Tips for achieving this lead tone?

RifferMcDuck

RifferMcDuck

Experienced


I'm working on one of the solos he's practicing here, and absolutely love that kind of violin-ey tone he's got going where all the pick attack is removed. I'm pretty bad at dialing in gates or compression though, which I assume are what's at work here. Can anyone help me emulate this tone?
 
If you want to remove pick attack, try the "Compander" type under the Compressor block. Lower the Transients knob and adjust Ratio/Time to taste.
 
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Compressor into a drive pedal, probably into a relatively clean amp would be a good starting point.

Turn the compressor off. Set the drive where you'd set a drive for very crunchy rhythm, or not massively driven lead, then turn it off for a moment. Next turn the compressor to a level where it fills out chords without making them too much louder, but makes lead lines sing a bit (you'll get more pick attack, don't worry, but keep the attack time fast). You'll find the guitar sounds pretty "natural" with either of the effects on their own.

Now turn them both on at the same time as each other, and notice how for single note lines the pick attack disappears.

My favourites for this kind of thing in real life are MXR DynaComp and Ibanez TS-10. You might want to go with a slightly more extreme distortion pedal, or more driven amp, but the key to the note definition without pick noise is most likely driving everything with a compressor up front.

Liam
 
Pickups will make a big difference on this as well, alot of the dynamics are removed from this tone, it would not be for me... he also might have rolled his tone knob on his guitar back a bit. Edited- I doubt that, it's bright it just has next to zero attack
 
sixtystring said:
If you want to remove pick attack, try the "Compander" type under the Compressor block. Lower the Transients knob and adjust Ratio/Time to taste.
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Thanks, I'll try this out when I can get back to my Axe. However, I'm really bad at compressors and gates, so "adjust to taste" might not be helpful if my ability to adjust is terrible to begin with, but I'll give it a shot.

Also I should clarify I don't really care about his entire tone, I more am wanting to remove as much pick attack as he has here so I can do so with my own tones.
 
David Tesch said:
Pickups will make a big difference on this as well, alot of the dynamics are removed from this tone, it would not be for me... he also might have rolled his tone knob on his guitar back a bit. Edited- I doubt that, it's bright it just has next to zero attack
Click to expand...

He's just playing on EMG 81/85 here as far as I know, nothing special. So in this case probably an 85.
 
Go to Axe Change and try out a bunch of presets from a style of tone your going for and tweak it till your happy.
 
RifferMcDuck said:
Thanks, I'll try this out when I can get back to my Axe. However, I'm really bad at compressors and gates, so "adjust to taste" might not be helpful if my ability to adjust is terrible to begin with, but I'll give it a shot.

Also I should clarify I don't really care about his entire tone, I more am wanting to remove as much pick attack as he has here so I can do so with my own tones.
Click to expand...
In one of my presets, I use the Compressor block set to the Compander type into a Volume block on Swell mode. The settings I use in the compander are Ratio: 10, Time: 10ms, Transients: -3, LookAhead: 0. This removes enough of the pick attack and makes the swell behave more like how I want it to.

Unfortunately, you are going to have to learn to "adjust to taste" as your guitar, amp selection, etc will have a huge impact on where you need to set this. "Transients" ARE the attack of the note, if that helps. I would start with the defaults with the Compander (4/10/0) and lower the transients knob until it removes the amount of attack you want. Then, if you need "more" at the level you are at, increase Ratio to make the effect greater.
 
ProgressiveRocco said:
The lack of attack on the notes is caused by the awful camera/web cam built-in compressor, I bet it sounds drastically different in person. I get the exact same effect when recording with the iMac built in cam so I'm pretty sure that's what's going on here!
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Ahh that makes sense, but is still so disappointing to hear! Does the Axe by any chance have a web cam block? :)
 
sixtystring said:
In one of my presets, I use the Compressor block set to the Compander type into a Volume block on Swell mode. The settings I use in the compander are Ratio: 10, Time: 10ms, Transients: -3, LookAhead: 0. This removes enough of the pick attack and makes the swell behave more like how I want it to.

Unfortunately, you are going to have to learn to "adjust to taste" as your guitar, amp selection, etc will have a huge impact on where you need to set this. "Transients" ARE the attack of the note, if that helps. I would start with the defaults with the Compander (4/10/0) and lower the transients knob until it removes the amount of attack you want. Then, if you need "more" at the level you are at, increase Ratio to make the effect greater.
Click to expand...

This is perfect and exactly what kind of response I was hoping for! I'll try it out as soon as I can, thank you!
 
That "violiny" sound, not this sound, is a part of Eric Johnsons tone in many of his recordings.

Here is a video. I know it's NOT exactly what you are looking for but does have that "characteristic" that you mentioned.

 
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