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Folks,
I have been messing around with digital modeling a lot lately. I have been wondering what you think helps a guitar tone have that warm feeling as opposed to sterile and metallic.
In my experience, have the treble rolled off a little, and cutting back on the volume output from the guitar helps keep that "icepick" sound away.
I also read something somewhere about the science of it and something about clipping of the sine waves.
I would sure appreciate any thoughts you might have and any tips! Thanks.Last edited by AlsoRan; 01-18-2018 at 10:29 PM.
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01-17-2018 09:32 PM
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I play a Tele with fingers+nails. When the tone knob is way down, it sounds sweet and warm.
About later tweaks - the less is needed the better, always.
edit: But not lush. Started eyeballing some jazz guitars like Sauron for that ring.Last edited by emanresu; 01-17-2018 at 10:27 PM.
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You brought up something I missed, and that is the effect of the type of pick, fingers, or fingernails on tone.
Originally Posted by emanresu
So true.
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I played classical guitar so my preferred average sound is "round" anyway. Can't always nail it though. Pun was not intended Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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For me, getting a warm tone is about 1) a strong fundamental tone, achieved by picking/plucking as close as possible to a twelve-fret distance above the fretted note; 2) a subtle even-order harmonic enrichment via tube non-linearities; and 3) a dash of soft-knee compression from the same source, i.e. sweet-spot tube drive. I am currently experimenting with SS emulation of said effects with a Joyo American Sound. I have plans to upgrade to a SansAmp California Blonde. In the interim I have a bunch of amps to work with, including a TV front Tweed Deluxe (octal pre-amp, field-coil speaker). I have also found that pick thickness and contour have a significant effect, and have re-shaped piles of picks to get "that tone." For those looking for a quick start, Dunlop Jazz IIs (the black ones), work well right out of the bag.
Last edited by citizenk74; 01-18-2018 at 04:19 PM. Reason: phrasing
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My take on "warmth" is a preponderance of even-order harmonics supported by a fatness in the lower midrange. Is there a digital even-harmonics filter of sorts and a lower midrange boost digital switch?
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Warmth, it's a very subjective term. Tim Lerch has one of my favorite tones which is bright and warm, imo:
Last edited by fep; 01-18-2018 at 12:51 PM.
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Warmth to me is another one of those things that is a sum of all the components, the amp, guitar, and most important the guitarist's technique. I would say to work on tone practice on acoustic guitar, focus on how both hands are working to produce a full ringing note. Once you got it down on acoustic then grab your electric and start dialing it in.
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I think what warmth means to many is the onset of distortion. Not yet really distorted, but getting close. It's an amp thing, and it can be done, to varying degrees of quality, by many pedals, and by driving tube amps. The Joyo American Sound seems to work fairly well, as long as the drive knob is turned way to the left. I'm ambivalent about the voice knob, and change that setting a lot, depending on the guitar and the room. But mostly I just leave it off, and crank the amp just a little. The AI Clarus warms up slightly when the volume is at or above noon and the master volume is backed off. A reverb pedal also seems to help with warmth, as long as it's just below the level where it's perceptible. All these are introducing very low levels of distortion into the signal.
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In guitarese, "warm" = "i like it."
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On my Clarus 2r I find it warmest if I have the master volume up fairly high (about 2:30) and use the preamp gain knob as my volume knob (about 9:00 or so). EQ depends on the guitar and the room, but I tend to roll the highs down to 9:00, keep the mids between 11:00 and 1:00, and the bass around noon give or take. Balancing enough bass versus getting feedback on the lower strings is a challenge. Originally Posted by sgosnell
Reverb helps a lot in fattening and warming the sound IME. I recently got a TC HOF2 and have been very please with "room" reverb the decay knob dimed, the tone knob at 11:00, short pre-delay and the level up enough to just hear the reverb. Warm and transparent echoes. Basically it just about duplicates the quasi-reverb I hear in my archtop when playing acoustically- that's what sounds best and most natural to me.
To go back to the OP's question. Warmth to my ears is a round top end, somewhat lower mids and a fairly strong bass. Maybe a bit of tube overtones added to fatten up the sound and makes the edges a little fuzzy. And after all that work to get that tone, it's almost useless onstage because it just disappears against the onslaught of horns, cymbals and drums. Warm in the living room tends to sound like farts in a bathtub at the gig.
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Citizen74 harped on something I've never heard spoken of here, but was a CRITICAL lesson when I was taking lessons. I need to return to it as refresher.
He mentioned the importance of ") a strong fundamental tone, achieved by picking/plucking as close as possible to a twelve-fret distance above the fretted note".
NO KIDDING. Also played legato (the exercise I remember was 4 consecutive notes played with a pick as close as possible to a the fret above the fretted note played legato.
Many people only understand legato as an ascending or descending slur (or in really lazy guitar as non-musician speak, "hammer and pull off"). I mean legato in the musical sense played with a pick which absolutely minimizes the sound of the silence in between notes.
Actually the complete exercise was 4 consecutive notes played with a pick as close as possible to a the fret above the fretted note played legato in which each left hand finger successively plants on the fingerboard.
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So if playing in the low register, you're picking over the high end of the fretboard? Sounds strange to me.
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Yeah, I don't know of anyone who does this in practice. In theory, the lower the tension at the point of attack, the mellower the tone. But I don't pick over the 15th fret when I play a G. I tend to pick over the neck pickup, and I understand that the tension at that point changes depending on what note I'm fretting. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Tubes get hot when you turn them on, so using a tube amp, is to me, the most obvious way to warm up your sound.
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Less pithy answer:
One understand of warmth is "Ratio of low - mid frequencies to harmonics".
On a guitar that usually means something like boosting 100Hz - 600Hz, or decreasing the frequencies above that slightly.
One person's warm is another person's muddy. 100Hz - 600Hz is a large range. You want to be careful not to over saturate.
Compression also works because it gives the impression of notes being more even with one another. Compression can really sound bad when it's too noticeable, but I've found that Manhattan compression (i.e. blended with dry) using side-chain equalization to filter the low frequencies from the limiter really helps a lot to get a more desirable effect out of compression. Using this, you get less pumping sound while being able to make your trebles sound thicker.
Using an OD with the gain at 0.001 is a good trick. A lot of EQ pedals naturally have a frown-faced EQ, and many of them naturally apply some sort of low pass filter. Metallic sounds occupy a very high range of the frequency spectrum, so reducing those high frequencies can really help get rid of any harshness.
If you just use EQ and compression, you can get a very congested and boxy and artificial sound, though, because you're removing high frequencies that sound natural. If you want to restore some of the organicness, you can run a fully wet reverb track on the original with a less severe low-pass and then mix that in with the compressed/EQed track. Adding very subtle delay can also help restore some of the naturalness to the sound.
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I don’t think it’s to do with tension (is the tension in the string different in different places? not too sure about that). It’s more to do with harmonic nodes and overtones etc. Those at the midpoint of the string produce the fullest tone. Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
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Try to bend up 2 half steps at the 12th fret. Now try to bend up 2 half steps on the 1st fret. The tension is different. Originally Posted by grahambop
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A lot of warmth is in the cabinet, too, folks. Play your best stuff, all the right settings, and send it to a terrible cabinet with a mis-matched, inappropriate speaker, and you won't get warmth. Send a basically flat signal with very little complexity to a really nicely voiced cabinet with a well chosen speaker, and you'll have 90% of what you're looking for.
We all work so hard picking our guitars, our pre-amps... but so much is in the speaker and the cabinet. All our effort can collapse at the point of a poor speaker/cabinet.
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So true. We bought a Fender Hotrod blindly for the guitar class. It didn't like any guitar of our own nor our students. Mostly sounded like farts - with very cheapo guitars with humbuckers or whatever. Until one student got a semi-hollow something (I wasn't into brands and models, so dunno what it was exactly) - this was incredible match. I was in awe. Sweet fat full heavy drive, omg. And the guitar was bought new from a shop, not too expensive. Amp+guitar=1 single instrument it seems. The matching(every component) is probably more important than buying something real expensive.
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Cunamara, i've tried your method, and I prefer mine. Not that yours is wrong, I just prefer the sound the way I wound up doing it, and I've tried most every combination I can think of. I also tend to leave all the tone controls flat in addition, although with some guitars in some places I roll the treble back just a little, and the Brite knob up or down just a little. I adjust as necessary, but mostly I like the tone controls flat. I also leave them near flat on my Little Jazz, with the treble down sometimes. It all depends on the guitar, of course. And I have the original Clarus 1, which may be different from your 2R.
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Increasing the tension in a string raises the pitch. Which of course is also what bending the string does (by increasing the tension). If the tension in the open unfretted string was higher near the nut than in the midpoint, surely the open string would sound different notes in those 2 places! Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
I think the reason it’s harder to bend near each end is simply that you are trying to put more tension into the string near one of its fixed points. At the midpoint it’s easier because the increase in tension is distributed along the whole string.
But I’m no scientist!
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Neck pickup
Fat strings
Use your thumb ....
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NSJ ....Good point re legato in the true sense ....that can lead to feeling/hearing a series of notes as maybe warmer.
Certainly the opposite is so...for me anyway...staccato notes feel/sound more urgent and by extension harsher.
Both of those ways of playing are on a spectrum and are used by the greats on all instruments.
Re picking at the octave above a given note on the fingerboard ....I discovered that during my decades as a classical
guitar player....and I used it, very occasionally, to get a hollow sound, I called the "bassoon sound" More as an effect really.
I used to play a lot of very contemporary music where pieces would often have a page or so of special sounds the
composer wanted to hear with notation for each specific effect. So that's likely is where I picked that up.
Perhaps your teacher was wanting to get you to build the ability to pick at a very precise point along the string,
.....a useful skill.
Takes a minute to get to where you're easily "shadowing" the LH an 8ve higher with the RH...like first order harmonics.
Citizen 74....Jazz II ! .....Dohh.....a good call...I just dug one out of my string and pick drawer.
I already [mostly] like my sound using a Jazz III but tends to be a little harsh if I'm not careful on the top strings.
The JazzII smooths the sound immediately.
I have to use light strings these days due to LH finger tip numbness...bummer....used to use 13-53 chromes.
Now it's 10-46 ....yep... An aside but has anyone else tried Rotosound strings? ....they are the warmest nickel plated strings
I've come across. It's easy enough to get pure nickel wound strings...but I can't get on with their lack of magnetic quality.
And...I swear...the Roto 10/13/17's are the warmest plain strings I've ever heard!
So... my recipe for a warm tone given the circumstances I have to deal with : Rotosound 10-46...JazzII...medium capacitance
cable [not one of those "hi fi" jobs]... Fender Concert amp ....bass on 1-2, treble 2-3 ...[mid is set at a nice point internally..no knob]
The guitar is a Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion III with the supplied 490 pickups. That's it.
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So I take it you never had the pleasure of spending hard-earned dough and scores of irreplaceable hours of your life on an Electro-Harmonix "Octave Divider" back in the day when EH was still US-based. The Octave Divider was an early analog device the size of a mini-van that could, under certain conditions provide an octave below and/or above your fretted note. The conditions included, but were not limited to, the phases of the moon and tides, sacrifices to one of the more obscure Chthonic deities, and cleanly dividing the vibrating string length into two equal pieces. If you wanted this not-cheap thing to work (and that was kinda the point), that's what you did. You checked the tide tables and apologized to the goat and you found the center of the string. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Oh, and you bought nine-volt batteries by the gross, 'cause it used two at a time and ate 'em up fast. Other than that, it was pretty much plug-'n-play.
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When I was taught classical guitar, my teacher was big on tone colour changes and would write suggestions in the score using the musical (Italian) terms i.e. tasto (= near the fingerboard) or ponti (= near the bridge). Tasto is the warm, full sound as already mentioned. Ponti is a harsher, metallic sound. And of course all points in between are available.
The best exponent where you can hear these tone colour changes is Julian Bream.
So I think I have always been aware of this factor in tone production.
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