My guitar tone journey, by Devin Townsend.
Hey folks, Devin Townsend here. its been a long time since I posted on this forum, but I want to use this opportunity now to give you a bit of the story as to how I have now ended up with the Axe Fx as my primary guitar amplifier.
I have been experimenting with tones for my whole career, of course, but its really been over the last decade that I really dug in. I have been unbelievably fortunate to have the support and profound patience of several amazing amplification companies, and I am very fortunate in that way. There was discussion on this forum about me switching over to Kemper, which I did do for awhile, but after the past few months of recording and working with Fractal exclusively I want to make this statement.
Here is my (long) account:
So ultimately, I need 5 basic sounds. There are a few other minor variations I may use from time to time, but for the sake of clarity, since the beginning I have been looking for 5 basic sounds.
1 - Clean and dry.
-This sound is almost exclusively used for explaining parts to people during rehearsal. No effects, lots of headroom, able to take humbucking pickups and with a good low end. In between playing, having a clean sound thats articulate and clear enough to explain parts either quietly or loudly is important to me. This sound would also have a boost in front of it to give me a sort of ‘ACDC' tone if needed.
2 - Clean and wet
-This sound I began working on for the album Ki, then expanded upon for Casualties Of Cool. I became obsessed with the Fender clean sound. In my quest for this sound, I have had in my posession Fender Champs, Vintage Twins, Vibro King, Eric Clapton Deluxe, 1958 Champ, silver face Champ, Victoria Bassman, Carr Amps, Divided By 13, etc etc. Basically, an open back smaller amplifier (after trying bigger ones) that has an even clean sound, bouncy high end, and that is touch sensitive enough with single coil pickups without too much compression or noise.
-At the same time as this, I use a massive chain of effects, in stereo. An analog delay into a long reverb into a ping pong delay that I fade in and out with an expression pedal.
On this sound I use a wah as well as an overdrive. (my wah is the same for each sound, I like the Crybaby sound, but I need auto engage. Ultimately, I will use a lesser quality wah so I can still have auto engage.)
3 - Dry Crunch
This sound is my heavy sound, with no effects. I’ve always liked the idea of a Mesa Dual Rectifier with EL34s, a Maxon d808 as a clean boost, and somewhere between the modern and vintage setting on the orange channel. I like the Decimator for noise as it silences it without killing the sound. On this sound, I like the gate to be tighter and I use a wah and overdrive here as well. 4x12 V30s is a good sound for me here.
4 - Wet Crunch
This sound is my main sound. It is the same sound as above, but mixed with it is an old patch I came up with for Ocean Machine that was generated from a now obsolete unit called the Roland GP100. In the early days, I used various splitters to work these two sounds together, but ground loops as well as phase were always a challenge. This sound, as with the clean, is a DRY WET WET configuration. (I should note that I have had a patch set up next to this one on my pedalboard that is this exact sound, but the ratio is reversed for intros. Its predominantly GP100 with a quieter Distortion sound) On this patch I like to use a wah as well as a POST preamp volume pedal to fade the dry guitar out, leaving the effects. I use overdrive on this as well that I can toggle off and on.
5 - Lead
This sound is a more 'midrange and presence-heavy' sound with substantially more gain, another echo on the dry sound, and the gp 100 patch yet again. On this patch I also like to use a Wah and Whammy.
So there it is… simple right? Well let me just say, after years and years of trying to get it right, the problems are deceptively many. Here is an idea of some of the stumbling blocks I have encountered.
- Amp with crushing metal tone, and then a beautiful spanky open back clean tone.
- Seamless channel switching
- effects spillover between clean chain and gp100 and back again
- great, consistent sound to FOH and my in-ear monitors.
- no grounding issues
- no phase issues between 2 amp signals
- same sounds from studio as live
- road worthy
- midi switchable
- backup for live
- able to be shipped all over the world or be readily available
- cabs onstage
- effects: autoengage wah, autoengage whammy, overdrive, volume post preamp, expression controlling clean effects
- future proof
So my quest here has lead me to some pretty funky places:
For Ocean Machine - Ki, I used 2 Peavey 5150 amps, ESP Telecasters and Explorers with EMG 81 pickups, a Morley Bad Horsey wah and a vast slew of terrible a/b boxes to split the signal to the gp 100. I would use cabs and wedges on stage, and I didn’t have a clean sound. Basically, this whole rig was a noisy, inconsistent version of sound 4 (wet crunch)
In 2002 I switched out the 5150 for a Dual Recto with 34s and a clean boost and loved it.
In 2009, I had a Dual Rectifier with the boost, running simultaneously with a Mesa Stiletto through 2 4x12 cabs, with a Fender Tweed twin as a clean amp, I had a massive pedal board with a RJM switching unit to midi the Mesa, then a Radial pedal to switch to the Fender, a 16 space rack of reverbs delays, gates and amp sims, as well as 4 an expression pedal, a volume pedal, whammy and Crybaby auto engage wah. The cabling was a nightmare, the size of it all was absurd, and although it sounded good, the phase issues and the ground issues between everything made it just stupid for me. Plus: Micing it up never sounded as good as it did in the room, and if anything had broken during load-in or anything, I was screwed. There was really no way to trust it and diagnosing problems was a needle in a haystack… it ended up that even the physical rack I was using created a ground issue between the old fender that I simply couldn’t get rid of. It was a science lab of problems.
At this point, I was introduced to the Axe Fx Standard and Ultra and made the investment. I liked it, and I liked the idea of it, but compared to the ferocity of the sound I just came away from, it was more of a novelty for me than anything else. I realized though that at this point, I could at least replicate my clean effects and sell the Eventide reverbs and delays and cut down on the cabling and hassles.
So from here, I began to tour again, and I went through every conceivable arrangement… I started by simply using the Axe FX Ultra through a Mesa Boogie Power amp into two Peavey Cabs and wedges. I tried the 4CM, but went with simply two Ultras, a radial switcher, and 2 Gp 100s. This system then had a redundancy and worked pretty well. I spent literally weeks picking around with sounds, and although it sounded pretty good, it didn’t have nearly the balls of what I was used to, and now, the problems in my instruments began to reveal themselves. I found the Axe to be very sensitive to what pickups I used, and simple active pickups didn’t work for the cleans I was looking for.
I also began to realize how little I actually knew about what makes an amp sound great… my ideas for tone are so specific and idiosyncratic that none of the presets were doing it for me, yet when I tried to make my own, I kept going down rabbit holes of tone that resulted in some truly bad guitar sounds. So many cabs and amp models, and none I liked… I tried eqs and compressors and all manner of low end-tamers etc, and although I toured with this rig , I was never really satisfied. I would go out front and my sounds direct to the board simply didn’t work.
At this point I began to recognize that for so many years of just plugging into an amp and playing, I didn’t know how to recreate what I heard in my head. I didn't really know what I wanted yet…
The GP100 was starting to show its age, and the sound became noticeably worse as time went on, the input was crapping out and the knobs were breaking.
So I got through this tour cycle and recorded Deconstruction and Ghost. I took a deep breath and dug into the Axe FX more, as although I was having problems articulating through the tools available in it my sounds, the idea that it was all in one place was like an dream…so as I recorded the album, I decided to commit to recording direct. It gave me a practical goal to try and get closer to my sounds.
Deconstruction and Ghost were the first albums I recorded that was all Axe Fx, and it sounded pretty decent. It wasn’t perfect yet, and I was still using the GP100, but it certainly wasn’t bad…in fact, I t was arguably better than many of my past records.
I convinced Dave, my guitar player, to invest in one, and we set about trying to get cool sounds for Epicloud. They were getting better, and we recorded Epicloud in both my garage and his house. When we mixed it at a nice studio, I remember the engineer saying ‘Its good, but I still miss the physicality of a cab’
Part 2 to follow...
Thanks for sharing your tone-quest.
