Tone Tuesday

Picture this: you’re DEEP into a video guitar lesson, sitting down with favorite guitar. You reach over to your computer with your picking hand to pause the video, and you try to grab your coffee with your left hand. Next thing you know, your guitar slips off of your lap and the headstock smacks you in the jaw. The coffee flies out of your hand and spills onto your laptop keyboard. You see sparks, and then your computer screen goes dark. Now you’ve got a crack in your guitar’s finish, a sore jaw, and a dead computer. All because you were too cheap to buy a “Guitar Slip No More”. SMH…. you gotta do better.

Links

Guitar Slip No More

Safe Way Rubberized Tape

People keep asking about this Telecaster every time I use it, so here’s the down low on what it is and why it sounds the way it does.

I’m a Fender Strat player at heart. That’s the sound I know and love. But sometimes I like to step outside my comfort zone and play other things. I recently bought an Epiphone Firebird VII to use in a Johnny Winter soloing course. For several weeks I’ve been playing this guitar a lot, and now I’ve got some thoughts about where it fits in my collection.

If you want to record a stereo effects pedal IN STEREO, you should have two identical amps, each mic’d with an identical microphone, then recorded onto a stereo track. OR…. just run two guitar cables into your interface and let Amplitube 5 do the rest. In this video I’ll show you how to configure Amplitube 5 to record a stereo signal from your pedal and show you which settings you have to change to actually make it sound right.

You can hear the “sound” of high volume guitar amps on live recordings, but I’ve always wondered how volume REALLY affects your tone if you keep everything else constant. I figured out a way to do this using my Fender Tone Master Super Reverb, and the results are more subtle than I expected. In this video I’ll give you A/B comparisons and explain why I think the results are different.

If you’ve ever had a fuzz pedal that absolutely had to be first in the signal chain or it sounded awful, this video is for you. Certain fuzz designs only work if there’s no low-impedance circuit (like a buffer or engaged overdrive pedal) in front of it. So they only work if they’re the first pedal in your chain, OR if every pedal before it is true-bypass AND disengaged. In this video I’ll show you how an inexpensive pickup simulator pedal can remedy this problem, allowing you to use your fuzz anywhere you’d like.

Buying a strat that works well for Texas Blues can be tricky because most strats are not built for this style of playing. In this video I’ll talk you through the which options have worked well for me over the years.

Links From This Video

Fender Neck Profiles

Warmoth Neck Profiles

Fender Fret Sizes

Warmoth Fret Sized

Warmoth Body Woods

Warmoth Body Wood Comparison

Fender Pickup Comparisons

While visiting Austin in April, I stopped by the Sommatone workshop to chat with Jimmy Somma. I first tried a Sommatone amp about 10 years ago at an amp show, but this was my first time getting to hear them in isolation. We talked for a while, and thankfully I remembered to turn on my phone to record some of the conversation because he’s a really smart guy and great player too. If you’re an amp nerd like me, I think you’ll find our conversation fascinating.

The Texas Storm 1x15 combo from Homestead Amps is a beast of an amp. This is not a practice or hobby amp, it is a serious, professional grade tool that begs to be played on a stage. That’s not to say you can’t use it in the studio, but be prepared for a challenge. I have never had such a hard time capturing the accurate “feel” of an amp. The lows are full, but tight. The mids are thick and brawny. And the high end is bright and sharp, but never brittle or papery. Trying to capture all those things was not easy, but after some trial and error, I stumbled onto a combination of mic positions that felt right.

This amp was incredibly rewarding to play. Cranking it felt… really, really good. Knowing that I would only have it for a few weeks, I played it as often as possible. A few times I found myself lying awake at night thinking about the amp, seriously considering sneaking back down the studio one more time.

More info at HomesteadAmps.com

A few weeks ago I met Peter McMahon, the owner of Homestead Amps. He was a long time friend of Cesar Diaz (SRV’s famed amp tech). During their years working together, Peter helped him build and repair amps for people, learning his approach to amp building and modification. Cesar passed away in 2002, and Peter continued running Diaz Amplification until a few years ago when he decided to launch his own line of amps.

Peter asked if I was interested in trying out “a few of his amps”, and of course I said yes (given that Cesar was SRV’s amp tech). Much to my surprise, “a few” meant the entire lineup of amps. So for a few weeks I had a glorious wall of extremely high-end professional amps to play around with.

Of course nothing lasts forever, and after a few weeks I had to send the amps back. But I recorded two demos before I did. This first one is a quick run through the entire lineup of amps.

The amps shown in this video are:

HS50 (50w, 2x10)

Texas Storm (50w, 1x15)

BF25 (25w, 1x12)

HS100 (100w) into 212 Cab