How to get that addictive woody response from the bass strings

[Oscar67]

To my ears the best clean(-ish) electric guitar sound is something like this (I’d love to hear more of the wound strings but couldn’t find a good vid to illustrate what I mean):

My tone goal is to bring out that dry-ish, stringy, woody, slightly percussive quality from the wound strings while keeping the treble strings sounding warm. That’s a heck of a narrow tonal window. Listening to Jack Ruch, there’s a lot of midrange and treble in his tone. Without that, the bass strings just won’t give up the goods in my experience. Jack keeps the treble under control by using a very, very, very light touch on the plain strings. He caresses the instrument like a newborn baby. That’s how I do it as well (not that I’m anywhere near Jack’s level, mind you). It works, but if I get carried away for a moment and hit the plain strings too hard then the treble spike is like putting a battery on my front teeth.

Mostly I hear this kind of tone from ES3x5-style instruments. I had a beautiful Gibson Custom 335 reissue once but sold it because the neck pickup was just too dark, so I had to put way too much treble in the signal to make bass strings sound good. And then of course the treble strings would bite my head off. And I couldn’t go heavier than 10s or it would become total mud. Couldn’t get a balance on that guitar. Part of me still misses it. Since then my thinline of choice is a PRS 594HB-II and that guitar is just so much more transparent than a Gibson. That openness and transparency means I can put 11s on and don’t have to dial in as much treble to make the bass strings sound clear and woody. There’s zero mud.

In short, my recipe is like Jack’s: put in the mids and treble needed to get that tone out of the bass strings and then caress the plain strings to keep things sounding warm.

Would be interested to hear of other recipes to get there. It such a great tone and worth pursuing.

[Tal_175]

The dichotomy of dry, woody, percussive, mid-forward vs chimy, zingy, mellow mids, overtone rich, scooped exists in all guitar construction styles.

Laminate maple vs carved spruce archtops, mahogany vs rosewood flattops, alder (mahogany, maple) vs light ash solidbodies. It comes down to the overtone content I think.

You'll notice this in ES 175's too. You get thunky and percussive wound strings but the treble strings can get a bit too forward. Sometimes it's a feature (like having a boost pedal when you solo). But you can cut the mids if you want more balance in my opinion.

[GuyBoden]

IMO, the ideal would be a carved spruce acoustic flat top, with a very, very thin top and very, very thin finish. (My preference would be oil finish.)

The larger the body the more acoustic tone. So, a Jumbo sized flat top.

Semi-Hollow body guitars are lacking this acoustic quality, but have other very sort after qualities.

[Oscar67]

IMO, the ideal would be a carved spruce acoustic flat top…

It’s long ago already, but I went through an intense flat-top phase for about a decade. That’s all Tommy E’s fault. I saw him play back in his club days, sweaty, up close and personal and it was kind of like a seeing-the-Beatles-on-the-Ed-Sullivan-show moment. I came out of that period as a much better player but hating flat top guitars. I can’t stand the sound of them anymore and that’s all because of how the plain strings sound. Nails on a blackboard. But yes, the bass strings can sound nice on a flap top but I prefer the archtop sound and I really prefer a good thinline through a good amp.

[ruger9]

This is the age-old "problem" IMO.... getting the EQ right so the bridge pickup is not too shrill (for those of us who USE bridge pickups), while the neck pickup is not too dark. And this problem gets amplified with any amount of gain you use. I have a few guitars that do it, accomplished through specific pickup choices, and/or slight electronic mods to the neck pickup wiring. It's sort of a "constant requirement" of mine, with any guitar I purchase.

With acoustics, I have found that the construction is 90% of the equation. Strings can help a little, but the GUITAR decides it's EQ and response, the strings don't.

BTW, if you haven't tried different pick materials, it's a worthy experiment. I have been finding in the last year or so that acrylic picks (V-Picks, altho String Joy also now makes them), do a GREAT job of bringing out the clarity in the wound strings, while preventing too much treble from the plain strings. I use 1.5mm V-Picks and I also just got some 1.5mm String Joys, and they are the same. The V-picks one is called the Fusion, the String Joy one is the one with the dagger on it.

[John A.]

I have to admit I don’t really understand terms like “woody” and “dry”, so can’t help on that front. But I do understand warm (more did-range), bright (more treble), scooped (less mids, balanced treble and bass), boomy (too much bass) and muddy (too much bottom and lower mids).

It sounds to me like you want warm on the treble strings”, but can’t get there without being boomy and muddy on the bass strings. IME, there are two factors that contribute to that: pickup and polepiece height imbalance, and to a degree the scooped nature of Fender style amps.

With my semi hollow, I address that by lowering the bass side of the pickup, and usually lowering the tone control slightly. At the amp, I adjust the tone controls on the amp to neutralize the scoop (i.e., cut bass and treble and raise mids).

Exactly how to do that varies from amp to amp. But the key is to understand that T M B knobs at 5 on the amp is not “flat” on a Fender style tone stack; it’s scooped. Flat on a Fender amp is B and T at 1 or 0. So start from there. If there’s no mid control, you increase mids by turning up the volume.

All that said, OP saying that using 10 gauge string sets makes the bass strings boomy/muddy, I’d look at putting lighter wound strings on the guitar, maybe also experiment with round vs flat vs something in between (e.g. roller wound).

[Tal_175]

Taylor's tone glossary matches my intuition for these terms. In particular, I associate the term "dry" with the lack of overtones.
Tone Terminology | Wood & Steel

[Christian Miller]

Adjust the pole pieces on your pickups?


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[docsteve]

In short, my recipe is like Jack’s: put in the mids and treble needed to get that tone out of the bass strings and then caress the plain strings to keep things sounding warm.

Wow, you actually care about the touch. You know what sound you want, you got the right guitar for you and play it the way you want it to sound like, you’re all set.

Tone is in the head, it just needs an instrument and fingers to come out.


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[RJVB]

IMO, the ideal would be a carved spruce acoustic flat top, with a very, very thin top

carved and flat seem a bit contradictory ... and "very, very thin" top can easily mean "banjo".

Thing is, the OP is clearly talking about electric tone, and I'm not ready to believe that there will be a systematic, identifying difference between the outputs of a given PU on a flattop vs. a similar sized archtop (as long as feedback is prevented, yada yada).

[DawgBone]

OP video wasn't really my fave tone but it was still a nice tone. Lots of 335 action below:

[Christian Miller]

One thing - the amount of low end you hear may also be less than the microphone.

Turn up an amplified instrument and the ear recovers more bass as it gets louder relative to other frequencies. This means you may find recordings of gigs sound brighter than you thought at the time. Someone a few rows back might be hearing a lot less low end ‘mud’ than you are.


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[Alter]

Loved the tone of the first 335 on the OP video, the second one not so much. I believe a tried and true recipe is, 335 and a good fender tube amp, soft picking and a healthy amount of gain, lots of mids. Also setting your pickups bass side a bit lower helps.

A big part of that sound is the delayed attack semi hollow guitars have, more so the full hollow ones. You can kind of simulate it with a compressor when using a solid body. The right picking technique plays a part too.

Generally when playing through a good tube amp is very easy to get close to that, it's the natural compression and warm tube thing, especially when the amp has a tube rectifier.

Also, tone wise, one of my basic quality criteria for a guitar is for it to have rich bass and mids, and not to sound too trebly. If the guitar doesn't have it to begin with, you can't do much about it..

[DawgBone]

Loved the tone of the first 335 on the OP video, the second one not so much. I believe a tried and true recipe is, 335 and a good fender tube amp, soft picking and a healthy amount of gain, lots of mids. Also setting your pickups treble side a bit lower helps.

A big part of that sound is the delayed attack semi hollow guitars have, more so the full hollow ones. You can kind of simulate it with a compressor when using a solid body. The right picking technique plays a part too.

Generally when playing through a good tube amp is very easy to get close to that, it's the natural compression and warm tube thing, especially when the amp has a tube rectifier.

Also, tone wise, one of my basic quality criteria for a guitar is for it to have rich bass and mids, and not to sound too trebly. If the guitar doesn't have it to begin with, you can't do much about it..

I never dial mids into my Twin cause it just makes it more bassy/muddy. I guess my sound is scooped in that regard but it sits in the mix well. With a good set of efficient speakers I think the woodiness/stringiness is enhanced. I usually have my treble side pole pieces raised up compared to bass side but it's all to taste and guided by how the guitar and amp seem to be interacting and sounding. I've become real particular about those pickup height and pole piece adjustments and spend a lot of time setting them up and then do tweaks as needed after that. Then you drop the guitar off at the tech and he sends them back adjusted the way they think is right, or what works for them. Grrrrr......

[pauln]

As mentioned, Fender blackface tube amp tone stacks are electronically flat when set to T=1 M=10 B=1 where "1" is complete rotation to minimum. The amp tones set to "1 10 1" are also using no attenuation, because raising the treble control is really attenuating the bass, and raising the bass control is really attenuating the treble because raising the treble or bass control "cross reduces" its opposite labeled function. Passive filters work that way and the resulting loss of level is called insertion loss. The tone stack is accompanied by its own dedicated gain stage (+20dB) to recover the insertion loss, and the control for that is the Middle tone control.

To put is simply, the treble and bass tone controls carve off the frequency range OPPOSITE of what the labels read. That carved frequency response has been attenuated by the filters, so the middle control pushes the WHOLE curve up to higher level to compensate.

Using "1 10 1" does two things; it prevents the situation of attempting to reverse the effects of the tone control settings on the guitar, and it makes full use of the dedicated gain stage. Both those things let the amp "breath" and sound amazing. Turning down the tones on the guitar and tuning "up" the tones on the amp to compensate just irritates the amp.

There is no muddy sound with the mid control on the amp full up, unless you have the bass control up, too. Try "1 10 1" for Fenders with three tone controls; for those with two controls (treble and bass) you should understand that your amp has the same tone stack circuit, except the potentiometer for the middle control is replaced with a fixed resister. Keep tones at "1 1" and keep your guitar tones wide open.

Unless your guitar tones are wide open and the amp is "1 10 1", you aren't actually hearing the sound of your guitar. Think about it; all the words used to describe desirable qualities like "woody", etc., those are subtle things, easily lost by cutting high frequencies at the guitar, then reshaping by cutting low frequencies at the amp (raising the treble control) to compensate.

I encourage anyone to try all this and listen. If you are confused about the tone controls behavior, or wonder about how they work in other amps, this link is to the Duncan Amps tone stack calculator page where you may download it and explore.

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[Jimmy Mack]

In the first video, I don't hear the wound strings at all. Yeah, he plays nice on the plain strings, I guess a lot of players restrict their soloing to those strings. But he's cutting out half of the guitar. Why?
I don't like his tone much esp. on the Collings.
I agree with the OP, that balancing out the plain and wound strings is a challenge. For me too, especially when playing a 335 in the middle switch position. Often times, one needs those strings to sing out as well.

[entresz]

Getting that happy medium between warm plain strings and clear wound strings is tricky but I found most of it comes from right hand technique.

Picking near the end of the fingerboard vs near the bridge can produce a huge range of tones even on a guitar with a single pickup.

I tend to pick closer to the bridge for the wound strings and closer to the neck for the plain strings. Likewise if I want a big 'twang' sound, I can hit the plain strings near the bridge.

Having pickups that are not muddy help too. I'm personally partial to big bobbin single coils and lower output unpotted humbuckers. It's easy to take away treble, but trying to un-muddy a muddy pickup is much harder.

[Oscar67]

As mentioned, Fender blackface tube amp tone stacks are electronically flat when set to T=1 M=10 B=1 where "1" is complete rotation to minimum. The amp tones set to "1 10 1" are also using no attenuation, because raising the treble control is really attenuating the bass, and raising the bass control is really attenuating the treble because raising the treble or bass control "cross reduces" its opposite labeled function.

That was very interesting, thanks!

[Oscar67]

I’m toying with the idea of a ToM bridge with metal saddles for the bass strings and nylon saddles for the treble strings. Never played a guitar with nylon saddles though.

[ruger9]

I’m toying with the idea of a ToM bridge with metal saddles for the bass strings and nylon saddles for the treble strings. Never played a guitar with nylon saddles though.

Over the years I've seen several electric players (Joe Bonamassa comes to mind) using nylon saddles to tame the brightness of the B/E strings.

[marcwhy]

As mentioned, Fender blackface tube amp tone stacks are electronically flat when set to T=1 M=10 B=1 where "1" is complete rotation to minimum. The amp tones set to "1 10 1" are also using no attenuation, because raising the treble control is really attenuating the bass, and raising the bass control is really attenuating the treble because raising the treble or bass control "cross reduces" its opposite labeled function. Passive filters work that way and the resulting loss of level is called insertion loss. The tone stack is accompanied by its own dedicated gain stage (+20dB) to recover the insertion loss, and the control for that is the Middle tone control.

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I encourage anyone to try all this and listen. ...

So I checked this out on one of my tube amps tonight, as I had never heard such suggestions. I've always been a "mid-level setting" guy, so something like this seemed so extreme. To my surprise and enjoyment -- it sounded great! I'll have to explore this with other amps/cabs/guitars -- thanks for the tips!

Marc

[pauln]

So I checked this out on one of my tube amps tonight, as I had never heard such suggestions. I've always been a "mid-level setting" guy, so something like this seemed so extreme. To my surprise and enjoyment -- it sounded great! I'll have to explore this with other amps/cabs/guitars -- thanks for the tips!

Marc

I only discovered it a few years ago. Someone playing an L5 sounded so fine I spent a whole weekend experimenting with one of my Twins and Strat for any possible combinations of control settings that could get anywhere close to that tone. The improbable result was guitar tones wide open and "1 10 1" on the amp. Some research provided information about what the counter intuitive guts of the gear were actually doing.
First thing I noticed in performance was that this setting is not as easy to hear while playing on stage; it more naturally blends into the mix of the rest of the band and sounds a little thud like and dull when standing on stage without the boosted high end which would otherwise provide the usual crispy clarity that makes for comfortable intelligibility of chord type recognition and confident reassurance of hearing what you're playing. However, it sounds right out in the audience. It took a few shows for my ears to get used to it.

[Alter]

It's the famous George Benson setting! Funny thing is it's still mid scooped compared to other mid heavy amps, but it's the flattest a Fender amp will go.

[djg]

It's the famous George Benson setting! Funny thing is it's still mid scooped compared to other mid heavy amps, but it's the flattest a Fender amp will go.

grant green. benson merely copied the settings.

[Herbie]

The ’woody’ in the sound is mystery to me but ’muddiness’ and ’clearer’ I understand.

My way with the muddy low strings is to lover the bass side of the pickup and rise the pole screws. It makes those strings clearer.