Guitar tone help?

Question

I have a washburn x-40 model guitar with a Roland cube 30 amp which is connected to a Boss Metal-Zone MT-2 foot pedal.

I cannot seem to get good tone out of this combo.

can anybody help me set this up.

i play heavy metal music and would like a stuffy,heavy tone.

Answer 1

well i dont know how big that amp is because im too lazy to look but depending on how much the amp can customize the distortion sound i would turn everythng all the way up my amp gives out a really distorted sound that way and do you know how to use the pedal right cus with something like that you should be able to get some heavy stuff anyways hope this helps oh and it could just be your guitar...

God Bless

Answer 2

Oi vey.... "yeah, get good tone by turning everything up".

Sigh....

Alright, so if you want better tone you need to look at the biggest tone elements in your signal chain, and look at how these elements are connected.

The biggest factors in your tone are your speakers, your amp, and your guitar, in that order. Since you are using a smaller combo amp, you can't switch the speakers, so the two elements to look at here are the amp itself (settings, etc) and your guitar.

So, I evaluate a guitar amp by turning it up to listening level, and setting all controls to half-way. This will give me a ballpark feel for what the amp is going to sound like. If I remember correctly, the cube has modelling? Okay, try to find a setting that isn't too crunchy to start with (bear with me, it's important).

From this setting, try raising and lowering in turn the treble, mid, bass, and gain. Try to get a feel for how the amp responds. Try this approximate setting - gain around 60%, treble around 50-75%, mids around 40-50% (no lower for now!), and bass between 40-50%. These are the basic settings for a solid tone. Don't cut too many mids, when you cut your mids you cut your volume. This is okay to some degree when playing solo, but not when playing in a band - you get lost in the mix.

So try different amp models and see if you can find a sound that works pretty well with these settings, without turning the gain up beyond 60% or so and the mids not below 40%.

Without using the pedal, you should be able to get a decent tone.

Let's try using the pedal... with the same settings, lower the gain to 40-50% and select an amp model that is pretty clean and sparkly. Now plug into the pedal and run it into the amp.

The Metal Zone takes a little while to get used to. Start with all the settings straight up. Raise the level until you hear the sound coming through the amp. With this pedal you shouldn't have to raise the gain above 50%. The rule of thumb is that every guitar pedal and amp starts adding noise past 50% gain - noise is bad, so keep the gain down to a reasonable level. Avoid the urge to crank gain - all you do is muddy and compress your sound.

Um, okay, so there should be a bass, treble, a mid boost/cut, and a mid freq selector k**b. Turn up your treble till it has a nice bite, adjust the bass to have some *warmth* but not more. Now try using the mid control. Turning the boost/cut k**b slightly to the left or right, then sweeping the mid frequency k**b is the way to dial in the tone with this pedal. Again, cutting too many mids will cut your volume. This pedal is very sensitive, too much cut or boost will quickly give you an unusable tone.

The metal zone is a little "dry" of a pedal. It can be warmed up by judicious use of mids and bass and controlling the treble, but it takes some experience and a lot of tinkering.

Finally, your guitar. The more gain you add, the less the differences between guitars tends to matter. The important factors become output (how hot the pickup is), sustain, the amount of bass in the signal, and string quality.

Hot pickups means that less gain does more. Since gain always adds some degree of noise, we want to minimize the amount of gain we add to just what we need. Gain adds some degree of sustain already, but natural sustain gives better tone - we can't control that really, but it's something to look for when you buy your next guitar. The string quality is important - you want strings that aren't dead. Fresh strings have more output, dynamics, and better frequency response.

One of the most important factors, in my opinion, is the level of bass in your signal. Bass saturates gain stages very quickly. This is good in small quantities, because you want a crunchy sound, but too much bass overloads a gain stage and makes it all farty and fuzzy and crappy.

What I do is actually lower the bass side of my pickups. This reduces the bass output, and gives a cleaner, brighter signal with more clarity. It makes it easier to get that 80's guitar sound, but the end result does really depend on your setup. Doing this means that later bass controls act more as "warmth" and tend to add thickness rather than make mud.

You can try raising your pickups, too. This will increase their output a little, but it will also tend to make the sound a little edgier and less smooth. Lowering has the reverse effect. I tend to prefer hot pickups at a distance from the strings, to get a smoother overall sound. This, of course, may not be for you.

Upgrading your pickups is probably the best thing you can do for your rig at this point. Some overwound humbuckers will have thicker and more aggressive overall distortion than the stock pickups you have now. Again, the distance and angle tips from above apply here, too. If you get hot pickups too close to the strings, though, they can actually kill sustain, so be mindful. I like many of the Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio pickups - the SD Distortion and DiMarzio Evo's are two examples of decent pickups. There are others that may be better suited for you, I advise you to do some research.

Well, I hope some of that helped. Feel free to email me if you have more specific questions, I'm not always on Y!A.

Saul