Congrtaulations! You're almost there! You might want to sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee, hot chocolate, or grab one of your favorite beers for this next part, because I'm going to share with you what has taken me 5 decades of experimentation, blood, sweat and tears, ungodly amounts of money, and an unquenchable thirst for the best possible sound. Being a perfectionist A-hole didn't hurt either, although it annoyed my friends when they wanted to do other things but I wouldn't quit. I could probably charge a fortune for this stuff.
Not to brag, but I am routinely complemented for the sound I get, always questioned as to how I do it. And of course, this is all just my opinion, but I honestly know of only one other guy on the face of the planet (who is even more obsessed than me!) about seeking perfect sound, and he's not a musician, but his sound system has people flying in from all over the world just to experience it. It's like listening to a living, breathing band in front of your face with depth and detail you can't imagine. He thinks I have the best guitar sound he's ever heard live.
We begin:
Although EMG's are absolutely wonderful for canceling noise (which is why they are popular for high-gain Metal) and tuning your sound for a specific tone, with a few exceptions they tend to sound very dry with a digital edge, like using a distortion/overdrive device that produces irritating odd harmonics instead of sweet even harmonics (same difference in using a solid state versus tube amp for amp distortion). BTW, and I'm sure you already know this, but always use EMG's with enough voltage to give them as much headroom as possible so they can breath, at least 18v.
If you really want to hear those strings perform, and get almost liquid, (and for the best possible sound if you go into a studio, or just won't settle for less (like me
), try them on a good ($$$) guitar (detuned to E flat for a slightly thicker sound, which is why Eddie Van Halen, ZZ Top, me, and tons of others do it, easier to play and sing with too) with good single coil or humbucking alnico II, III or V pickups, or better yet, original black Gibson P-90's, my favorite sounding pickup. Something like a high-end Strat, Les Paul, or ES335, and of course on a boutique quality all tube hand-wired amp, including a now hard to find tube rectifier. But actually, without spending the big bucks, the new Fender Bassbreaker can get pretty sweet if you find a good one and dial it in juuuuuuust right. It's one of the few cheap amps that can get that most difficult of tones that walks the line between clean, and just a hint of tube saturated, slightly compressed overdrive without a pedal for a sweet Blues, Jazz, or Southern Rock style tone, where high quality guitar tone lives. Many of the better tone guitarists around here (I'm only an hour away from New Orleans) use original black-face pre-CBS fender tube amps, or their vintage reproductions. Always let tube amps warm up, fully on, for at least an hour. I prefer 10" speakers because 8's and 10's reproduce the human voice the most accurately. 12's have a little too much low-mid emphasis that kills the sweetness and natural qualities of a voice, and we don't want to add unnecessary eq to compensate. Any added eq causes distortion in the tone circuit of an amp, not where we want to get it from. The human voice (and a violin) is the most difficult sound to reproduce accurately, so why not use the same thing for a good guitar sound? 8's don't have the full low end that a guitar can get, unlike a voice, but can sound great in a studio post-eq as evidenced by the first Led Zepplin album and many others. Of course if you can find a 1959 vintage Marshall Super Plexi Lead 50 or 100 watt head with same period 4x12 cabinets and speakers, well, crank it up!. I used to play on a stack of those back in the 70's when my band used to open for acts like Bob Seger, Cactus, MC5, Brownsville Station and others. We never had a hit song which is why you never heard of us. Anyway, back to our story..........
While you are at it, (if you want the best of the best of the best, with honors, (couldn't help a little MIB humour
), get some Neglex-Mogami 3080 110 ohm AES/EBU Digital Audio Cable with good quality Soundcraft or better 1/4" jacks soldered with lead-free Silver Bearing Solder 96/4 compound (62/36/2 will do), and run it with the imprinted logo reading towards the amp, with the cable as short as possible. Yes, once you reach a certain quality level in sound, you can definitely hear the difference in which direction a good cable is run. And go straight from your guitar to the amp, no BS in the chain because every little thing changes the sound. Let me repeat that again because it is critically important, every... little... thing... (down to the solder) changes the sound. For your live rig or if you want to use pedals and such, of course make all of the wire runs between them using this stuff, as short as possible. I've also taken pickups I really like and replaced the leads from them inside the guitar with this wire, as well as all of the internal wiring of a guitar, but it may or may not be an improvement over something like cloth-covered vintage wiring.
Enough. This will get you where you want to be, and hopefully as you play with this stuff it will open your mind to ideas you never considered before, and encourage you to try anything and everything. You never know what might make a difference, and every little difference adds up. As I approach the grave, hopefully you will continue to keep alive the spirit of experimentation and constant improvement that has clearly driven me insane.
One other tip I just thought of that helps immensely. Train your ears. If you can't hear the differences, all is for naught. Get a CD or whatever of the entire sound frequency sweep from 20-20,000 hz that plays each frequency for about 15 seconds. Use 10 hz intervals from 20-200 hz, then 50 hz intervals up to 1000 hz, then 100 hz intervals from then on up. Learn it until you can tell me blindfolded that a frequency I play for you is 1250 hz, or 2500 hz, or whatever. This will put you miles ahead because then you can identify when something is missing or overbearing, and where it is in the spectrum to fix it. By the time you get to this level, you will be able to hear sound in a room in a completely different way. You will be able to "tune" a room to get the best sound by moving furniture and changing wall/floor/ceiling materials which will change reflections and ambience, creating air or deadening a room as needed to allow the frequencies to sound their best. Are you hearing harsh reflections coming off of a brick fireplace in your living room? Put a dense chair or sofa in front of it to suck them up. If you really want to get psycho like me, I try to "see" sound and air as it moves around a room. I do it outside too as I play Disc Golf and shoot competitive air guns. It helps in adjusting furniture, setting up a recording studio control room, getting that perfect guitar sound in the studio, or figuring out why your band doesn't sound quite right in a certain room. You can do stuff like help all of your friends have better sounding systems (speakers up against a wall?.... oh no, no, no.) and identify problems when listening to other bands (they don't really suck, the room does) as well as your own. Learn to use your eyes and ears.
Forgot about picks. Nothing sounds better than flesh, but for a little attack, I like a tortoise shell medium Fender pick. Once you get everything else together, experiment, and choose what sounds best to you. And that's the thing, once you get your system and ears happening, you've opened up a whole other world of options for subtle nuances to fit what you want.
To my badminton brothers and sisters, my apologies this is so long. And to anyone who thinks this doesn't have any business being in a badminton thread, you are right, but s_mair has generously shared a lot of his badminton knowledge with me, and I'm returning the favor in a thread that I started.
Update soon on new badmiinton goodies. Teaser: 2 sets of LN No.1 on the way.
). We discovered BandLab as a brilliant platform for this kind of "joint jamming". 