Help with Joe Bonamassa tone.....

Tremonti

Tremonti

Fractal Fanatic
How he gets that fuzz with bite, yet warm and full sound is beyond me. Fuzz that sounds good with chords, not just single note lines. Ideas? Obviously talking about how to re-create in Axe Fx.
 
Isn't his tone the same as (similar to) Eric Johnson's for the most part. I know he channels Eric a lot.

I would think that somebody would have dialed in Eric's by now.

I know a lot has to do with their style, but they have that same woody sound for cleans, then they crank it.

IMHO ...
 
Fuzz is in his hands? ewwwww ... not in the hands.. he has tons of gear and a combination of amps... at least 2 running all the time, and various pedals depending... and runs the volume knob a lot.
 
Start with say a silver jubilee, and a dumble type amp... set the jubilee for the high endy sound, the dumble darker, he uses EV speakers as well. I'll give it a shot when I get home... do you have a clip of what you consider his best tone?
 
As stated by dpeterson he runs two amps at a time, although he considered his Marshall Silver Jubilee the core of his sound. And his cabinets are loaded with some sort of EV
However I believe this has changed the past year or so (big surprise, the man loves his gear)
Rides the volume on the guitar allot, as stated above. However I did see a interview were he keeps it around 8 thats home for him were 10 would be home for most other people.
Something else to keep in mind guitar wise, the wiring most likely 50's style wiring, some of his guitars have it for sure. All my Pauls are 50's style.
Also on some of his Paul's he has nylon saddles on high E, B, G and I believe he also uses 11's on most of his standard tuned guitars.

I think just those things alone on the guitar side make a huge part of his sound, however not the string gauge so much.
Then the amps and of coarse the other 90% his hands.

John
 
Something else worth mentioning, to me it looks he uses some substantial cable runs Guitar>Board>front of giving Amps. I dont know if he uses any buffers or if any of his pedals (for that particular day) he uses has buffers in them, if not thats a bit of capacitance going on. Roll off some high end! Then for a bit more of color: effects loop of the amp to the pedal board and then back to the amp. However one I amps I believe he uses a tape delay in the loop of one of the amps but that is back by the heads.
 
I think his cabs are EV-12L loaded. Yep, go for Jubilee and Dumble voice for starters as stated above with a nice warm reverb. Take a Cliffs Of Dover patch (from Fremen I think) and play around with that, as that has a JTM45 as the amp with drive in front of it. If you are struggling for note definition, stick a clean cab in parallel. No silver bullet to this stuff, just play around. Also, what are you using for amplification?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
If you're asking specifically about when he kicks on his fuzz face, keep in mind that he has a signature Dunlop FF that was designed to work well with his rig and Les Pauls in particular. Just my opinion, but getting a fuzz to work with humbuckers can be difficult to impossible depending on what you're going for, so I've been curious about his signature fuzz for this reason alone. I have no clue how to go about reproducing his FF in the Axe.. I think you would need to nail his base rig tone first and then be able to play in his style (definitely EJ influenced at times, but he's a remarkable player in many respects).

One other item.. play really loud. Like REALLY loud... no substitute for that, IMO.
 
I get that thicker throaty tone when I play with bridge humbuckers when the gtr volume rolled back to 9 or even 8 and the gtr tone for the bridge is rolled back to 3-4.

Yes tone rolled back that much :)

You have to compensate with treble on the amp, but rolling the tone way down does something to the pickup response that gives a vocal thick tone to it. Not just muffled or muddy. The response changes.

This works only with the bridge pup though. Neck humbuckers are not the same. And I would definitely recommend the 50's wiring for both pups and maybe a .015 cap for the neck vs. .022 for the bridge.
 
With the AXE its really not that difficult to get a reasonable Bonamassa tone

Try these amps:

1. Jubillee
2. Tucana 3
3. CA Triptik Classic

The patches recommended are great starting points and if you are comfortable dialing in a 2 amp rig it'll get even closer.

Another thing that gets me a really cool Bonamassa tone is if I put a real subtle UniVibe in the effects chain to give it sort of that "amp is breathing" effect.
 
Tremonti said:
How he gets that fuzz with bite, yet warm and full sound is beyond me. Fuzz that sounds good with chords, not just single note lines. Ideas? Obviously talking about how to re-create in Axe Fx.
Click to expand...

Have you tried recreating his rig with two amps. One dry one wet. I had done it a while back and had it sounding great. I was using combos if silver jubilee and dumble. I tried swapping out the dumble for a carol Ann, divided by 13 etc.

Just watch some videos about his rig run down And start recreating in the axe. It's fairly simple. A lot is in his hands as well. But he has a very specific routing technique for his rig.

Also, what type of guitar are you using?
 
ptgold said:
With the AXE its really not that difficult to get a reasonable Bonamassa tone

Try these amps:

2. Tucana 3
Click to expand...

Totally! The thing about Tucana is that it delivers me the exact Blues tone I was expecting. Thick and not too gainy, so na open chord will sound full-bodied and punchy. All blues tone I've dialed so far with other amps miss this characted. Not fan of that "thin, fendery bright tone".
 
Four amps up on full (he told me himself when I asked him after a gig), based around the Marshall Silver Jubilee (hey we have one of those!) I would blend that with something like the Carol Ann amp model, another that Joe uses. Going into EV-L speakers (there are some excellent ultra rez ones from Ownhammer out right now). Amp settings? Crank the hell out of the mids, turn the treble down slightly. The tone is cleaner than you'd think (so not much distortion). Tube Screamer or something similar gets kicked on for leads from time to time when he really wants to dig in.
 
My issue is how to use fuzz? It has always eluded me as single notes sound good, but chords no. How to get his fuzz tone yet cut with chords and not sound washed out???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom