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Anyone have semi detailed examples of how shape a guitar tone?
I'm NOT asking how to get a specific tone or brand equipment, but rather what do all the moving parts of the signal to sound chain of pre-amps, eq, gain, bias, tube, amp, cabinets... DO.
How does each part shape a tone when it seems every stage has an eq?
What does Bias DO?
Which alterations will change the tone the most?
Regards, and thanks in advance.
Comments
I know guitar folk who ask me this all the time. Would love to point them to a guide.
Look up @Blue_Mangoo's many recent posts about shaping guitar tone.
He's just about to build an app for that, and the discussion is certainly a good read.
I really like his approach of using audio signal processing knowledge to achieve his goal but judging by ear instead of logic about what set-ups sounds best.
@rs2000 I've read that thread, a couple of times. @Blue_Mangoo s videos are great and very instructive.
I've got Bias Amp (Bias FX Tonestack). While I can see all the bits involved in the presets for Bias Amp and can hear the resultant coloring I have no idea which bits actually shape the sound to the greatest effect.
The MOST success (although crude) I've ever had is using Flection and Shaper with a little EQ and some rando effects.
It just like sculpture you either add or delete audio spectra.
Apps try to follow the history of hardware with amps of various decades into speakers and the. Stamps to boost or add fix.
It’s also like cooking with various cuisines. Lots of recipes and ingredients.
The amp sim app generally seek to model the real hardware. The fix can copy stomps. The IR reverbs van model real cabinets.
But a guitar into these app gets distortion, EQ’ed and effected.
I think you get great sound in AUM with the best FX and more control.
There are FX in AUM and you would be surprised what it can do with some twiddling and no extra products excepting reverb IMHO.
@richardyot suggests a specific stomp amp sim pedal line and he’s rarely wrong. $40 and it’s like a Fender.
Perhaps being more specific would help:
What would be the basics to start at.
Electric, Acoustic, electric acoustic...
Scooped Mids? Add Overdrive? Tube 'warmth'? Reverb basics?
Works best in mid range frets, low...
For a blues or jazz tone ________
For a prog rock tone ________
For a heavy metal grunge tone ________
For a shoegazing tone ________
I'm not looking for a specific tone just some basics
For instance, I had not to much of an idea, that a stereo widener was key to mid 80's YES guitar sound on "Owner of a Lonely Heart"
Thanks for everyone's effort and comments so far.
For those who are interested here's a thread featuring @Blue_Mangoo previously mentioned.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/33269/blue-mangoo-compressor/p1
Such a huge subject. And you haven’t even mentioned all the other things that are critical to a guitar’s tone: fingers, strings, pickups, wood used for the body, shape of body, wood used for fingerboard, colour, cable capacitance, treble bleed resistor, pot resistance, paper-in-oil capacitors...
I don’t know if any of the musings below are of use to you but here goes (talking about valve amps here).
A key thing to understand is that the guitar circuit in a passive guitar (i.e. nearly all of them) includes the cable and the input impedance of the amp. A low impedance cable and a higher input impedance will give you a brighter sound - which may not be what you want, of course.
Once the amp has the signal, the preamp brings it up to a level where you can, for example, use tone controls less basic than in the guitar itself and will often give it a character that is distinctive of the amp type. So Fender amps are typically scooped (reduced mids). Crucially, the preamp is often used to distort the signal somewhat - essentially by being underpowered for the signal level it’s getting so it saturates and clips. Some amps get great distortion from a single ended design (Fender Tweed), others use several gain stages to keep pushing up the levels presented to the next stage (Mesa Boogie and many others).
At some point the signal goes to the power amp stage where it gets loud enough to use on stage. This stage can add further changes to the tone - again by causing saturation-related distortion. The choice of valves in the power amp stage will also affect the quality of the distortion (EL34, 6L6, etc).
The signal is then fed to the speakers via an output transformer and this will also affect the sound.
The speakers and the cabinet they are in is another whole world of variety. Some speakers (or baffles around them) can spin as well...
So distortion of the signal can happen in a number of places: the preamp could be clean but push the power amps to distort, the preamps can distort on their own, or both could distort. Or neither: Hiwatt DR103s are famous for having so much headroom they don’t really distort at all - crystal clean sounds you can go deaf too at leisure (I have one).
A twist to note is that Vox AC30s have a distinctive sound because they don’t use negative feedback to damp the peaks of the signal - allegedly to make them cheaper to make - and this lack of feature creates its distinctive break-up sound. AC30/AC15s don’t sound like any other kind of amp.
Cutting to something you asked:
a jazz tone is typically very un-trebly, not much obvious distortion but often a level of saturation. This usually means using the neck pickup and maybe turning the treble down a bit.
not sure what a prog rock guitar tone is. Are you thinking Steve Howe, Steve Hackett or Steve Hillage? Or Opeth..?
heavy metal covers a multitude of sins. If you mean modern metal then it’s lots of gain stages in amps - sometimes with a pedal to push it even harder. The great thing about this sound is that the guitar or pickups you use are totally undiscernable so you don’t need to buy anything expensive.
shoegaze. If you mean Ride then it’s very much pedals. Boss DS-1 mostly plus lots of reverb. Andy Bell started out with a Hiwatt DR103 (I know because I leant him mine once) so his amp added nothing to the sound. This style is far more about the time-related effects (delays and reverbs) and any tone subtleties of the distortion get lost in the wash. Wah-wah is also a key part of the Ride sound.
Not sure if I’m really addressing what you’re looking for, though.
There are plenty of youtube videos about getting a specific guitar tone, I bet you'd be better off watching these. There are so many different philosophies about guitar tone, it's worth to watch quite a few and listen.
BTW, the best stereo widener is to play and record your guitar riff twice and hard-pan the tracks to the left and right channels, respectively.
@qryss Thank you all points of data are needed.
So pickup ( I hear you on how important this is but let's skip for now ) —> cable —> preamp (to usable level for tone shaping) —> amp (for levels usable for stage) —> cabinets (add their own particulars of acoustic shaping of sound some with effects)
Your descriptions are very helpful. Looking at the preamp/amp modelling in Bias what is the EQ flow in getting a tone? There is a pre-eq —> low cut / hi cut frequency (assuming it's like another eq) —> then Bias (which I'm sure I can google) —> post-eq
And that's just on the Pre-amp then a parametric EQ, Tonestack, Power Amp & Transformer (Im assuming are components in the AMP circuitry. Then out of the Cab to another EQ.
At which stage am I supposed to be deciding what frequencies to cut/enhance?
– Opeth or Dream Theater
I suppose I will
I don’t use Bias (I’m an S-Gear person so I don’t use the iPad for guitar at all) so I’m not sure of their topology.
I can explain bias (I hope):
A valve at its simplest has two electrodes - the cathode and the plate. A heater heats the cathode which frees up electrons. In between them is a grid which is held at a certain voltage to control the flow of electrons between the negative cathode and the positive plate (a flow of electrons is also called current).
The signal is applied to the grid. A small change in the voltage between grid and the cathode will result in a large change in the voltage between the cathode and the plate. The signal is amplified!
If a difference between grid and cathode would result in a certain change between plate and cathode but that can’t happen because there is not enough current available then the valve is saturated and the sound will be distorted. The input to output ratio is no longer linear.
The bias is the DC voltage applied to the grid - and it can be varied to optimise the performance of the amp (in particular by changing the point where saturation occurs).
Hope that helps!
I found this video from one of the masters of guitar tone pretty helpful...
So I think the variables are incredibly vast should probably be explored based on a need to know basis, based on what genres you play and compose in and the tones you already enjoy. I’m pretty sure the electric bass guitar, The electric guitar and the synthesizer keyboard are mankinds newest popular instruments/inventions, and shaping their tone Has been an ongoing evolution since the 1920’s . If you were rocker in the 60s and 70s the amps and the pick up , did a lot less of the distorting than the speakers and the amount of gain did, resulting in more of a fuzzy distortion.
And I always thought it interesting, that’ the guitar is one of the few instruments that can have 1000 different players performing And recording back to back, yet Each player could have a different tone, different techniques and a recognizable style which is much harder to achieve on most other instruments. Ie piano is mostly going to sound like a piano and a trumpet mostly like a trumpet with a lot less variety. I think the amount of variables you’re talking about are astronomical and it’s better to limit yourself to those genres and tones you are interested in. There are several articles online on how to model different aspects of the sound chain, from wood choice and density, to capacitor resistance, wattage, string gauge and microphone placement when recording . It’s all a matter of taste and often the unorthodox can sound great or awful . 20 to 30 years ago I remember seeing a kid named Blues Saraceno. He was giving a clinic at a local music store and was on tour with Ginger Baker . He was mostly a bluesy soloist in the hard rock format using the guitar to play melodies and solos mostly.( on his own recordings ) He ran through a stock marshal JCM head, Curiously he turned his highs all the way down , so there were no highs and no presence And I was surprised at how sweet his soulful tone was especially when playing slow long held out notes. After that I started pulling back treble in my tone , especially for tasty playing ., But I did it by rolling back the treble knob on my guitar. I have this saying .
I don’t need to know how a combustible engine works to get in the car and enjoy the ride. And since were talking about sound here, you can read about amp SAG, tube and amp bias , tonal qualities of different types of wood , but I believe the best thing you can do is experiment yourself to find the most desirable tones for your ears . I can also tell you this : most guitarist that are inexperienced and who play by themselves want the buggest fattest tone they can get to impress the neighbors and any lurking ears as well as their own ears but in a band setting you will have to turn down your strongest frequencies , like bass mid and highs , if you want everyone to be heard equally and not step on your bandmates toes . Also , less distortion is better for clarity , even in metal and rock , in most cases , too much gain robs one of tone and clarity .
Maybe having a search for "gain staging" would be useful as you start to explore this stuff. Each part you mention can make minimal or drastic changes to the sound of the guitar. It's important to understand that it's a cumulative effect and that each stage has an effect on the following stage—they're not static colors. An main amplifier stage will react differently based on what you have going on with the preamp stage. Since it's cumulative, the pre-amp is probably the most important stage, whatever that means.
Great knowledge on display in this thread.
Thank you for sharing.
🤙🏻
Presets are you friend when learning any complex app.
The free ToneBridge App uses this approach. You select a specific famous tune
from a long list and the app installs the settings to give you that tone.
Pretty basic idea.
You can then go in and see what specific devices and settings were used to set up the Rig.
There's reason it's so good and still free. It was an existing app that the Ultimate Guitar Tabs website bought to encourage more musicians to play and seek out the Tablature to the tunes they like and sign up for the Premier Pro service that plays the tab's with visual aids and slow-downer and such.
The ToneBridge app is the most overlooked one in this particular category.
Now, the presets in ToneStack, Amplitube, BiasFX will also instantly show you some
excellent rigs and knobs settings for tones you like in all styles.
Theoretically, all the devices can be simulated with EQ's, IR's and Saturation/Distortion FX
in various orders with Reverb, Compression, Delay, Tremolo, Modulators for specific genre tweaks. AUM lets you build great sounding tones.
That comment about Stereo Wideners is really about the recording studio techniques.
But many guitarists do split their signal into 2 and use stereo choruses for live playing
in small clubs with 2 amps behind them... so stereo FX does seem valid to add to the kit of tools. They also enjoy that wash of sound as they play with 2 Fender Twin Reverbs behind them.
Keep asking questions. There are more answers than questions in this use case.
What makes a good guitar tone? Attention to quality in every component. Starting with picks and finger nail care. String gauges. Cable impedance. Clean power. Room acoustics.
So, many videos on these topics... guitars were quite popular in the last century.
"Survey says" #1 in instrumental sales. You can't own enough of them for all the possible tone styles available.
Also known as: Gain=11 😅
On the shoegazing thing, I found this guy's videos quite interesting (as a non-guitarist):
