We all strive for it – how do we get there?
Here are five simple tips to get right:
#1 It all starts in the hands!
Watch, listen and emulate your inspirational guitarists picking techniques and pick thicknesses, watch how they bend the strings and move the guitar. Where do they pick, near the bridge? Near the neck? Practice, emulate, listen, implement.
#2 Strings!
Gauges of strings will greatly affect the way the guitar is played, the way the notes ring and the timbre of the notes. Thinner strings generally are easier to bend and play and give the aural perception of a thinner, mid-cut type tone. Thicker strings boast more mid-low end and generally play harder and bend less easily. I find thicker strings also hold tuning much better.
If you down tune your guitar, generally go up a gauge for every tone dropped, so if you play 10’s in E standard and drop to open D go up to 11’s.
#3 The right guitar and pickup!
Pretty obvious but is the guitar you’re playing actually getting the tone you desire? No Strat single-coil with a maple neck and Alder body will ever sound like a Les Paul with its mahogany construction, maple top, rosewood board and humbucking pickups. Think about the construction of the guitar, is it neck-thru like the player’s you look up to, or is it bolt-on? Both have their own tonality and sustain.
Pickups can be a great way to upgrade your tone without spending a huge amount. Seymour Duncan and EMG pickups are pretty much the standard in the industry. Try a few and do some research into your favourite players.
#4 The right amp!
Are you trying to get an awesome tone out of that beat-up Pignose? Guess again. A very important point to consider is that amplifiers and cabinets are designed and built in a myriad of ways and all have unique characteristics.
• Am I looking for a great CLEAN tone or a DISTORTION?
• Am I really looking for a great clean tone or is there grit to it?
• Is the distortion really as ‘distorted’ as I think it is?
• Valve or Solid-State?
You can get hold of an amp that has a great clean tone and distort it with a pedal in front of the chain, that’s a great way for those of you who are looking for various tones (cover band/function guitarist) but what is YOUR tone?
Bass, Mid, Presence, Treble, Gain – don’t be afraid to use more mids and less gain, yes, even you Dime lovers can benefit from less gain and more mids, why? Clarity of notes. It’s very easy to swamp your sound in distortion and play sloppy chords, let’s hear your shredz bro!
The master volume on a valve amp is the most underutilised tone control. More volume pushing the transformers on an old Marshall will thicken out the low mids and give you that punchy Angus Young type tonality, turn it down and it will fizz worse than a shaken Coke.
#5 Reference material
How often do you come to your amp and go, “what was I thinking?” and completely re-EQ everything!?
What I’m saying here is that we need to have some kind of reference point to understand where we sit. Hence, reference material. Play your favourite artists on a good high-quality speaker system and then spend time trying to match the sound. It’ll take a while but you’ll get there!
Author: Robert Huskinson
