Gain Structure - where's my sound?

**VitalSigns** · 08-06-2022, 03:28 PM

I don't know if any of you have this problem - I get a great room sound at home and recording, a fat Pat Martino type
sound with individual notes which don't sustain beyond their welcome. At louder club volumes the sustain is up
and I don't get the same fat staccato - more like a blues sound. I have a couple of Gibsons - both are 490-R;
a Seymour Duncan Classic pre; into an Ameson (small UK maker) SS amp into an EV cab. I use the same
gain settings on the pre + amp with the volume up a bit on the guitar and amp. I thought it was the gain which
produces the amount of overdrive. One difference about the amp is that the loop experienced quite a lot of
interference, so the Amp maker changed the loop to post-fader, which means the loop controls the amount
of gain rather than the amp gain - a bit weird but you get used to it. Bit frustrating - I play the notes I would
play, but it doesn't sound like me!

**garybaldy** · 08-06-2022, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by VitalSigns

I don't know if any of you have this problem - I get a great room sound at home and recording, a fat Pat Martino type
sound with individual notes which don't sustain beyond their welcome. At louder club volumes the sustain is up
and I don't get the same fat staccato - more like a blues sound. I have a couple of Gibsons - both are 490-R;
a Seymour Duncan Classic pre; into an Ameson (small UK maker) SS amp into an EV cab. I use the same
gain settings on the pre + amp with the volume up a bit on the guitar and amp. I thought it was the gain which
produces the amount of overdrive. One difference about the amp is that the loop experienced quite a lot of
interference, so the Amp maker changed the loop to post-fader, which means the loop controls the amount
of gain rather than the amp gain - a bit weird but you get used to it. Bit frustrating - I play the notes I would
play, but it doesn't sound like me!

I find that playing with a band at higher volume I need to take the guitar volume right down.

**Herbie** · 08-06-2022, 04:58 PM

Originally Posted by VitalSigns

I don't know if any of you have this problem - I get a great room sound at home and recording, a fat Pat Martino type
sound with individual notes which don't sustain beyond their welcome. At louder club volumes the sustain is up
and I don't get the same fat staccato - more like a blues sound. I have a couple of Gibsons - both are 490-R;
a Seymour Duncan Classic pre; into an Ameson (small UK maker) SS amp into an EV cab. I use the same
gain settings on the pre + amp with the volume up a bit on the guitar and amp. I thought it was the gain which
produces the amount of overdrive. One difference about the amp is that the loop experienced quite a lot of
interference, so the Amp maker changed the loop to post-fader, which means the loop controls the amount
of gain rather than the amp gain - a bit weird but you get used to it. Bit frustrating - I play the notes I would
play, but it doesn't sound like me!

I don’t know about gain stages but sounds like You have too much mids there, or lows – or both. 490 humbuckers are known for their mids.

Making Yourself heard with a darkish guitar sound with a band is not easy. You need a lot of volume to be heard, but then Your guitar feedbacks or Your guitar is so loud that other instruments are not heard.

That’s why people like to add a bot treble to the mixture, You will be heard without excessive volumes.

The live sound is always a question about the room too. Every room needs different eq’ing.

I don’t know how Pat Martino did it. Did he play loud?

**VitalSigns** · 08-06-2022, 08:19 PM

I don't have the guitar volume very high - when I record DI I find "4" is optimum. Altho' I'm
told my sound is dark, similarly the tone is set to a mid position and I leave the amp EQ flat.
I prefer a flat EQ as I've found that at band volume certain runs can disappear - when I last
saw Pat Martino that seemed to be true of his sound. I think the gains I have in the loop,
like the Lexicon rack input wouldn't produce overdrive, but the Seymour Duncan preamp
(which I have the gain low, about 9 o clock) and the guitar volume seem likely suspects -
I'll have to experiment.

**st.bede** · 08-06-2022, 08:32 PM

I am not following a 100%... and I am not really useful. I love pat martino but not so much his tone. I like things brighter with a little mid breakup. ...

however you mentioned a piece of rack gear: lexicon. I do know, that you have to match levels going into gear.

If you hit too low, you often end up rising the noise floor level.

If it is too hot, there will be distortion and typically not the type we like, but the depends on the gear. With digital stuff, I would not want to hit it too hard (unless it is designed to be emulating something that is supposed to be hit hard).

Not sure if this is helpful.

**rpjazzguitar** · 08-06-2022, 09:04 PM

Hard to diagnose from that description. I assume you've tried every combination of gain structure, but you can't get loud enough with your usual at-home settings and tone. Then, no matter how you try to increase gain, the tone changes.

One thing I've tried with small amps whose tone I liked, is to run the signal through something else. My LJ has a line out, and I can get the LJ tone, more or less, through a powered speaker that way.

Another thing is to mic a small amp and then run the mic into something more powerful. I've tried other guitar amps, the powered speaker and a kb amp. The mic'ed sound (Sennheiser 409 or 609, can't recall - the $100 one) is pretty accurate. Both these methods can work, but what I actually do if I need more volume is just run two amps from the L and R outputs of my pedal board.

**st.bede** · 08-07-2022, 12:19 PM

After having read the OP’s post a few more times, I wonder if what is happing is: turning up the volume on the amp for stage, is introducing some distortion. The distortion is a: creating some compression, thus adding sustain, and b: the distortion is making it sound more bluesy. (By adding some harmonic content through intermodulation... that is typically what we want).

It could be, you just need an amp with more headroom.

You could also do what rpjazzguitar suggested.

One other possibility is to add another speaker cab, if you amp has a speaker extension out line. There are good things and bad things about that, however sometimes that is all that is needed. It would be best to test that idea first (at stage volumes), before buying a cab.

(Sometimes I use a typical pedal comp, that way the notes hit more evenly and that can sometimes let me turn up the amp, but retain enough clean. That of course would not work in your case, because you are also trying to avoid sustain).