Hollow body flavor - Thoughts / Tips?

Kidmag

Kidmag

Member
Thoughts on how to tweak my JCM800 preset in the AX8 to have my solid body guitar adopt some of the flavor of my semi-hollow body guitar?

I play mostly mid level overdriven alternative and blues rock stuff. My two primary guitars are an 80's Yamaha SA-700 (ES-335 copy) and custom Jazzmaster (alder body / maple/rosewood neck) with a s/s/h pickup set-up.

The Jazzmaster is the best playing guitar I've ever owned and the sole guitar I want to play live. I love how I can beat on the thing, the flexibility with the clean tones, and for some stuff the bridge hum overdriven sounds are great; crisp, tight, cutting, etc. (the guitar also sustains like a mofo for a bolt on - hipshot trem bridge is the real deal). But on some stuff its too thin, while the Yamaha bridge position sounds perfect; warmer, fatter, maybe a slower/looser attack, etc.

I'd prefer to set-up a second preset with slightly different JCM800 settings then have to switch guitars between songs. ,

Is compression what I want to bring some of that hollow body flavor to my Jazzmaster? Or is there something to tweak in the amp itself. Or is this quest useless. Any thoughts? I never use compression and generally find the base settings either kill my tone, or are so transparent I can barely tell anything is different.

Thanks!
 
Hollow bodies are a bit more mellow sounding so I would start with the GEQ. Back off the 2-8k a bit, scoop the mids and increase the 100-450 range. You're probably going to see a crooked smile with the low end sliders higher, lower curve in the middle and the high end between the two.
 
You could try something cool with an IR. Seems like someone out there has shot an IR of a semi-hollow guitar.

I haven't tried it in this manner, but it works great with acoustic guitar IR's to warm up and add body to a piezo-equipped acoustic electric.

You'd have to find a way to add it (I guess) to a cab IR and combine then into one. You should be able to do that with CabLab.

Just spitballing here as I sit at the airport waiting forever.

:)
 
5150 said:
You could try something cool with an IR. Seems like someone out there has shot an IR of a semi-hollow guitar.

I haven't tried it in this manner, but it works great with acoustic guitar IR's to warm up and add body to a piezo-equipped acoustic electric.

You'd have to find a way to add it (I guess) to a cab IR and combine then into one. You should be able to do that with CabLab.

Just spitballing here as I sit at the airport waiting forever.

:)
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Hmm.. Sounds really interesting. Way above my pay scale at this point. I've not even begun to get involved with CabLab. Maybe I'll poke around and if the learning curve doesn't seem too steep I'll dig into it. I've been trying to get back to practicing at night instead of tweaking presets - but you know how it goes, there's always one or two little things you wish for.......

With regard to the other great suggestions, I've already upped the input trim a bit (seems to blurs it a little and adds more gain). And I've adjusted my GEQ block a little. Sounds a little fatter through my home monitors, but I'm worried I'll be buried in the mix live. I actually was previously boosting my mids / high mids originally in the simple 5 band GEQ to help cut through the mix live. We'll see on Wednesday night.
 
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