knows...you might be better off with the Cobalts for that particular guitar. I use the Boomers on all mine without any problems...but that's just me.
 
After the guitar: Don't let that beat you up. Tone chasing is like finding a soul mate in life. You'll know it when you have it and you won't need to know what happens before, during or after the guitar. Like music theory, some of it can help, but at the end of the day man, a good tone is a good tone no matter what it may look like or cost. The key in all of this Starise, is to do a little research on what your hero's may be using. There are times when you don't have to cop what they have exactly to achieve what you need, but it will at least point you in the right direction.
 
For example, if you were after an Eddie Van Halen tone, you're not going to get as close to that with a transistor amp like you would a tube amp. In saying "tube amp" it's not even necessary to get an all tube amp. A tube front end with 12AX7's is all that is needed for 80% of the core of your tone. In Eddie's situation, of course it was based on volume and output tube power helping, but in today's times, tube pre-amps like what I use or a Tri-Axis etc, have enough gain to where you don't necessarily need output tubes to be so loud a bird will explode in front of your cab. I play in a VH tribute band...my tone is NOT spot on, but close enough for me to where I get plenty of compliments, sound Eddie-esq, yet still sound like me. I think that's the key really. Get close, then tweak things to YOUR liking.
 
If the dudes you know and love use tube rigs, you need at least a tube front end to get the characteristics of the tone you're looking for. That pre I use can get nearly any sound possible with a little tweaking. I've never NOT been able to cop something. From extreme metal to classic rock, blues or even Lenny Kravitz type tones...it's all there. Could I get these with a tranny rig? Yeah...but there is always something missing...and that is, the sound of 12AX7's which I personally prefer.
 
The other thing you may need a little guidance on, is what to listen for in a tone. What we think we hear in a tone sometimes isn't really so. I remember when I was learning about this stuff, the first thing I always did was crank the gain as hot as I could. Little did I know my hero's weren't doing this at all. It's the right combination of highs and gain that create the tone. Some guys mistake gain for treble...ever hear someone with a real nasal type sound? They don't understand that it's having the right, tight gain with just the right amount of highs that allows the tone to be good.
 
There's good gain, and bad gain. Some of the older Marshalls for example....bad, loose gain. You'd need a stomp box and a compressor to make the gain tighten up or send it to a guy to have it modded. Mesa Rectifiers for example....a great example of a tight, high gain sound if that's what you're after where a Mesa Mk series, has a looser more bottomy sort of gain to me. Useable of course, but you'll need to tweak it. So the first thing you might want to do, is figure out what sort of gain sound you're even looking for. List a few players you love that you wouldn't mind having a sound close to. This tells you a lot about how to search for your tone.
 
Steve Stevens for example, has a loose gain....kinda classic rock on steriods. George Lynch is a tighter, more processed gain. Gary Moore fluctuated between loose gain and tight gain in his sounds. It was quite amazing how he worked those Mesa's. When you hear a driven blues sound with some bottom that's creamy, that's loose gain jacked up pretty good to where if they played chords, it would be way too gainy and sound like a run-on-sentence. But for leads...this works great. If you did that with a more modern high gain sound, it would sound a bit thinner and not breathe as much. See that's the thing man...modern high gain that's tight, is sort of processed at the gain stage to be that way. Loose gain allows for more expresssiveness and is more the classic rock/blues way of doing things.
 
Steve Vai has a hybrid gain. It's loose, yet tight due to how he processes and compresses it while not being overly tight. When he chugs chords, they breathe where if George Lynch were to do the same progression, it would be tighter and breathe a little less sounding a bit more compressed. That's kinda the tone I prefer...the tighter gain that has the compressed, more controlled sound. I can just roll off my volume knob to control gain where Vai's volume knob is an actual volume knob. Mine is more a gain knob. So decide which type of gain you want...tight or open and loose. This will dictate where you may need to search.
 
With pups...it's like I said before. Some will give you a little presence boost, others will sound a bit more mid rangey. Some have a bit more drive, others have a bit less and will rely on a bit more pre-amp gain. My winning combination has always been a Duncan Trem Custom in the bridge, and a Duncan JB in the neck for that creamy tone. The reason for that...those pups aren't super high output. So when I'm dirty, they are dirty...when they are clean, they are clean. With high output pups or pups that have drive in them, it becomes a chore to get a good, clean sound without some dirt artifacts. The Trem Custom is the same as a regular Duncan Custom (not to be confused with the Duncan "Custom" Custom...too much mids in that) but caters to keeping your trem use solid without losing power when diving or pulling up.
 
In my Carvin guitars, I decided to upgrade from their stock pups and have been really pleased with the way they sound. My Carvin's are the only guitars I own that don't have the Duncan rig in them. They sound a lot like the Duncan customs but have just a little more bite which I like for a bit more of a modern sound where the Duncan Custom is a bit more meaty in the mids....but that depends on what guitar they are in. Most times, they sound just like the Carvins other than one Ibanez USA Custom I have. That thing is just thick and resonates like a bear. So I have to raise my treble a bit when using that guitar or it sounds a little too warm. Anyway....give some of this some thought. You'll figure it out man, you'll see. Just don't make it more difficult than it needs to be. A sound either works or it doesn't and you move on to something else or try a combination of things. It's really that simple. :)
 
 Zungle: You're too kind, thank you....and you're also every bit as credible brother. Don't sell yourself short....this is a style of music you've been involved in for a long time. It's obvious you know what you're talking about and should share your experiences. I sure enjoy reading them. :)
 
-Danny

 Zungle. I have appreciated your input here. Thats a nice guitar you have there. The pickup config is pretty close to mine and you have a whammy bar....seriously this is the only thing I'm missing right now on the Schecter. To me the EMGs are really nice once a person starts to get accustomed to some of the ins and outs of how they work and what goes well with them. I'm not there yet but the journey is fun.

 Hey Danny, no problems here. I can tell you are passionate about what you do. The fact that you are willing to share your experiences is well noted here and I know many of us have been better because of it.
 
 Although I don't really know Mike well, I am guessing that he is more of an electronics/engineering kind of guy. He seems to have a bent for thinking along those lines and some of this thinking comes along here and there. 

 The whole reason I am getting into high gain is for added effect into different kinds of music. I'm not really looking at a strictly metal formula in my music. I need to work on the chops to go with it. The kind of gain I'm looking for is probably going to be more tight and refined with maybe using some of the dirtier sound as a second guitar part. Danny I might be on a PM to you one day begging you to play a part I can't get. I am practicing but I seriously doubt I'll ever get close to where you are in one lifetime.  I am doing this because I like doing it, noone is lighting a fire under my behind to  make something happen, but I am putting myself on the block to learn some of this stuff. If I didn't I would never get even close. Right now it's mostly about developing muscle memory and my memory isn't so good :)

 When I started off on keys I  spent a lot of time doing what I liked to do and now I can do it pretty well, I plan to do the same here unless my time runs out before that happens. For me its just as much about the journey as getting there and guitar is the kind of thing that can keep me busy for a long long time.

 Thanks guys!

  

 

"silly scope" ROFL!

I almost lost my Diet Pepsi.

How did I miss this thread? This is the first I clicked on it, only because I saw your name as the last poster Danny and thought I may learn something. Boy did I! LOL!

I caught a glimpse of someone talking about EMG's.

I have a set of old EMG's in my Jap Strat. No noise, and they sound great through an Amp ... but I don't like them at all for recording. They have a bump in the lower mid range that actually causes a ringing and I have to go in and surgically remove it on every recording with a sharp Q'd cut. And I have to fight it to sit in the mix, unless I'm using the full treble setting.

For the longest time it was wired wrong, probably because it's left handed and the guy who installed them did it backwards. He had the tone control effecting the treble setting, but not the last setting. Reverse what it should be. I finally got tired of it and rewired it a few years ago. I had to contact EMG and get the schematics. Great company to deal with.

Kind of on topic, and I don't know if this has been asked, too much text to read through ... but is there such a thing as pick-ups designed for recording or does everyone just mic a real amp?

Bub
Kind of on topic, and I don't know if this has been asked, too much text to read through ... but is there such a thing as pick-ups designed for recording or does everyone just mic a real amp?

I've never heard of any myself, but they may exist. Pretty much anything "no noise" or the lace sensors etc are the closest I know of made for recording due to the lighting always wreaking havoc on strats. As for your pup issue Bub, is it on the bridge pup? If so, check and see if the pup may be a little high on the bass side. Or, if there are adjustable pole pieces in the pup, maybe try lowering a few on the bass side. This can work wonders for annoying things like that. Strange rings, bass, dual tones when you try to tune etc, all come from how the pup gels with the strings and how close the pup may be. Sometimes you really don't need a pup to be as high as you may think. They sometimes sound even better when they are almost deep into the body cavity. I have a few of those actually. They sounded a bit too powerful and had a few artifacts at what you can call a "decent height"....so I dropped them and the further I dropped, the more the artifacts went away. I tend to leave my treble sides a little higher for sustain on leads. But the bass side, just about always I leave that further away.

Even your other pups being high can contribute to some weirdness in how 1 pup sounds. The magnets can really do strange things and can still add some weirdness even if the pup isn't enabled. All the stuff bleeds into itself at the end of the day, ya know? So check some of that out and see if it helps any. :)

mgh
FWIW (not reading the whole thread cos it seems to turn into an argu-fest)

Sorry about that. That's a shame too....some really good stuff in it that you might find useful someday. But...completely understandable. Yeah true, no one doing metal that I know of today is using actives other than some of my buds, but they're more hobbiests where the pros are definitely keeping things passive for metal. I only use active for clean sounds, classic rock or blues these days as they really make a huge difference for me. It's nice to have the push/pull volume knob to have both realms at once. I'm so used to it now, I can never go back to one or the other. :) But I too prefer passive for metal tones. It just sounds right where the actives are like....hmm...airy or something? They just don't hit me the same way.

-Danny

Jonbouy

mike_mccue


Show me with an oscilloscope... and we'll eventually end up agreeing about why we are hearing what we are hearing.

all the best,
mike

Ah the quest for evidence which is always imposed on others who are in a position to make realistic claims, yet never come from McQ himself.
 
Yet he has claimed that one guitar tuner costing £200 clocked at 11,250 can be more true than another one of the of the same internal accuracy, so much so that he tries to explain it is capable of re-producing some mythical tuning of legend and demonstrated by the nashville greats in that it somehow manages to change to tension of a string at different points throughout its length.
 
He's most recently been majoring that a $300 mic body will end up sounding superior to one found on a complete $150 mic with exactly the same shape and dimensions.  No figures to substantiate any of it though, he just knows.  He doesn't seem to get that while transformers which were a necessity back in the 60's are no longer a requirement anymore they are just optional extras if you feel that the same kind of mojo can't be added after the capture phase.  Most folk using that stuff back then would have dumped it in favour of what is available now, but nostalgia is great for rose tinting your vision.  None of those kind of figures show up on the graphs that Mike would insist that others bring to the table, and whilst indeed they may show differences, they don't show anything to suggest that one thing is 'better' than another.
 
Then he starts throwing words around like hatred and cowardice simply because he can't impose the same standards he demands from other to himself.
 
Poor chap.
 
One thing I'm sure of is that I'd rather listen to Danny about putting a mix together or achieving a guitar tone than I would from the enthusistic but misguided McQ, simply because I DO think for myself rather than take the half-formed ramblings of a theorist as being anything meaningful on most occasions. 
 
I do say most occasions because there is the odd occasion that Mike will say something meaningful but it tends to be the exception rather than the norm and often any charts he may post serve to confuse rather than perform any helpful function once you've managed to work out what they in fact related to.
 
I've learned from observation and arriving at my own conclusions to think like that, strange but true.

Pure comedy this.....
 
So this one time, in band camp, a client stuck a disc with a VSTi piano where the sun didn't shine. When it came out and we installed it, it was magically tuned to 555 and stuck there for life! It sounded brilliant! Now granted, I can't tell you why the client and I thought it sounded so great, but trust me, I just get it and it's ok if you don't. That and, well, the client doesn't want me to disclose any information about it so you'll just have to wonder what the big secret is. The tuning is a little weird and can use some work, but it's really great.
 
What was really great was, the client tried to sing in the key of B while tuned to 555. Needless to say, what's left of his throat is on display in my control room. I've got graphs and charts of all the damage as well as how his mangled vocal chords showed up on my silly scope! He wound up calling the tune "Barking Spiders" but "Gargling with Razor Blades" was a close second. Gotta love 555...so realistic Melodyne won't even touch it. :)