What I've Learned About Guitar Soundz

What I've Learned About Guitar Soundz

Prerequisities are to read these:

• http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/evh/gp122979.php
• http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/evh/gp0480.php
  

I feel like I've been on an exploration to create some kind of paper for some kind of rock guitar history class. It's a journey that I've never really taken. It's a good journey but man...That EVH article I mentioned in previous post should be required reading by Federal Law prior to a person buying a guitar, amp, or pedal unit.

I must confess that I was the innocent victim of the "gotta have the gadgets" syndrome. To have gadgets & dink with effects was far more important than to just simply sound simply good. I've wasted a lifetime just pushing buttons & turning knobs endlessly & aimlessly & without knowing why & not ever really finding my "purple" sound.

We wuz prayed upon by listening to the hammering guitar carnages of our youth who had thing after thing in their racks all of which contributed to sounding big & good. But what we so easily forgot is that the 'big sound' was owed in large part to the record labels financially backing the recording studio, the recording engineers, the live sound crews, & the live sound system. Of course joe schmoe guitar dude with a simple stock mass produced guitar through some whatever high tech mass produced multieffects unit into a small amp is not going to get ya big sound. And then we take our guitars & run 'em through myriads of effects thereby muddying up & clouding what could possibly be a decent sound. We was ruined by the marketing of crud. And just last week I was hit by that DigiTech RP80/50 from the store dude at Union Grove. Sheez.
These quips from that Eddie & '79 article pretty much sum it up:

"GP: What is your philosophy on using effects?
EVH: What I'm really into doing is squeezing anything out of the cheapest possible thing. Like whenever I get something made or built or designed I always say, make it as cheap as possible. I'll walk into this music store where I buy all my stuff, a place in Pasadena called Dr. Music, and they laugh at me. Because I ask them what they have, and they go, Oh, got this new this, got the new digital delay or something or other, and I go , Got anything cheaper? Because I can get weirder noises out of them than the expensive state of the art stuff. ...And like a lot of big name players laugh themselves silly when they see it, but after they hear me, then they go, Can I plug in? Some of these guys have got four out-of-phase switches, and a this and a that, and a biamp crossover, and blah, blah, blah. And I just go, Is it on? Is it working? What's it for? What's it do? I can't tell! At least when I use an effect, you know I'm using it. My main tricks are in my amps."

How did pop & Roth & the world take Eddie's classic sound & simple approach...This title of their song seems to sum it up "Everybody wants some." Everybody wantin' a piece of him & exploitation till there was nothing let to take. Too bad Eddie lost that philosophy to keep up with the pop & rock mainstream. But my own journey by looking into EVH's early sound has returned me to the concept of simple:

Brother Glop mentioned reverb. It's all over great surf tunes & Eddie's early sound with a delay here & there.So my journey towards simple consists of:

• Ordering an MXR M101 Phase 90 Pedal with 1 knob & turn it to slow sweep & keep it there forever unless I want to try to get Gilmooreish or Trowerish.
  I never learned this about distortion in amps & that 'tis good to drive them with something like the classic Boss SD-1 Overdrive pedal or better yet, get the modified & cleaned up version from http://www.robertkeeley.com/product.php?id=13
  
• Am being patient to wait on an EBay or Craigslist item for a Boss GE-7 EQ to stick in front of the amp. I found this info in a wikipedia article:As an example of pre-distortion EQ, Eddie places a 6-band MXR EQ pedal before the Marshall amplifier head (pre-distortion EQ). Slash places a Boss GE-7, a 7-band EQ pedal, before his Marshall amp. This technique is similar to placing a Wah pedal before the amp's preamp distortion and leaving the Wah pedal positioned part-way down, sometimes mentioned as "fixed wah," (pre-distortion EQ), along with adjusting the amp's tone controls (post-distortion EQ).
  
• And then use my rack compressor & either built in Amp verb/delay/chorus or find the simplez in my Quadraverb 2 which is not a cheap unit. Nice thing is it's technology is dedicated towards time based effects instead of trying to have a million features.
  
• I've also dreaded changing strings on my Ibanez because of the supposedly great locking tremolo system which will drive one to 5150 status quickly. I was often puzzled by how whammy monsters such as Vai, Satch, Eddie, etc. can go so long in a show without going out of tune. I asked myself that just this morning. And today I read this in that article that I didn't see before:
  "GP: Do you put new strings on every night? EVH: Yeah, Fender 150XLs. I stretch them to death. With that new Rose thing, I boil the strings so they stretch, because if you just put them on and clamp it down, the strings stretch out on the guitar. I just take a pack and let it boil for 20 minutes in the hot water. And then I dry them in the sun, because otherwise they rust. But I only use them one night anyway, so who cares if they rust?"

So can I have an A+ now teacher? Strange thing is that I've done all this looking about & such & I haven't even gotten an amp out or changed any strings yet on me electrics. I did change my acoustic strings last weekend though. Now I'll go buy, boil, & sun soak some electric strings & see how they, & I do. Laff.

Untils later comes, turn it up to simplicity.