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Old 11-17-2009, 11:40 AM   #9 (permalink)
PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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The tone you hear depends on two things. Your guitar and your amp. (<---obviously)

Amp:
Some amps are designed for low gain, mellow blues tones and simply can't be driven hard enough to get a good, thick overdriven/distorted sound. Some amps, on the other hand, (this pertains more to tube amps like the Mesa Rectifier, Marshall JCM2000, Peavey 5150 etc) are wired to put out as much gain as as you could ever need. This also has to do with the tubes in the amp (EL34s and 6L6s are the most popular choices, 6L6 tubes are pretty standard in terms of amps like the 5150 designed specifically for high gain tone).

If you're playing through a solid state amp which, with a question like this I'm assuming you probably are, your tone will be a lot weaker because you wont get the warmth, saturation, headroom, and especially the low end you'd get out of a tube amp, and your tone will sound a lot muddier, especially if you aren't using a distortion pedal (which is designed to emulate tube sounds). Most solid state amps on the market these days come with relatively weak built in distortion circuits, and for an even halfway decent high gain tone, need to have a distortion pedal in front of them. There are some exceptions to this. Any Line6 amp or anything else digital will have a decent high gain tone for an amature guitar player, but will have very little headroom or low end. Fender makes a solid state amp called the "Metalhead" that is designed for high gain tone but you need a 500 watt cab for it just to keep up with tube amps. (A 25 watt tube amp is as loud if not louder than a 100 watt solid state amp.)

Guitar:
Your tone also depends a lot on the components in your guitar. A standard Fender Stratocaster comes loaded with 3 single coil pickups. While these are great for bluesy clean and crunch tones, they will sound very thin when a "metal" amount of gain is applied. A Gibson Les Paul comes with humbuckers (dual coil pickups designed to reduce the electronic "hum" that single coils are notorious for). These will give you a much thicker, fatter, and fuller sound, and when distorted, will sound smoother and warmer. Different pickups are designed for higher output, more high end, more low end, or more mids. The higher the output of your pickup, the more of a driven tone you'll get. (with a solid state amp, that is. Mid to lower output pickups will actually give a fatter tone when played through a high gain amp)

Consider getting a distortion pedal. I used them for years before I bought my tube amp. Some companies (Krank, I believe, is one of them) make distortion pedals that actually have a vaccum tube in the circuitry. That's going to be your best bet in terms of pedals, but check out the ones that others are suggesting too, you may find you like them better.

Hope this helps a little.
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