What amp should I use to get a warm Pat Martino sound out of a solid body ?

[Greentone]

I strung a Telecaster with 12-52 flats and had no problem getting a Pat-tone with a Polytone. Flats are important, IMO.

[Cunamara]

I know that they are similar devices but jazz oriented like the Fender Jazzmaster Ultralight or the Acoustic Image Clarus ... but can we get a jazz sound out of them with a solid body ?

Jazz sound ? Well I'm digging mainly a Pat Martino sound, but I also like Wes, Grant Green and many others sounds !

Well, Pat Martino got the Pat Martino sound from a variety of solid bodies! He's played Les Pauls, a Parker Fly, an Abe Rivera custom, etc. To approximate the PM sound:

1. Use the neck pickup.
2. Use very heavy strings (he plays 14s or 15s).
3. Pick hard.
4. Roll the treble way down.
5. Use a clean amp (Pat lately uses an Acoustic Image Clarus through cabs provided by the venue).
6. Master his conversion to the minor concept.

[Bobalou]

Well, Pat Martino got the Pat Martino sound from a variety of solid bodies! He's played Les Pauls, a Parker Fly, an Abe Rivera custom, etc. To approximate the PM sound:

1. Use the neck pickup.
2. Use very heavy strings (he plays 14s or 15s).
3. Pick hard.
4. Roll the treble way down.
5. Use a clean amp (Pat lately uses an Acoustic Image Clarus through cabs provided by the venue).
6. Master his conversion to the minor concept.

What he said^^^Also his Benadetto signature model guitar.

Please excuse me for bumpin' such an old thread.

There are lots of videos of PM playing live floating around the internets. If he's not playing through a JC120 he's playing through his AI Clarus head into, of all things, a 4x12 Mesa Boogie cab provided by the venue. I read an interview of him a few years ago where he said he liked the sound of those cabs. Mesa Boogie really only makes two varieties of 4x12 cab in terms of the speakers in them. The speakers are either 4 Celestion V30's or 2 C90's and 2 V30's. I don't know which one but if I had to guess I would say it's the Mesa Road King variety with 2 C90's and 2 V30's, but that's just a guess it could be the 4 V30 model that he uses. Put all this together and that's his whole rig. The rest is his magical musical genius fingers.

[christianm77]

Get heavier strings...

[christianm77]

BTW, Pat said in a recent thread at allaboutjazz.com that his first string is a .015, he then, as I recall, uses a .017 2nd and the rest of the set is like a trypical Jazz light set (something like .024-.052). He mentioned that he may at some time go "back" to a heavy set, but feels comfortable with this hybrid one for now.

This is basically the set up I use.

It feels much lighter than you’d think.

Peter Bernstein does a similar thing.

[christianm77]

I think what these hybrid sets are getting towards is balancing the tension across the string set.

TI basically gauge their jazz sets like this. I wish more would!

[ugarte]

One thing to remember with many SS amps is that the tone stack doesn't work the same as with old-school tube amps where BMT just effectively cuts or shelves frequencies. On some SS amps turning up a bass mid or treble will actually do other things actively, it takes some getting used to, my practice amp is a Yamaha THR 10 and it took me couple months to figure out that the tone controls work way different than on my tube amps depending on the "voice" chosen on the Yamaha, but once you find a sweet spot you can save to a preset forever.

Its hard to believe you can't get a Martino-ish tone with the PRS neck pickup and the tone control rolled off. One solution that might be cost effective is an EQ pedal.

[Alter]

Besides the amp, a compressor pedal works wonders at manipulating the attack of a solid body into that if a semi or hollow one. If you don't mind using one that is. Apart from that, a lot of the sound is the picking technique he uses, a heavy pick, and really heavy strings (used up to an 18 for the first string when he was younger ).

[jzucker]

which era pat martino? He used fender amps for the first 5 albums. He didn't switch to solid state until after his aneurysm.