Do high gain amps make you a lazy player?

[Nitro Express]

Screwing around on a high gain amp is fun but I always felt they masked a lot of mistakes and kind of made it easy to be a sloppy player. I had a 5150 once and if you got it into the sweet zone it was fun but out out the sweet zone it sounded like shit. A one trick pony.

I would rather have the loose classic Marshall tone than the high gain buzz saw. It's seems like you have to play better on the guitar to get the good tone as well. In other words, you have to work for it.

For me, nothing stills beats the good old Fender Bassman circuit and the British bastardation of it for tone.

[Coyote]

That's a great question... And you're absolutely right.

[Nitro Express]

Well Eddie Van Halen really did some neat stuff on the 5150 but he never came close to the magic of his old style of playing on a Marshall Super Lead. I think he went more high gain because he had that screech owl Sammy Hagar in the band. Face it, a buzz saw works better with a screech owl.

Eddie even said the 5150 made it easier to play. Yeah, with all the gain and sustain, you can sound like you are doing a lot when you aren't. I think it made him a lazier player.

Go back to a Strat and a Marshall. If you want to make it scream you have to coax the bitch into the scream. You have to work for the orgasm instead of having high gain drugs do it for you.

[Coyote]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
Go back to a Strat and a Marshall. If you want to make it scream you have to coax the bitch into the scream. You have to work for the orgasm instead of having high gain drugs do it for you.

In other words, Don't do (High Gain) Ecstasy! :D

[Roy Munson]

I don't like a lot of gain. The perfect tone for me is a balance of a Marshall Superlead and an old Hiwatt DR103.

Clean gain...if there is such a thing?

[BrownSound1]

I detest high gain amps because they lack character and definition. I see all of these young kids out there with their Triple Rectumfriers and the like, and it just sounds like a bunch of mud. I'll take an old Marshall, Vox, or Fender any day over any modern high-gain beehive. If you need more distortion than a regular Super Lead puts out, then just use a stompbox...it ain't going to sound any worse.

Oh and to answer the original question...YES. An old amp makes you try to have clean execution in your playing, whereas the high gain fuckers let's you get away with murder. Probably a good thing considering the current crop of "rock" guitarists.

[Nitro Express]

I absolutely love the crunchy tone on the second Van Halen ablum. That solo on DOA is the ultimate guitar tone for me. I've been trying to nail that tone my whole life but it's one of those things you get close but not quite to it.

It's a breathing, loose, overdrive sound you only get with tubes and the right speaker cabinent. I just love the sound of the raw power. Not the buzz of too many gain stages.

[BrownSound1]

It's....organic. :D

[Hardrock69]

I just prefer the standard Tube Screamer and Marshall 2203 Head through 4 X 12 cabinets.

I get all the crunch, tone, and sustain I need, without it going overboard.

If I turn down the volume on my guitar, it cleans up enough for me.

Turn the volume back up, and I can make notes that sing beautifully.

:D

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by Hardrock69
I just prefer the standard Tube Screamer and Marshall 2203 Head through 4 X 12 cabinets.

I get all the crunch, tone, and sustain I need, without it going overboard.

If I turn down the volume on my guitar, it cleans up enough for me.

Turn the volume back up, and I can make notes that sing beautifully.

:D

You know, that's how I test amps in stores. If it doesn't clean up to a nice shimmer when I turn down the guitar volume knob, I'm not interested.

The good old green Tube Screamer. That's one of the classic peddles of all time. Now they make reissues of the originals. It will be a sad day when tube amps and good peddles dissapear. Maybe they won't. It's 2006 and we are still using shit from the 60's and 70's.

[sammysucks65]

a jimmy page esque distortion is good. not really crunchy but definatley not clean, that right tone that just screams.

it is fun to get those p.h.'s to just wail with high gain haha

[Hardrock69]

Actually you do not need to crank up the distortion much to get sustain. Just turn up the volume.

[Matt White]

And yet...high gain amps have been the amp of choice for METAL now for a number of years....

Many younger players prefer the sound of a high gain amp to a boutique....

And the price is much nicer.....


All a matter of personal taste...or lack thereof....

I'm quite fond of my JCM 900...it does what I want it to....:)

Of course...I've got the Dual Reverb model.....

[Nitro Express]

I had fun with my 5150 but it worked the best with the Wolfgang pickups and you had to have the power amp going to get the thing to smooth out. It was loud as shit and yeah I can see where Eddie was digging it after years of playing some real good Marshalls. Something different.

I don't know. High gain to me sounds too 90's if you know what I mean. Yeah, I guess I dig a good Jimmy Page tone myself. I want the sound of raw power and not an over processed buzz saw.

It's like when I went to see the G3 show with Satriani, Vai, and Malmsteen. Satch's tone was so over processed. Vai's tone was better. Malmsteen had the best tone. It was crunchy and organic. Just a good old Marshall with a simple overdrive peddle. He sounded great!

[jhale667]

I've got a Boogie Mk III, which has more gain than I could probably ever use, but I'm always shifting between all three channels and playing with the gain structures...I also back things off with my guitar volume when needed...

Having said that, unless you're jamming in a band context or working on a particular sound, you should ALWAYS practice WITHOUT your amp, so you never become dependant on gain for note articulation. I can NEVER thank my original teacher enough for pounding that into my head as a kid...

[BrownSound1]

If people made a list of the great rock guitar tones of the last 50 years, how many would have been made with a high gain amp? :D

[Brett]

Yes they make people lazy players, but I still think if you're a shitty player you ain't gonna sound any better on Ed's Marshall. :)

I use an older 5150, and I've tweaked the shit out of it, including getting rid of the crap Chinese tubes it came with, and I get a pretty warm tone. But there are some high gain amps that I just think sound awful.

Ibanez Tube Screamers rule BTW.

[Matt White]

Originally posted by BrownSound1
If people made a list of the great rock guitar tones of the last 50 years, how many would have been made with a high gain amp? :D

Depends on who makes the list: Somebody under 35 or over 35.....:D

It's constantly evolving...the guitar heros of the 60's-70's paved the way...the 80's & 90's tweaked what came before....

It's an open road...the next guitar hero will have a tone all his own...

[BrownSound1]

Matt, the thing about it though is all the newer guys today sound pretty much the same. The buzzy stuff masks the nuances of their playing, and there is no dynamics to it. Just overly compressed and loud.

There hasn't been a new guitar hero in many years...at least not one worth a shit.

[Matt White]

Check out John 5 Brownie....very cool.:cool:

I'm just saying that the classic sound of the 70s-80's has given way to a new sound...one we're not fans of...but that the sound of rock/metal guitar is always changing...

[Terry]

I prefer loud and more or less clean with a bit of overdrive right through the amp...actually have the bass up to ten, mid at 5 and treble on 3 at the most these days, with reverb up to about 5..

Am kinda looking for depth nowadays as opposed to screaming high-end EQ.

Started out on acoustic, and with that you can't mask your playing electronically; you can either cut it or you can't.

4 or so years later, was running through an MXR Distortion +, DOD Digital Delay, DOD Overdrive, with all the amp settings at 10 (of course), and went along like this for a few years, then one day was just playing clean and found I wasn't being precise in my fingering, picking, etc. I had defintely gotten lazy, for sure. Think all the distortion makes things sound more spectacular than they really are...

[BrownSound1]

Originally posted by Matt White
Check out John 5 Brownie....very cool.:cool:

I'm just saying that the classic sound of the 70s-80's has given way to a new sound...one we're not fans of...but that the sound of rock/metal guitar is always changing...

John5? I wouldn't consider him a guitar hero...definitely nothing groundbreaking there. He's good, but it is one of those, "I've heard it all before," type things.

I don't think the classic tones have given way to anything. I mean if they had then Fender and Marshall wouldn't be making reissues all the damn time. Hell, Marshall has the 1959SLP reissue and the 1959HW (both 100 watt Super Lead Plexis and essentially the SAME fucking amp), the 1987x (50 watt Plexi), JTM45, the 1962 (aka Bluesbreaker), the 1974x (reissue of the 18 watter), 2061 (reissue of the 20 watter), the JTM 45/100, and the Super 100 Hendrix model. Also, reissues of the 2203 (JCM 800). Not one of those amps listed is less than 30 years old. Of course you might be saying, "hey dickhead the JCM800 came out in 1981!" To which I say, "true, but the JCM800 was an amp that had already been out in 1975, but in a different head case. Even kept the same model number and circuit." Of course some JCM800s were just non-master volume Super Leads too, complete with the 1959 model designator. :D Amazing what a different head box design will do, ain't it.

Now why would Marshall go through the trouble of making reissues of all of those amps? If the current tone is high gain then wouldn't they be content with producing DSLs, TSLs, and Mode Fours? Reason is that these high gain amps cannot accurately replicate the tone of the originals, and a LOT of people want that tone.

[GAR]

This thread flies in the face of the statement that the "tone is in the fingers".

Higain amps are king because they add color, generate harmonic overtones with the distortion, thereby fattening the sound up a bit and making it easier to play.

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by GAR
This thread flies in the face of the statement that the "tone is in the fingers".

Higain amps are king because they add color, generate harmonic overtones with the distortion, thereby fattening the sound up a bit and making it easier to play.

Not really. Sevral people here have said the high gain can be a crutch and make you a lazy player. Tone is in the fingers but if you take the gain away there is less tone because the fingers have gotten lazy. I think high gain is what made Eddie Van Halen less of an interesting player. He was the best in the early days when he had to work the strings more.

[Nitro Express]

The egotistical Yngwie Malmsteen even said pussys play humbuckers and he said real men play single coils because you can't hid for shit. It's all out there. It's true. I think the statement is typical old school Malmsteen because I dig many players who use humbuckers but I tottaly get what he is saying.

Then you have Angus Young who plays through a fairly clean amp. I think he turns his Marshall up to where it starts to barely clip (position 6 on the dial) but he sounds huge like he's using a peddle or something. It's all in his playing tecnique.

I fly airplanes. One of the hardest things to do is keep an airplane flying straight at a constant speed an altitude. Now they have autopiolets that can do that for you. You relie on that too much and your skills of a being a piolet deteriate. Gain is kind of like a partial autopiolet.

So yeah, the people who say practice unplugged have a point. Strip is down to where you are naked and have to perform. Tone deffinately is in the fingers. It's like golf. The best clubs don't do shit for you if you can't play.

[Don Corleone]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
Then you have Angus Young who plays through a fairly clean amp. I think he turns his Marshall up to where it starts to barely clip (position 6 on the dial) but he sounds huge like he's using a peddle or something. It's all in his playing tecnique.

Angus attacks the strings, he's a very aggressive player (Ed used to be the same), and it's part of what gives him his overall sound.

But I agree that a Hi Gain amp will hide a multitude of sins in your playing.

[GAR]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
Yngwie Malmsteen even said pussys play humbuckers and he said real men play single coils because you can't hid for shit..

It would be interesting to note that for the last 20 years he's been endorsing the DiMarzio HS-3 which is a humbucker.

I think his point is singlecoils typically sense one position on the string, Gibson humbuckers sense two points of the string which mutes some naturally occuring harmonics.

That's why octavers work better on Strats than Pauls.

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by GAR
It would be interesting to note that for the last 20 years he's been endorsing the DiMarzio HS-3 which is a humbucker.

I think his point is singlecoils typically sense one position on the string, Gibson humbuckers sense two points of the string which mutes some naturally occuring harmonics.

That's why octavers work better on Strats than Pauls.

Yeah, you have to read between the lines on that statement. I mean you hae a great point to hang Yngwie with on Judge Judy. LOL!

Yngwie has always entertained me because he pisses so many people off and still does. Whenever Yngwie does an interview, the next issue of Guitar Player is full of angry, pissed off people griping about what the Swedish meatball said. I love it! I would rather have an asshole spouting shit than boring Joe Satriani. I mean that's what ruined tennis, we don't have John McEnroe or Nastassy anymore. I want someone who could be a tottal asshole but win the match.