Hello! I’m a huge Eric Johnson fan and love his tone, especially on High Landrons. Does anybody have a flanger setting that can approximate it? I have an H9 that various flanger presets for that algorithm. I’m just not good at programming the sounds. Thanks for any advice.
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I can’t help you myself, but I suspect James Santiago might. He is an EJ expert and knows a lot about his gear. He might be able to point you in the right direction with regards to regen, mix etc.
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Thanks Aliendough! I’ll check with James for some advice. I have seen that video, but not sure which algorithm on the H9 is closest to the old MXR Flanger/Doubler. The control panel the H9 is a bit different.
For me, the guy in the video above has more grit in his tone than EJ, but like I say, it’s maybe just me.
If you can, try setting up with two complimentary amps* (something Marshally, something Fenderey), pretty much set for as much clean headroom as you can stand/as you can fit in your space and very little preamp gain (if it’s a separate control). Just enough to let the amp show its character but a fair bit short of starting to break up.
Then play about with stacking boost/OD/fuzz into this, keep the output levels down on your pedals because you’re working with masses of headroom, aim for unity or just above, let each pedal just contribute a tiny bit of drive (for example, on my boss SD1 I can hear fairly distinct “stages” on the drive knob, I don’t go past the first one, a TS is a bit less steppy but I just try to hear a point at which it does something to the tone, but not too much).
Think of the aim as something like maximum harmonic complexity from minimum gain/drive.
I know this doesn’t address any points about flangers but I’m only typing this all out because I think once you’ve had a go at setting up this way, you can put all sorts of modulation/delay/etc in and it will sound great, and you get that really luminous sort of thick/saturated-but-clean tone. It’s a lot more fiddly than just “I cranked my amp and it sounded awesome”, and a fair bit more fiddly than “amp just breaking up, compressing enough that pedals hitting the front are controlled by the amp”, but it’s a sound worth exploring.
*or three, why not go crazy?
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Also, what IS a High Landron?
Thanks Prlgmnr! I wish I could set up my amps like that.Unfortunately at my apartment I need to keep things pretty much at bedroom volume. The confusing part about the flanger is I have read to use a through-zero flanger to approximate it. However I don’t believe the MXR is that type. In the end, I’m probably chasing something that isn’t too attainable. I’ll keep at it though.
You might have some luck googling user settings for the H9 online.
I know that a Strymon has a forum where users can share settings for various sounds we try to emulate.
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