how do you drive your tone?

F

fatoni

Inspired
ive always had pretty hot pickups in order to give my tone a little kick. with the axe fx it seems it could be easily done with pedals, preamp, "tube saturation" and even speaker breakup. it got me thinking that if i started using some colder pickups i could get a much more versatile setup and not need soo many guitars. changing pickups just to experiment is a little too expensive so i was just wondering what you guys thought. i mainly play metal but i love jazz tones and have never really had a blues/rock tone that i liked. what do you guys think?
 
I've had the same thoughts you had and have experimented with different pickups.

To be more specific, I installed some Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAFs in my Les Pauls because I wanted the classic LP sound for blues, jazz and classic rock tone. With those pickups in that type of guitar, I was able to get tones for those styles no problem but with some experimentation, I found that I could get great metal tones as well. The same held true for my Strat (with Dimarzio Area pickups) and my Tele (with Barden pickups). None of those pickups are what I would consider "hot", especially when compared to my standard metal pickup, a Dimarzio Tone Zone.

All I use to make vintage pickups work for metal is put a Drive block before the Amp block and I use the T808 (Tube Screamer) model set like this:
- Drive = 0
- Tone = I turn it down for single coils and up for humbuckers. I season to taste after that.

On the EQ page (the 3rd page in), I just give a the mids a 3 dB boost and tweak the mid frequency around the default, depending on up the guitar.

It's that simple for me.
 
Hey fatoni.

I have a couple of guitars that I use with my axe-fx because I like the versatility. When I play the metal, I use a guitar with EMG active pickups. When I want more subtly and dynamic range I switch to a guitar with colder passive pickups. The pickups I've been checking out recently are the Seymour Duncan P Rails. They are essentially 4 pickups in one: single coil, P-90 and humbucker (series or parallel). My thinking is that ultimately I will be able to use one guitar and my axe-fx to do any style. They may suit your needs too. Does anyone else out there have experience with these pickups?
 
Those pickups sound interesting...the problem I run into is that I have the most acidic sweat known to man, so I have to predominantly stick with pickups without exposed pole pieces...

WOW...just checked out those P Rails...what a cool concept...man I wish they had a casing to cover the pole pieces!
 
alcaldwell said:
The pickups I've been checking out recently are the Seymour Duncan P Rails. They are essentially 4 pickups in one: single coil, P-90 and humbucker (series or parallel). My thinking is that ultimately I will be able to use one guitar and my axe-fx to do any style. They may suit your needs too.
Click to expand...

Thanks alcadwell!!, I am very interested in these pickups. You aroused my curiosity.
I was always looking to get strato and gibson sound in one guitar.
I don't think you can get the exactly the same sound due to the resonance of the wood, but you can get something like.
Please let me some questions:
is the model SHPR-1 P-Rail? What guitar you're using?. Can you replicate any sound styles (strat, tele, gibson) at least 40% of the original sound.

I'm thinking of using them in a chambered standard gibson.
 
Ok, so I think I may have hijacked this link. Edding, tone being a subjective thing I would recommend that you check out these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p933WODqe8Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZhJXcSVnfs

So my plan is to start assembling my own guitar based around those p-rails. I was planning on a H-S-H design with a 7-way selector switch (bridge, bridge + middle, middle, neck + middle, neck, bridge + neck, ALL 3!!!) Since each pickup has 4 settings, I was going to wire them with two volume push/pull knobs (up/up, down/down, up/down, down/up). If my math is correct, that would give me 29 possible settings. Which I think would appeal to my fellow axe-fx people since we love having options....

And getting back to driving the tone (which was the original topic here :lol: ), I will have different methods of keeping my volume level consistent (EQ's placed first in the chain, different input level settings, filter blocks and drive blocks).

Cheers,

-AL
 
Oops, I almost forgot....

I just picked up one of these things. I haven't installed it yet on any of my guitars, but I plan on using it to drive my tone too... (my plan is to use so many different sounds and styles that people don't realize that I'm not that good of a player :mrgreen: :lol: :lol: )

Here's the linky (and kinda funny cause I just noticed the link has the words "fetish" and "sex" in it):

http://store.guitarfetish.com/onsexcimatou.html
 
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