Guitarist Thread!

Ok!

 

Let start the music presentation, i'm an addict of Paul Gilbert and Racer X.

 

Here is my new guitar, an hand made one, specs are the following:

 

Dimarzio pickups (Tone Zone & Air Norton)

 

Maple wood for the neck

 

Ash wood for the body

 

Gotoh mecs

 

And Schaller 3D bridge

 

Few pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful guitar! I'm a big Racer X fan too.

 

I've been after something a little more metal directed recently, got the Les Paul for the classic rock and blues, the Strat for the Texas rock, just need to get something to fulfil my metal habits!

 

I'm in love with Caparison guitars, but getting one in budget and in the UK is not easy!

Beauty...

 

I'm no guitar player.. too many strings.

 

I totally love my Fender JazzBass Mex. with US pick-ups. 4 strings is more than enough for me ;o)

Love the JB's, such a bright sound, lovely!

I went from 7 (including a couple of custom made guitars) to two electrics:

 

The main one: Schecter Jeff Loomis Signature 7 String. Love this guitar, nothing but tone for days and great action to boot.

 

 

 

The secondary:

 

Jackson DK2M. Mine has the neck pup disabled and an EMG-81 at the bridge.

 

Nice guitars! I have a Jackson SLSMG and I just ordered a Broderick signature. Waiting impatiently!

 

This is what I want if I can ever get the money for another guitar again. ESP F-350

 

Total that Schecter is beautiful! I'm not a fan of EMG's but damn that looks nice!

How do you guitarists go about processing your favourite sounds?

Metal/Hard Rock:

 

EMG81 -> Zoom PD-01 (No Distortion, Clean Boost only) -> JCM 900 50W - G-Major Effects and Danelectro EQ in amp loop. Marshall 1960 cab.

 

A midi loop switcher to switch off/on the PD-01 and a Danelectro flanger before the preamp. The midi loop switcher and my G-Major are controlled by a FCB1010 midi pedal. I also have a Dunlop switchless wah.

 

I like 50W better than 100W tube amps cause for the same volume the power tubes will break up earlier.

 

I use a EMG85 in the neck position for clean sounds. That and the Dimarzio pickups in the Jackson I ordered that I am waiting on.

How do you guitarists go about processing your favourite sounds?

 

Historically, my live sound was always via an Ampeg VH-140C head with a Rocktron ProQ and a Rocktron Intellifex in the effects loop running through a Genz Benz sealed 4X12.

 

Recording-wise, I would record three signals and leave the channel EQ on the board turned off:

 

1) Raw, dry pre-amp feed from the Ampeg head

2) Shure SM-57 cone mic

3) AKG 414, or equivalent condensor type, ambient mic

 

During mix-down, I would run the pre-amp feed through the ReValver plugin to model a really nice, solid replication of my tone and then blend in the mic feeds. Made for a really rich representation of my tone without going overboard on the bass or the mid's.

 

My tone was initially inspired by the cutting edge fullness of Criss Oliva of Savatage on

& Edge Of Thorns and the richness that Zakk Wyled had on the No Rest for The Wicked release. I was also inspired by Jeff Loomis of Nevermore and was blown away by his tone on . I couldn't help but fall in love with Nightwish's Emppu Vuorinen's tone, especially on the track Ghost Love Score from the album Once. His tone remains the same live or studio and that's danged hard to achieve. Of course, Brian May of Queen was the pinnacle of making a unique tone and identity and I think he hit the peak of tone with the song .

 

It took a long time and going through ALOT of guitar and equipment configurations to finally dial it in. I also had to learn that much of a guitarist's tone comes from how they actually fret and strike each and every note and chord. The pressure on the strings, the firmness of the pick strike, etc I played through Criss Oliva's rig on one of his guitars and could not, for the life of me, get it to sound like he could. That was my first lesson in making the tone unique to the player.

 

Nowadays, after some back injuries and just generally getting older, I no longer carry the half stack. I have modeled my tone using a Line 6 XT. I always run direct now. Monitors give me my stage reference. Not having a cabinet and cables everywhere also frees up alot of room. I also have a single 12" combo amp to use as a reference if needed.

 

http://www.myspace.com/lychesis

 

Play Break. I'm the right channel. The lead on this song was the other guitarist. He's a technical shred wizard. This was an early mix of the song. Not too thrilled about posting the horribly compressed and crappy bitrate sound of myspace, but it's all we have uploaded at the moment. The overall tone of the mix is a little too thick and muddy from what the final will sound like. We're still waiting on the final mastering of the songs. The mastering studio got hit by the ONLY bolt of lightinging from a small, independent cloud and the primary AND backup drives of the Work In Progress got obliterated. So, everything went back to square one on the mastering process.

 

Ignore "The Call". Great song, horrible mix. This was a complete test mix and, in reality, should not even be on the internet cuz it's such a horrid representation in terms of balance and how it sounds lol! We haven't touched our myspace page in forever and don't plan on doing anything on the net until the masters are completed. Last time we did, lightning struck and all the hype we were generating was for nothing :D

Edited November 3, 2011 by Total

Total, did you open for Savatage?! How did you get the chance to use Chris' stuff?

I knew 'em back when they were just struggling to get noticed in the US from seeing them a good many times in the circuit. I wasn't in a band at the time, but Savatage (even back then) had a thing about always being available to the fans. Even to this day, now that they've become the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, there's a meet n greet after every TSP show :)

 

Anyway, it was just me hanging out with Criss at a bar before one of their shows. He was showing me how he pulled off those really painfully high pinch harmonics and how he got his tone. His tone was REALLY interesting on those Randalls :D

For me it's dependant. I have a home studio so I'm quite into my recording gear, but I also like to keep my signal path simple. Typically I'll just stick an SM-57 in front of my Orange 2X12, which is powered by a Dual Terror.

 

That will pretty much cover most sounds for me, but when I'm going clean I'll use my JJ Audio USA modded MXL V67G. That thing really opens up the bottom end when I'm using the Fender for the brighter stuff, lovely sound!

 

I don't really like effects units, I'll use a clean boost to break up the Fender a little bit, but it's got DiMarzio rails so it holds its own on the output levels!

Ranger 12 string jumbo that is about 30 ish years old. Fender strat and a gibson (Les paul) also a classical type jobbie that was a custom made in Valencia (Spain) all in a loft in the UK till I return to Spain and have them shipped over. I have two old valve amps one being a marshall and the other I can't remember and I also have a Laney CX (the Laney is the nicest out of the lot).

Don't know much about my kit I just play it ;)

 

(Forgot my little kick around Gibson ugly as sin but less of a worry to travel around with)

Edited November 4, 2011 by Fleshpiston

Awesome story Total. Thanks for sharing. He must have been a really nice guy. Yeah, Gutter Ballet tone is great. That album is a classic.

My current guitar Ibanez GRG-270DX

 

 

But Saving up for one of these.

 

If I don't get a mo monies :P

 

Ibanez 2011 RG350MZ Electric Guitar Maple Neck, Edge Zero II

 

 

And If get mo monies

 

Jackson DKMG Dinky Electric Guitar

 

JACKSON DKMG

 

I simply consume enough beers to make it sound better.

 

I didn’t plan for my guitars to be all red and my car is red as well, so what the heck is going on I ask my self.

The middle guitar is in B tuning. a bit like viola (Go for 7 string guitar if you are looking to buy one)

 

 

Do you get excited about free vst amps?

No?

 

That was the clean channel?

 

Photo is of my 2007 Ibanez RG2570VSL, it's already looking a bit battered as i've played through the top layer of the finish below the singlecoil. After the volume pot failed, i replaced it with a push pull version and rewired it so i can split the humbuckers. I'm not too fond of the bridge one split, but the neck pickup sounds quite nice.

 

I've also got a 2004 Gibson LP Classic in tobacco burst which is my main live guitar, but it's in the rehearsal room, maybe i'll take a picture when i next get there.

 

 

As far as gear goes, i keep it very simple, just a Dunlop Cry-Baby into a Boss CH-1 chorus and a Boss DD6 delay. From that it's straight into my Marshall TSL602.

Edited November 7, 2011 by sobek

I'm a violinist. I don't know really what type mine is, just that it's not a stradivarius ;) , and that it has a really rich, beautiful tone quality on the lower strings ( D and G ).

Jeez... no violinists here I guess...

Gibson sg special limited edition here , played through my digitech gnx4

 

write produce my own tracks.

Edited July 29, 2013 by diveplane

Jeez... no violinists here I guess...

 

I guess not, but I learned violin and cello at some point and practiced hard for a year from which I had a lot of joy.

I play in cover bands now so i haven't been working on originals as much, also since i'm a huge slash fan i cover a lot of his music on youtube

 

Necro time:

 

I recently bought a carvin amp (a V3M) from a fellow student, but since i had no cabinet for it, i went ahead and built an open cabinet myself and loaded it with a V30. My bandmate and fellow audio engineer helped me do all the calculations and he also came up with the idea of adding an acoustic lens to it to ease up on the sharp focus that guitar cabinets usually have from hi mids upwards. Our main goal was to keep it as light as possible while trying to retain the acoustic qualities of my old 2x12 combo. It's not (yet) a looker, since i want to really put it to the test before i commit more time to things like painting, adding guards to the corners etc. but so far i am quite satisfied with it.

 

Here's a little foto story of the building process:

Edited July 29, 2013 by sobek