“Good tone” night October 19, 2007
Posted by Phillip in Amps, Effects, Guitar, Live Sound, Music.trackback
I’ve been experiencing a love/hate relationship with my Reeves amp lately, but it was definitely working for me last night at practice. I have come to realize that the Custom 6 is a very midrangey amp, and I hadn’t really been setting the EQ right. Last night, I decided to try to settings that would probably sound like crap on any other amp. I set the bass at about 12:00, the mids at about 8:30 (almost all the way down), and the treble around 3:30 (almost all the way up). The gain was at 1:00 and I was using the low input.
I was getting a really rich, chimey tone and it was very touch sensitive. When doing light picking or strumming, I was getting nice Tom Petty-ish (for lack of a better word) tone. If I really hit the strings hard, I could almost pull off “Back in Black.”
I’m still trying to figure out my distortion pedal situation. For a lot of songs, I’m able to go without pedals, which is nice. Other songs really need a kick in the pants to really take off, and I’m struggling with how to set my Barber pedals. I have the Small Fry, which excels at high gain stuff, and I have the LTD Silver, which has better low to medium gain settings. I’m thinking that the SF will be my heavy rhythm/palm-muting pedal, while the LTD handles lead tones. I’ll probably change my mind 30 times before this weekend, though. Both pedals are awesome, I’m just not sure if they’re redundant.
WorshipGuitarist 
hi, worshipguitarist.
if you were me (a worship pastor) and you were going to buy one guitar amp for the various guitar players to use in order to get a more consistent “home base” guitar tone, what would you buy?
i’m enjoying following your blog,
stephen
I would probably recommend something along the lines of a Vox AC-30 or an AC-15. A lot of guys use those, like Tomlin’s guitar player (Daniel Carson).
Other options (if you’re willing to get a little “boutique-y”) would be the Stulce SA-10C or the Goodsell Super 17. Both amps have incredible clean-to-breakup tones. They’re not exactly budget amps, but they are built by hand and are very high quality. They also are very pedal-friendly, so your various guitarists can stick their own pedals up front to get their own tone.
I’ve also heard good things about Orange amps (AD-30 or the Rockerverb series). There are really a ton of options, but I would suggest getting an amp with a great clean tone and go from there.
Orange amps are very nice, my suggestion would be with whatever brand you decide to go with, I would go with tube amps. They seem to achieve a richer warmer tone. You cant forget about fender. They are very good amps, but again, the higher-end models may not exactly be budget-friendly. I run on a 1979 fender dual tube amp that has a pair of 10’s in it. This would more than likely be too powerful for a church setup, but I could never ask for more out of an amp. We re currently running all of our stuff direct-in, but I am dying for the tone that I simply cant get without an amp. Unfortunately stage volume is our issue. With all that said, you definitely don’t need alot of power just tone.