Do you find - as you get older......

[trag-o-caster]

..... that you want to use less and less distortion on your tone? Or is that just me?

I used to try and get that Jeff Beck/Jimi Hendrix BIG MONSTER ROARING sound. Now, I want to sound like Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys.

Jeez - should I cut my hair too?

[Jakedog]

Well, when I first started playing, I had to have gain, gain, and more gain. I was always looking for ways to get MORE DISTORTION!!!!!

Nowadays, not so much. As I grew as a player, I got less and less into shred gods, and more and more into guys like Mike Cambell and Dan Vickrey. I don't think I'll ever get rid of the dirt entirely, but there certainly is a whole lot less of it these days. I use two TS-9's in my rig (the only effects I use), and I'll bet big money that even with both of them on at the same time I'm using less gain than most folks.

As far as your hair, have you seen Frampton lately? Tone, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with the length of your locks.


Jake

[lenny]

cut the hair!
mine is falling out on its own, so that choice is easier for me
and yes, i was just noticing yesterday, how i can do a lot with less distortion these days. and i still think i can make it sound just as good and raunchy..
i prefer to think of it as improving my guitar skill, but yea you're prolly right we're gettin old

[trag-o-caster]

(Hee hee) I'm currently sportin' the "Samson Tone" - and I'm not talking about the wireless system!

Have you noticed that, when hooking up two overdrives, that it doesn't really offer more drive - it just seems to smooth things out. I used to use a cheap TS5 in conjunction with a Rat pedal, and it was surprisingly smooth. Nowhere NEAR as outrageous as one might think.

[dean]

You are assuming that we're getting older - that's not necessarily true. Some of us have decided to deny time. That said, I think the better you get, the less you need external distortion to make the sound you want to hear.

Dean

[J-man]

Originally Posted by dean

You are assuming that we're getting older - that's not necessarily true. Some of us have decided to deny time.

Quite right, mentally I've been getting younger since about my 10th birthday! :D

That currently makes me 5, almost 4, hey looking at it that way actually makes me a good guitarist!!

[gls500]

I'd have to agree with that.

For the last 8 years or so, I've only been playing with a "clean" non-master volume amp just past the point of breakup anyway.

Sometimes when I do kick in a pedal or two, I'm amazed at how well it covers up slop! Maybe that's why I felt like I haven't been getting much better in years - less distortion to hide behind!

[petebradt]

Originally Posted by trag-o-caster

..... that you want to use less and less distortion on your tone? Or is that just me?

I used to try and get that Jeff Beck/Jimi Hendrix BIG MONSTER ROARING sound. Now, I want to sound like Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys.

Jeez - should I cut my hair too?

I want natural tube overdrive but distortion? No way.

[TheGoodTexan]

I find that I have a totally different character, depending on which guitar I pick up. Teles and Strats, yup, fairly clean to moderate overdrive. And yeah, I have found that I like it cleaner now than I used to, but I think that's more of a function of me getting better as a player, and needing less OD to cover up my mistakes.

BUT - when I pick up my Les Paul - I'm a pure rock guy...getting that modern Billy Gibbons tone. Thick and rich, lots of gain, harmonics galore. Since I don't have a gig right now that demands that tone, I really don't get to do it much any more - just at the house.

[Dana]

As a kid in the 80's I used all rack gear. I had an ADA MP-1 Preamp with gobs of distortion/overdrive into a Marshall Poweramp into a Laney 4 x 12". At the time I thought it sounded great. Then one day a friend said to me "I can't hear your guitar at all. Get rid of that rack stuff and get yourself a TUBE amp and you'll sound way better."
So, I dumped all that stuff and got a Mesa Boogie Mark 3, then a Marshall halfstack. A few years ago when I started really getting into Jazz I began using black face fender reissues. When I need a little distortion I simply use a Blues Driver. So yes, I've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other.

[Joel Terry]

Originally Posted by trag-o-caster

..... that you want to use less and less distortion on your tone? Or is that just me?

I used to try and get that Jeff Beck/Jimi Hendrix BIG MONSTER ROARING sound. Now, I want to sound like Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys.

Jeez - should I cut my hair too?

Actually, Tim, I guess that's true for me, except I started doing this when I was about 16. This was during the confluence of my main guitar influences, Andy Summers, Alex Lifeson, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, who were all notable, especially during this particular time, for getting really nice tones without a lot of distortion. My style at that time was basically the coalescence of their styles, with several other musicians' styles "peppering the dish," so to speak.

In fact, my first distortion pedal was a BOSS DS-1 when I was 12 in 1980; then, I ramped up to the BOSS HM-2 Heavy Metal when it came out in late 1983. However, when I was about 16 or 17, it was then that I first realized that the Heavy Metal pedal was actually getting in the way of the Summers/Lifeson/SRV tones I wanted to emulate. So, I took the Heavy Metal pedal out of my pedalboard and replaced it with two BOSS OD-2 Turbo Overdrive pedals so that I could get overdrive in varying and manageable degrees. Now, I use two BOSS OD-3 Overdrive pedals, if and when I need those degrees of overdrive.

I can fully relate, Tim. But--at least for me--it doesn't have as much to do with sheer age as much as it has to do with experience, and trial and error. I've simply learned over the years that I don't have to use a distortion pedal to get a huge, driven sound. Or a huge sound, period.

Joel

[Scotland]

I generally play as clean as a whistle. I prefer to hear what my guitar sounds like rather than what it sounds like distorted. I like just a little overdrive sometimes too so that I hear both sounds together.

[eryque]

Actually, when I was younger, I wanted a totally clean tone. It always sounded good in my living room, but never good on stage. So now I'm learning that a little overdrive is a fun thing, and sometimes I crank it up to where it's totally saturated just because I'm turning into a 29 year-old juvenile delinquent and things like that are cool to me again.

Lenny, you have only one option: shave your head!

[J-man]

Nobodies making ME cut my hair! I can now tie mine back. 8)

[div]

abosfigginlutely! It really depends on the music you play- some kinds of music can't be played without alot of distortion/overdrive, others can't be played with it.

As a youngster I always played with maximum distortion (& humbuckers too) but I was playing hard/ punk rock. Now I'm doing country/ rockabilly & I play mostly clean.

I guess I'm more interested these days in imitating Roy Nichols than Johnny Thunders.

[Twang]

Originally Posted by div

abosfigginlutely! It really depends on the music you play- some kinds of music can't be played without alot of distortion/overdrive, others can't be played with it.

I abosfigginlutely agree.

It totally depends on the style of music I feel like playin'.

I just got my first humbucking guitar so I'm playing with a little more distortion than I have been in the past few years. Can't seem to wipe the smile off my 40 year old face.

Good times.

[Robin Nahum]

I have been a guitar-into-amp person (okay - with a bit of reverb) since I bought my first Tele back in 1997 and started jazz lessons. However, in recent months, I have become more interested in additional effects. I put this down to curiosity arising from listening to my previous teacher, who was a fusion player, and Bill Frisell.

I now have a compressor, chorus and delay, and an overdrive on the way.

I must say that I am not quite sure why I am doing this when a basic setup already offers plenty of variety.

[bri]

At age 64 I now play totally clean with only a bit of delay. I'm basically a country player and I'm only interested in the true Fender tones I get out of my Nashville Tele or my 50th AmDlx Strat and my Blues Jr amp.
Brian

[Ringo]

The funny thing to me is that when I listen to old Cream, Jimi , Deep Purple etc now, it doesn't seem that distorted, not like the high gain stuff that you hear now.
I guess becausethey didn't have master volume amps , just cranked up the amp and used the guitar to control the overall volume.

I do know that tastes change, I went through a phase a few years ago trying out fuzz pedals trying to find the sound in my head, never did find it. The old Univox Superfuzz, Big Muffs etc.. that I used to have just don't sound good to me any more, and most of the boutique pedals didn't sound much better, I've about given up on fuzz pedals.

I go for more of an on the edge of amp feedback type distortion really, I've always liked that tone.
I dig good clean tones a lot though, always have.
For me my DR , or my Bassman head with a couple of pedals gets me all the distortion I need , which isn't as much as it was years ago....

[stantheman]

I fall into The Good Texan's philosophy. When I play a Fender I want the clarity but when I play a Les Paul or
a Flying V like the kid in the Twisted Sister Video.....
"I wanna ROCK". With holler bodies and semi-holler (I've
been catching up with 0le Fuzzy postings) it'll vary depending on the genre. The only time I really dig the
distortion on Fenders is with Tweeds or the Plexi setting
on my GT-2 through the old 70's Peavey Classic.

[bluesy]

I like finding/using instruments that have good natural sustain so I don't have to use distortion to enhance sustain. I prefer using overdrive is to bring out the harmonic content of chords and add a little "hair" and fullness to single notes. I'm a firm believer that the guitar should rule the distortion, not the other way around.

[trag-o-caster]

Actually I think I've got it figured out now.

Each new crop of younger players uses more distortion than the preceeding generation, making it seem like us old fogies are playing cleaner, and cleaner. So, it's really just an illusion.

Keep in mind too that SOME peoples version of "Clean" means the first two Van Halen albums.

"Just For Men" + Big Muff Pi = Eternal Youth!

[TT100]

Yes. Right now I'm amazed at what my Tele and LP sound like clean. Really makes me pay attention to my (ahem) technique.

All this might come to an end soon though as I'm waiting to build a Tweed Deluxe clone.



btw, I'm 46.

TT100

[Rob Rent]

and the more folks try to educate me the more annoyed and confused I get....I always wanted to have the equipment that gave me the best sound I could get...I'm 47 and when I was playing....oh...for lack of a better term "power blues" in the 70's....Savoy Brown, Rory Gallagher, the Allman Brothers and older cool blues, country and Rockabilly stuff we found by accident I didn't know anything about effects...and neither did the folks I hung with....except the Echoplex...I thought THAT was the coolest thing ever until 1978 when I saw Danny Gatton playing through a Leslie....for a time I even used I Peavy steel guitar amp because it was loud as Hell and CLEAR...I like when an amp is being worked to where it starts to break up a little...but I've neever understood when folks talk about "good" or "clean" distortion....I've never understood guys who would buy an expensive guitar, run it through a really good amp and add that damn pedal that makes it sound like a rig they could have had for thousands less....perhaps I've been old all along....my hair just caught up over the last 12 years or so....