Cool Tool - The "U2" Pick

Take Your Pick #2

In this video, the second of two, I talk about higher quality and unusual picks. 

Wegen Picks

Take Your Pick #1

There's a corny bumper sticker joke that goes - Every guy has his gal, but a guitarist has his pick. This is part one of a two part video series on the importance of the pick you choose. In this video I talk about "signal path" and six different gauges of Dunlop picks which are...

Dunlop Nylon 1.0mm
Dunlop Nylon .88mm
Dunlop Nylon .73mm
Dunlop Nylon .60mm
Dunlop Nylon .46mm
Dunlop Nylon .38mm

Sound Better for Free (or next to nothing) - Tip #2

Raise Action
A guitars "action" is the heigth of the strings from the fingerboard.  Guitars with low action play easier, but when when the strings vibrate against the frets they cause "fret Buzz" or "fret out".  This causes a thinning of your tone.  As little as a 1/4 turn counterclockwise at the bridge can held elivate minor buzzing.  Truss rod adjustments can also eliminate buzz on both acoustics and electrics, but please consult a professional guitar repairman and make minor adjustments and live with them a couple of days.  There are several books on guitar repair that make it easy to understand and measure truss rod adjustments.

Here is a video on truss rod adjustment by guitar repair guru John Carruthers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpphzkj4Wh0

Sound Better for Free (or next to nothing) - Tip #4

Spend Time with Your Gear

Don't just expect to be able to plug in and play.  Whether you have a twenty space rack full of effects and preamps or a simple amp with just a few knobs, you get the most out of your gear when you spend time with it.

Once a student brought over a new amp he'd received for Christmas.  He complained that it didn't "rock" and that he thought he was going to have to buy a distortion pedal.  Within two minutes I had four different sounds dialed into his amp; a clean, a crunchy, a saturated (lots of distortion) and a surf tone (lots of reverb) all within the confines of a fifteen watt practice amp.

Start with the amplifier

One of my amps is a one-channel Matchless Clubman 35 head, because the entire signal path is analog (not digital) and it has tube preamp and power amp stages, it is very reactive.  Meaning I can dial up a heavily distorted sound on the amp and by tweaking the volume knob on my guitar get a clean tone (by turning almost all of the way down), a crunch tone (midway) and a heavily distorted tone (volume all the up). All that without having to jump on pedals or program anything.  Try this with your amp.  If you have an amp with a master volume control (meaning a preamp knob and a master volume knob), turn up the preamp volume close to ten while keeping your master volume below ear bleed levels.  Now turn down your guitar and listen, is it cleaner?  Turn your guitar up about half way, is it getting crunchy? Lastly crank it, is it screaming?  Some amps will do this, particularly high end tube amps.  Overall volume shouldn't change very much when you do this.  Twiddling with your guitars volume control can bring forth an entire rainbow of tones through an amp with just the right "mojo".

Effects

Stomp boxes, do-it-all floor units or rack mounted units each provide their own complications.  I'm not big on reading manuals.  I'm a kind of fidget-with-it-until-I've-painted-myself-into-a-corner kind of guy.  Then I break out the manual.  I learn fastest when I experiment.  But chances are with the complex sound modeling effects of today none of us are getting the most out of our gear.  I do know however when the tone isn't happening.  That's when I go to work. Youtube can be a valuable resource.  Learn from the successes of others.  Though good tone doesn't always translate from gear to laptop mic to internet to youtube to internet to laptop speakers.

Some units have headphone outputs.  Don't use them unless you're programming late at night or just familiarizing yourself with the parameters.  Headphones are not real world.  If you're EQing, your ears are receiving the sound quite artificially, play through an amp, however quietly, for the best results.

Rarely have I brought something home that didn't need major tweaking. Years ago a major manufacturer (who will remain nameless) gave me a multi effects/preamp unit to use and abuse.  I could not find in its 200+ patches one slightly crunchy tone (a la SRV).  I had to create one from the ground up!  In fact all the patches I use have had adjustments made. Some slight, most major overhauls.  But ultimately, to my ears, the thing sounds killer now.