I think I've been relying on using too much gain - how to break out of this rut?

Playing Technique
#15

Thank you for the kind words :slight_smile: I think I know the video you mean - I’ll post it below and break down the interplay of techniques and tone used, I think it illustrates my points well :slight_smile:

As you can see / hear this is a fairly harsh crunchy tone with pretty low sustain. It works well for this piece because I’m using a picking technique entirely based on USX (upstroke escape), and because I am picking almost everything.

Since the picking motion here is “simple” i.e. always along the same linear trajectory (USX), I can dig in quite a lot without fear of making (major) mistakes. I’m pretty sure all the downstrokes are resting on the higher string as well. I think the aggressive pick attack compensates for the low-ish sustain of the tone.

If I tried to play some Satriani-esque legato lines with this tone I suspect it would be absolutely painful to do / listen to. Notes would die too soon and I’d just end up doing a death grip with my left hand in a vain attempt to get more volume with hammer-ons and pull-offs. It’s basically not the right tool for the job.

And good luck making the 3rd-4th finger hammer-on loud enough without some compression :wink:

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#16

Yes, sorry, I should have posted the video in question - I was really tired when I wrote that message!!

You mentioned aggressive pick attack - your picking doesn’t sound aggressive to me in that clip. It sounds smooth and even, even though you’re using low gain. That’s the sound I like!

I bet if you added in a little compression you could play legato no problems.

EDIT: Check how clean and articulate this guy’s technique is - I’m envious of how well he can play with a clean tone:

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#17

…though, the compressor kind of gets in the way, I’d think. There’s nothing more uncompressed than an unplugged electric, or an acoustic - it’s just the string. A super clean amp adds a little bit of compression via the preamp and speaker, though not very much at all. A compressor though, smooths out the dynamics, which is the LAST thing you want to do, if you’re trying to force your fretting hand dynamics to stay smooth. Not trying to be argumentative, sorry! I just must not have explained myself very clearly.

#18

I don’t entirely agree. Specifically this part:

What a compressor does is modify the dynamic response of the instrument. A full-featured compressor can do this in many different ways, and compression is used for many (sometimes opposite) musical purposes. Used intelligently, a compressor can enhance dynamics rather than smooth them out. Most guitarists don’t want full control over every variable, and that’s expensive anyway, so most guitar-specific compressors are not full-featured, and are often kind of hardened into a single preset with a small range of variation, and only one or two knobs that sometimes vary multiple parameters at once. This is why different compressor pedals are usually associated with a single tone flavor, and guitarists often get the idea that compression has one specific sound.

But if you choose the right compressor for the purpose, or dial in a flexible one competently, you can arrange it so that all of the musical dynamics fall into just the right signal voltage space so that small differences in your attack are made distinct (musically, not volume-wise) and makes the instrument more responsive. This effect can be used to great musical effect, and can also be used as a training tool for consistency of attack, which is what I thought you were getting at with the comment that I quoted.

For what it’s worth, I find a great difference in the inherent compression of acoustic guitars vs unplugged electrics. A highly compressed funk rhythm guitar sound is often a very good imitation of an unplugged electric. That sound is often pretty difficult to achieve on many acoustic guitars.

Ditto

Edit: An envelope filter (aka ‘autowah’) could be used in a similar way if the wah effect isn’t too distracting.

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#19

If you set the Attack slow, the front edge of the sound will hit before the compressor squashes anything. That was the first thing that I thought when I read that. If I had a nickel for every time a client said something like, “steer clear of the compressor, I don’t want this sounding squashed…” You do have to pay some dues to really get a feel for this side of things, though. We used to hit those original 160’s so hard that, if you took the master fader down, you’d hear the needles of the VU meter popping to the beat. But if you mult the snare to that (with 5-10 ms attack) and bring it back on a parallel channel on the Trident 80B, it gives you a fader that you can keep pretty low but bring into the mix pretty much as “snare attack.”

This too – when the string makes the soundboard move, there is a practical limit to how quickly and how far the string can make the soundboard move, vs. a freely moving electric string within a magnetic field. Compression, or maybe “dynamic limitation,” occurs in “acoustic” nature. Distance (vs. close miking) can also blur the edge of the attack. Sound is literally a “moving target.”

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#20

You know, @gotmixes comment ctually helped me see (I think!) what you were saying here, and if what you’re saying is something akin to what he mentioned when you’re using a compressor to bypass the initial attack but clamp down on the sustain to accentuate the attack, as dynamic shaping more than dynamic compression…

…then yeah, ok, I’m 100% with you, and that makes sense to me now. :rofl:

This is also kind of what I was getting at earlier with touch sensitive distortion - if you can find a sweet spot where within a narrow, even dynamic range you get a full, clear, open tone with maybe a hair of breakup to it, below that the signan gets really weak, and above that it gets REALLY broken up… That’s a good way of getting really audible feedback whenever your fretting hand isn’t as even as it should be.

I THINK we both understand with, and agree with each other, and I was just being a bit obtuse there, lol.

#21

Yeah, @gotmixes said it better than me.

To do this well, the player would also want to fine tune the threshold, ratio, and release parameters to fit their specific goals, technique, guitar output, etc. This is fairly easy to do by ear for a player knows what they’re aiming for and has pretty intimate familiarity with compressors, but giving a recipe for it in a forum with readers of a wide-range of expertise would take a lot of words, and would probably come across as condescending to at least some readers.

So I was trying to avoid overexplaining the fine details and ended up being too abstruse instead. I always find it hard to get that balance right, which is one of the reasons I just lurk most of the time.

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#22

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” for sure.

Add to that the fact that a distorted amp tone is basically a square wave generator – the distortion is compressing the dynamics a lot already.

So what you hear as “dynamics” may really be more frequency-dependent – transients aren’t really dynamic peaks and valleys so much as blasts of pick noise or 1.5-4k or something. EQ (cut or boost) can bring it into focus, but it’s not likely to “fix” it if you’re not at least somewhat into the tone already, and by the time you get to micromanaging something like a multiband compressor or something, you’re probably out of the zone anyway.

Tape compression is pretty great for this, though. PM me if I shouldn’t be going this deep into explanations. But here goes:

Tape can’t actually handle the full (20-20k) spectrum at a decent level. The workaround for it is an EQ curve for recording which is reversed on playback – there is a standard for this for vinyl: RIAA EQ (record player) – so this way, when you press a record or put something down on tape, the ACTUAL signal is REALLY thin. This is why if you’re just hearing the turntable stylus vibrate acoustically, you’re hearing a lot of 1.5k and up – the lows are at a REALLY low level. The playback EQ brings them back, though, and if the reverse EQ is right, the output should equal the input. If you actually recorded a record or tape flat, full spectrum, without this little trick, the noise floor would come up so high that it’d be pretty much useless, as far as “sonic fidelity” or whatever.

Keep that in mind. So we’re recording to tape something similar to that tinny stylus-in-the-room sound – only on playback with reverse EQ’s does it get really full-spectrum again. But if you slam the meters on that Studer A800 Mk II so that the red lights are begging for mercy as you’re magnetizing those little particles on the Ampex 456 2" reel running at 15 ips (to get those chunky lows, of course!), guess what kind of signal is hitting (and getting modified by) that wonderful soft wall of tape saturation? That tinny sound from the record player with the volume off on your stereo, THAT’S pretty much what you’re telling those little ferric oxide particles to align to. And if a few of them say, “too much level – screw this, I’m going home” (pretty much the same thing your 6L6’s say when you’re tone-chasing “Fight Fire With Fire”), they’re doing that when the 1-4k range is peaking. Guess what range humans are BY FAR the most sensitive to? Guess what range is the most CRITICAL for mixing, since that’s where intelligibility (of vocals or anything else) sits? Guess what range can be the MOST IRRITATING if the peaks are too harsh?

What were we talking about again? :sweat_smile:

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#23

Not sure how relevant this is but I’ve been able to drop gain levels successfully this last month.

My ears are getting better at finding that sweet spot, mostly a balance between avoiding harshness while retaining adequate sustain for playability. The sustain required directly depends on the kind of style your going for at the time.

This is much easier on a real amp where the amp is the source of the drive for the most part. With soft amps, it depends on your experience with real amps to dail it in realistically. Often as in my case too earlier on, folks using amp sims are not accoustumed to the real world counter parts and lack a real frame of reference, so the frustration of guessing never goes way. The issue is mostly difficulty managing the compression and attack, while trying to avoid the feeling you may be using too much of driving aid.

I haven’t read the entire thread so I’m not sure how relevant my comments are.

#24

@twangsta If this is that pedal that replicates the sound of the wireless unit (hazy memory about his setup), I’ve been mad intrigued about it. Mostly I like to read about pedals that replicate the tonal impact that “non-drive” gear imparts (like this unit or the saturation that echoplex’s impart).

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#25

It’s exactly that, the Shaffer Wireless thing in pedal form, it’s got a compander, boost and the limiter. The compander part has some eq mojo going on, the limiter manages the feel, and the boost part I hear is 25 or 31 dB. I hear they are very interactive too, I’ve spoken to folks who have it, and they are addicted, it’s an always-on thing.

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#26

Holy Batman, a dear well-wisher just sent me one, I’ve had it an hour!

It’s like somebody removed the blanket off my amp!

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#27

Its got a top-boost kinda sound to it. Bit of sizzle to the Marshall bark - very nice. Its £200 here in the uk - I’m debating whether its worth that (I wonder whether you could coax this sort of boost with an eq pedal or a cheaper EP pre pedal) what do you think?

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#28

It could take 3 to 4 pedals, even then there’s nothing that leaves the mids alone as this does. The results will not be the same, I’ve tried to do it using a boost, compressor and eq, there is something else going on with that gain knob that’s hard to put a finger on, afaik it’s a “compander”, something to do with compressing and then expanding the signal. Tricky business. Just get it, you will end up selling other stuff, this is one of those on all the time pedals. Can recommend this for any marshall amp user without any hesitation.

#29

I’m curious that they say the 200 quid pedal is almost the same circuitry as the 1200 quid tower thingy - wonder where the extra grand comes from?

#30

Some day I’m going to find out :grinning:
If the pedal is this good… lord have mercy!

#31

My wife just declared that the tower version looks cooler because of the VU meter, can’t argue with that.

#32

Haha, good woman, wise!
If you have the scratch, get the tower, no brainer.

#33

If I was going to spend that much on some kind of large effects unit I think the first thing to go for would be a refurbished Roland Space Echo.

Anyway, I’m still paying off the last round of gear purchases so I’m getting absolutely nothing for about 6 months.

#34

Legendary stuff, you have great taste Sir, in gear and women :slightly_smiling_face: