getting great guitar tones is achieved by a combination of three factors: 1. Great Players, 2. Great Gear 3. Great parts/riffs/arrangement. well this week i think we've had all three.
this week i've been working with my buddies in @CaptionsFL from Pensacola, FL again. what's especially fun about these guys is they have really good gear which always makes it more fun to record. if an indie band comes to me and all they have is an Ibanez Jem and a Crate combo amp, that's totally fine - we just end up using my gear. that's why it's there, right?? what's cool is when we don't have to use mine and i get to play with new toys. here's a quick rundown on guitar world for the past couple days:
CABS
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here we have three different cabs. to the left is an ORIGINAL Orange 4x12 from the 70's. i don't know what kind of a speakers were in it but it had a smooth tone that breaks up nicely without being too harsh. if you look on the back the cab is actually rated at 15 ohms instead of the standard 4, 8 and 16 ohms because apparently Europe (this cab is English made) was using a different ohm standard back then. i don't know the full story on that. maybe someone can chime in on the comments with the real story.
on the far right is a newer Orange 4x12 with Vintage 30's - the same cab that i own and use on almost everything. if you ask me it's one of the best sounding cabinets out there.
in the middle is a Bad Cat 4x12. what's interesting about this amp is how dark it is without the low end becoming spongy. we also found out if you take the speaker grill off there is a metal bar running right across the middle of each speaker so the most direct method of micing the cab is actually to be off center. if you've ever played a BadCat amp you'll know that they're pretty bright on the top end so it makes sense that their cabs are darker sounding to complement the heads.
GUITARS
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the amount of guitars in studio is in direct proportion to the size of your ego. haha. the two racks of guitars on the left are mine. the 5 guitars on the right are the ones they brought. there's 4 different kinds of Les Pauls which is AWESOME. and of course one Tele which we used on some clean parts. the one we ended up using a LOT was the one with P90s. it took a bit for us to figure out the right way to use it. P90s are a little muddy, but once we got some of that low-mid stuff scooped out it really sounded amazing.
AMPS AND PEDALS
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the first thing you'll notice about this picture is that i'm a horrible photographer. stupid sun ruining my shot. anyway, for amps we've got my Marshall JCM 900, an Orange Rocker 30 which we ended up using a LOT, a Hughes and Kettner TriAmp and a Matchless DC30 which sounds amazing. we had plenty of pedals to go around. the ones we ended up using the most were the OCD and the Full Drive. i'm sure that's no surprise to any of you gear nerds out there. i still think the best rock tone is a guitar with hot pickups using a pedal lightly to hit the front end of a tube amp hard turned up loud. it doesn't get much better than that.
i love my job :)
