althoughofcourse asked: This is more a question for Teppei after that studio video. My musical interests have sort of gone with the progression of your band (which is why I still love it so) and i'm getting rid of my Mesa Dual this weekend and picking up an AC30cc2x. How do you get such a good variety of tones from it? And tones that both sparkle and bite like some of your old sounds? Thanks, all of you dudes, for being such a good influence and great people.
I’m gonna start off with a bit of a rant:
It’s surprising to me how many guitar players don’t understand the importance of themselves as part of their tone. Folks, the way you play has a HUGE effect on how your tone sounds. Your equipment is only part of the equation, not the equation. I was talking to Dave (our producer/engineer for the record we’re working on) about this very subject the other day and he told me a great story about engineering for a band and how the guitar player just couldn’t get a part right. He handed the guitar off to the producer who just happened to be an amazing guitar player and the sound of the guitar changed completely. All of the sudden it was brighter, more articulate, more exciting. He handed it back to the guitar player and in Dave’s words, “in comparison, it sounded like he was playing with oven mitts on”. We agreed that equipment in only 50% of the sound. The other 50% obviously being the guitar player. Without you, a guitar is just a piece of wood with strings and magnets and an amp is just a piece of wood with resistors and bigger magnets. I’ve seen guitar players wanting a heavy tone and just barely strumming the guitar because they rely so much on the (in my opinion unusable) amount of high gain on their amp and to me, it just doesn’t sound aggressive. If you want your sound to be big and aggressive, you have to play big and aggressive. My tones are generally fairly low gain. I play really hard when I want something to sound aggressive or heavy. I get asked a lot about what I’ve learned or how I’ve evolved as a guitar player over all these years and I’d have to say it’s this - that I am 50% of my tone and guitar playing to me at least, is ALL about feel, not technicalities.
On to the question:
I think one of the beauties of tube amps is that they respond to your playing - especially non high gain amps like the AC30. Even without changing any settings, you can get it to sound clean or gritty just by the dynamics in your playing. My settings are simple (it has to be - there’s only 4 knobs). I go into the brilliant channel, crank it to about 1:30-2:00, barely any treble, probably 9:00-10:00 (since AC30’s tend to be really bright in the first place), bass maybe around 2:00, cut knob off. To clean up, I either back off my playing or use a volume pedal to cut output from my guitar. If I need a little boost I may use a compressor pedal but like I said in the video, VERY minimal. Just enough to give me a small boost. You don’t really want to hear it much, it’s more of a feel thing. If I really want a boost, I’ll use a distortion pedal but very minimal on this as well. I’ve got a Tubescreamer clone that I built from General Guitar Gadgets that I really like. That’s it.
- Teppei
Spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti.
