Updated the Almost Honest Impulses for more of a high gain sound using the TSE-X50
Here are the new impulses, one left and one right with the designation “X50” in their titles to distinguish them from the older impulses
Here is what they sound like
Here is a REAPER RFX Chain, of both of the FX chains used for the sound above, using the TSE-X50, which hopefully you can still find somewhere, this was the old free one
To me, one of the Holy Grails of guitar sounds is at the beginning of Megadeth’s Almost Honest. I created two impulses based on this with the results you hear above.
You can download the impulses here, one left and one right and put them in your favorite impulse loader. If you don’t have one already, NADIR from Ignite is free, and the one I used for this: http://www.igniteamps.com/en/audio-plug-ins
For the amp sim, I used Vadim Taranov’s JCM800 with the default settings. You can get that here http://pvamps.blogspot.com/2016/07/jcm800-1986.html
Aliasing is a problem in digital audio where frequencies above the passband “foldback” into the audible range. While watching the review of some guitar amplifier modelling software, the issue of aliasing came up so I decided to try a few experiments.
In an effort to get more variation and versatility out of an ukulele, I started playing it with steel strings, but even that wasn’t quite enough. Where to go from there? Scallops!
Recently, I was having a perplexing problem of a double locking guitar going out of tune on certain strings after a bend.
If I bent, it would be flat on the return. If I tuned it back up, as soon as I hit the tremolo, it would go sharp. This tremolo was locked to “dive only” so it really had me scratching my head! Then I had a look at the lock nut. If you have a Floyd or a Kahler or some other lock nut and are having weird tuning issues, have a look here:
This is a seven string, so the strings are, from left to right: Low A, low E, high A, D, G, B, high E. Have a look at the low E and D strings compared to the high A or G. The string is not centered in the lock nut, which can change the strings length on bends or dives. You would think that the act of clamping would force the strings into the center, but the size difference between the strings can create a lever effect, so check them carefully next time you lock them!
The Fat Cats at the Hard Rock Cafe on Monday May 11th from 9-11pm
No cover, lots of cheap parking, great food and service
The Fat Cats at the Kailua Elks Club on Saturday, May 9th from 5-7pm and every second Saturday of the month. Tell them you’re a guest of Bob Frost
Typical guitar pots
Chances are, your electric guitar or bass has some knobs on it, usually named “Volume” and “Tone”. There are a few variations on how many of each of these you are likely to see on a “normal” guitar, but once you understand a single volume and a single tone control, you’ll understand any of the different setups available.
Underneath and attached to the knobs on your guitar are the devices that do the actual work, the potentiometers or “pots”. They will usually be three terminal devices and look something like the picture to the right
You are probably familiar with the basics of what these things do to your sound. The volume control turns up or down the volume of the signal your guitar sends to the amplifier and the tone control makes the tone of the guitar duller, muddier, mellower or one of those adjectives people use to describe less treble.
Active electronics on a guitar or bass can have a few more functions, but let’s leave those alone for now and concentrate on what you are likely to see on 99.999% of the electric stringed instruments out there, the passive volume and tone controls.
While you are pretty sure about what these things do in general, do you know how they work?
Idealized model of a potentiometer
The potentiometer type most commonly found in an electric guitar has a rotating shaft that you use to control two variable resistors at once. A resistor is a two terminal, passive electronic device that resists the flow of electricity. In a pot, the resistance changes depending on where the control shaft is turned.
Refer to the picture on the left: Think of the pot as a variable resistor between points A and W and a separate resistor between points B and W. As you turn the shaft one way, the resistance between A and W increases, while the resistance between B and W decreases. Turn the shaft the other way and you get the reverse; the resistance between B and W increases, while the resistance between A and W decreases.
For example, for the volume control on a typical guitar, the signal from the pickup(s) or the pickup selector would go to terminal A, terminal B would be tied to ground, and terminal W would go to the guitar’s output jack. You can think of it as the shaft deciding how much of terminal A vs how much of terminal B to send to the guitar cable from terminal W.
How often do you use the tone knob on your guitar?
If never you might want to just get rid of it. Why? Well, I like to follow the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) philosophy of making things only as complicated as they need to be, but no more. More parts are more things to go wrong, and believe it or not, every potentiometer (usually referred to as a pot) on your guitar has the possibility of affecting your signal, whether you are actively using it or not. If the pot is in your circuit, it’s in your signal. But hey, that’s a discussion for another day.
Personally, I NEVER use the tone knob on my bridge pickup, but I often like, love even, the sound of the neck pickup with the tone knob all the way down, especially on the higher frets.
Here’s an example of the tone knob in its full clockwise position
And here is a similar lick played with the tone knob in the full counter clockwise position
In my case, I wanted the tone knob available to the neck pickup, but out of the circuit of the bridge pickup, so how can this be accomplished?
We need to make changes to the guitar’s wiring. Chances are, if you have two humbuckers, one volume and one tone control, your wiring looks something like this:
In the diagram above, the tone control shares a terminal with the middle pole of the pickup selector switch, and the signal input terminal of the volume control. No Matter which pickup or combination of pickups is selected, the tone control is always active. Since I only want my tone control to affect the neck pickup, I am going to move its input to the neck pickup pole of the pickup selector switch.
In the picture above, the wire for the tone control is sharing a terminal of the pickup selector with the neck pickup’s output wire.
One caveat here is that, when using this arrangement, the tone control is still in the circuit when both pickups are selected, but ideally is out of the circuit when only the neck pickup is selected.
I say ideally, because when I actually measured the pickup selector switch out of the circuit, the terminals only had 1.5 MΩ of resistance between them. That might sound like a lot, but as we’ll get to in a future article, that is only 3 times the resistance of many of the pots used in guitars!
Kailua Music School’s Random Weirdos will be opening for Jack White of the White Stripes Wednesday April 15th at the Blaisdell Arena! If you miss this show, you can also catch them every Wednesday at 6:30 at Boardriders Kailua
