Ramblings of a mad musician

Well continuing my quest for the sound that i want, the research continues.

The Marshall is sounding hot as ever, except for the annoying hum, which turns out it may well be either a leakage on one of the circuit boards between the valve stage and the ouput or bias drift from the valves, or many other issues, who knows until John has a look at it.  But apparently this is has been noticed as being a problem with the Marshall DSL’s and TSL’s of late.

So the amp is off to the shop for some minor repairs……. Boooh!

In the meantime, the search continues for the sound i want.  Upon some research, i may well have found what im looking for but will need to try it out and not many people sell it (after trawling their dealer list)

Xotic AC Booster

This may be the ticket.  Ive heard alot of demo’s of this and it appears to be what i may want.  It sounds pretty damned good too.  On further research, it happens to be one of the three types of overdrive that Paul Gilbert uses.  Now i love Pauls sound and his use of the amp overdrive + his various drives.

He uses one for his shredding, one for his rockier, slower and more melodic melodies and rhythms plus another one for lesser rhythmical tones.

From the reviews ive read and heard it appears to have great response to volume control as well.  I like being able to explore lower gain “chunk” tones for my band The Cilikis Progressio Project and be able to provide a wide range of dynamics in the solos and more rockier tracks rather than having a common and sorely overdone “move out of the way, the leading edge of my sound will chop your head off” tone.

Well that sound is bit over the top for what i want (the chop ya head off metal sound) but this may be path i might need to go down to try and cement a sound thats a huge, phat rocky sound yet can be played without sounding “too” metal.

Ahh the elusive goal of the guitarist in the search for perfect tone continues……

Last Friday morning at Rock City Rehearsals, me and the boys had quick morning rehearsal before the nights competition gig at Fity’s in Waterford.

Well i forgot to take my pedals and leads etc… so i had to resort to using the amp overdrive.  Now with relatively new valves i know it sounds great (minus a bit of muddyness in the low end which changes slightly depending on plectrum guitar gain etc..)

Well it did sound great as i knew it would and sounded exactly the same as the models im using in my Line6 setup.

I thought, maybe i should go about researching the use of maybe some stompboxes in the pre and use the line6 for just effects like Delays, Choruses, Flange etc etc running through the send loop.

So ive been hunting and have come up with a dilema of what to choose.  This means im going to have to spend hours at a music shop testing stuff out with my gear to try and get what i want out of the sound.

I will need to get me a Marshall footswitch to change from clean to drive etc plus maybe a stomp box or three who knows.  But what i DONT want is to lose any warmth or tone from the sound of the amp when the pedal is engaged.

So far my list includes

Ibanez Tubescream TS9DX

BOSS SD-1 Super Overdrive

BOSS CS-3 Compressor/Sustainer

The tube screamer does edge out that sound that i want but the model i tested with seems to decrease the upper and middle tone that i dont want.  I want the eq to remain as set without losing the quality of that eq.

The BOSS SD-1 has a nice crunch to it at lower settings that may drive the amp overdrive the way i want it too but then again i dont want it to distort the signal and take away any tone from the guitar.

The Compressor will help round out that edge i think but based on some tests using a Line6 compressor this may not help as much as i think except that a hardware compressor such as the CS3 would help out.

I really like the natural sound of the amp drives as i can use it to get that rock sound or even drop it back for the blues sound but when it comes to hamming it up for shred leads, its good too except when playing chunky rhythms is where that muddyness comes in.

Decisions Decisions Decisions

Ive had this dilema before and every guitarist goes through this dilema trying to come up with a setup that is what they want.  After playing for Acca/Dacca Bon Scott tribute show for 2 odd years, i certainly know the Marshalls capabilities and what i want out of it and currently i am just not 100% happy with the sound i have.

Each guitarist has their own views of the perfect tone for them and will always be trying to improve and tweak their sound.  Once again im on that hunt for my perfect tone and what i want out of the sound.  I am most of the way there but change is in the wind for more clarity and definition of sound.