What we want is to compensate for the effect we get from driving the tubes hard on a bigger amp. In many cases this is a better basis for your pedals that a purely clean channel. If your amp has two channels, you might want to experiment with the gain channel and get it as clean as possible. Raise the gain until you start to notice a breakup.
You probably don’t want full overdrive but a super clean amp often sound thin. Be careful with this one but try to find the right balance between it and the treble.ĭon’t be afraid to give the amp a bit of break up. Some amps also feature a tone or presence control that, depending on the amp, boosts between 4-7kHz.
The precise settings depends on your guitar, amp and taste. Lower the bass, crank the mids and keep the treble at a moderate level. Again, when playing alone you probably want to feel the lows but that’s where the drums and bass are and while you don’t have a full band in your bedroom too much low end will make your guitar sound muddy and flabby, rather than focused and tight. Crank that mid range and your guitar will sound warmer and fatter and you’ll have a much richer sustain. Still, your ears are designed to pick up on the mids range, as that’s where the main register of the human voice lies and when you bring those fabulous mid scooped tones on stage, your guitar will drown completely behind the drums and keys. The lows and highs makes the tone really scream. When playing alone your guitar often sound best with a typically mids scooped tone. One of the biggest mistake many guitarists do – both on stage and smaller rooms – is to neglect the importance of mid range. Amp settings – don’t neglect the mid range! An amp with more mid range, like Hiwatt (or similar), will sound warmer and more balanced. Amps with a scooped mid range, like Fender (or similar), will often sound brighter and thinner on low volume. If not you’re basically just raising the distortion level, which leaves you with less headroom and, on low levels, often a thin sound. The amp should have a master volume control in addition to gain. This will allow you to set the amp at the edge of break up or full blown distortion without getting too loud – much like an attenuator but more effective.
Amps like the Laney Cub12, Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18 and Hiwatt’s Tube Series (among others) feature a built in power scaling that allows you to down-size the wattage to 5w or even 1w. Most bedrooms doesn’t need more than 5w or maybe 1w. Tube amps are usually easier to make sound good on lower volume (and manipulate to do so) compared to solid states, which have a more static character and can sound thin.Ī 50w or 100w tube amp is usually out of the question for bedroom players but a 15w or 30w is still a very loud amp and most of these needs a bit of volume to sound as intended (meaning: you need to crank them a bit for the tone really open up). Still, getting an amp that’s suited for a smaller room, will save you a lot of headache. I’m a believer in that you can get great tones from almost any type of equipment. This can’t be achieved on low volume alone so we need to compensate and simulate it. This makes my guitars and pedals sound fatter, warmer and more compressed but it also makes my ears adjust, trying to even out those transients and focusing on to the mids. I want the sound of glowing hot tubes on the very edge of breakup and speakers pushing air. So what is a big tone? What do we want to achieve on a smaller amp? Well, personally I want the same full bodied character I get when I drive my Reeves Custom 50w really hard. I’ve experimented a lot over the years and found ways to achieve a big tone on low wattage and volume. I have a couple of smaller tube amps that serve the purpose of both practice and recording (although most of my live guitars are recorded in our rehearsal studio). My home recording studio is a typically bedroom-sized room equipped with a few low wattage amps. In this feature I’ll share some of my tricks for getting great tones at bedroom levels. Still, we all want a big and fat tone that has all the qualities of playing on a loud stack.
Limited space, grumpy neighbours and a patient family makes it hard to really crank that amp. Most of us spend a great deal of time playing guitar in either a bedroom or a small home recording studio.