@New New Milo Alex Murphy In my mind the difference is between "dry" and "clean" tone: dry tone is totally unaffected tone (so it can be dirty from the amp but no pedals between guitar and amp) and "clean" is just an undistorted tone, so it can have effects and still be considered clean. Potayto, potahto I guess haha
Definitely my favourite Andy Rocker. Nothing can Marr my admiration of Mr Martin's ability to Buck the trends and bring The Clean to us, The Great Unwashed. Reminiscent of Sommers past...
Michael Furman I mean yeah it’s hard since you can’t really bend the G, but you can always do the bends on the B and high E on lower frets to compensate. It’s a whole different thing with a different mindset to have. Could lead to more creative results since it’s outside of most people’s comfort zones
Jack Pursel Why can’t you do bends on a flatwound G? How far up are you trying to bend it? I’ve used flats on a 25.5” Jazzmaster for years and never had a problem getting where I wanted with bends on any of the strings, and I don’t think I’m particularly tough. Maybe it’s a technique issue? When I started playing around 94 the guy that gave me lessons stayed on me about doing the “Hendrix thumb” and drilled into me how much less leverage you have for bends if your thumb isn’t around the “skunk stripe” area. Obviously it never stopped Jimi or thousands of others that bend with their thumb wrapped up by the low E, but it’s a thought for dealing with higher string tension 🤷🏻♂️
Michael Furman I use lighter gauge flatwounds, 10-48 so you can bend the G but I actually replace the G because the tone is better to my ears. The core of wound strings is the magnetic part so it has to be very thin if the G is wound. Just my opinion. That’s why there’s sometimes compensated pole pieces.
Been using a Keeley 4 knob comp for a few years now (the blend knob) is the secret sauce, every compressor should have one! A Wampler Equator EQ pedal allows me to cut and boost frequencies as desired, too bad it does not allow presets. That Source Audio looks interesting.
If you add a treble bleed you can do a lot more with your volume knobs on your guitar. I like on a four knob guitar to turn the volume down on my neck pickup and leave my bridge on 10. Three settings, three levels of clean.
I always judge a treble bleed by ear, I hate them on low output teles and strats (I personally find the spiky top end loss works very well), but they work so beautifully on high power humbuckers
Lucky for you youtube is full of him! Search Andy Martin and also ProGuitarShopDemos (his old job) for tons and tons of his great explanations and playing over the years.
I don't think I've ever seen Andy talk after playing in the same shot. A little jarring but cool. Nice video, good concept. I also really like stacking a light clean boost with a compressor and some analog delay on the tail end. Could play like that for days without even stacking fuzzes.
For clean tone on a particularly hot preamp, swapping 12ax7’s out with lower output compatible tubes works wonders. 12at7, 12au7, etc. As far as I know there is no risk to your amp and it makes for a much cleaner and milder preamp. The effect is similar to a low input demonstrated above. The downside is that you can’t get all the way up to the max gain that you had with the 12ax7 without swapping back. If you never crank the preamp, it might be an option worth considering. If you do, going with the low input or decreasing your input level in another way still allows much easier access to the full gain of your preamp. I have a 4x10 Hot Rod DeVille that was just too hot for my taste, so I put in a mix of 12au7 and 12ax7 and the max is still plenty hairy for me (and the “more drive” sounds MUCH better!) I honestly think the 4x10 HRDeVille would have sold better with this setup from the factory, and fender could have noted the option to swap in 12ax7s for the customers that wanted it.
I exclusively play on the 2nd input of the normal channel of a silver face Super Reverb. Might be the least used channel on that amp for most but I think it sounds amazing!
thanks for being you, Andy, nobody else like you of course. Today's Kurt's...thanks for doing his riffs justice through the years. I think my favorite is the time you did it with a Fender Humboldt.
Great tips. Once you have a fairly good clean sound, adding different types of delay and reverb will get you the rest of the way to clean tone heaven :-)
I’ve found if you can find a treble bleed circuit with the right cap-resistor combo for a particular type of pickup, then you can set your amp for a healthy amount of breakup and your volume knob will act more as a gain dial than anything else, just roll it down to get clean tones.
I use the compressor trick to put my always-on Dirty Little Secret into 'clean amp-in-a-box' territory. So the settings on the DLS never change, I just push it with boost, Klon, or un-boost it with a compressor!
I use the Earthquaker Devices Tone Job E.Q/preamp and Zxex Super Duper 2 in 1 boost. Both are useful sculpting tools, withe Zvex adding a little sizzle and presence & the tone job wakes a dull amp up. Anyone else tried these?
Best thing about Andy’s terrific demos: 1) he plays mostly creative rhythm parts with little bursts of lead, so you can hear how the product would sound in an actual song rather than just jamming around; 2) he stays in one key, which should be a given but most guys demoing on RU-vid will dart nervously around, changing keys every five seconds, which again doesn’t sound like a song. Andy is not only fun to listen to, but you get a real picture of how this device would sound used in a real band setting. Great job!
Also, the Thorpy Fat General in Juicy mode has a balance knob which allows you to underdrive the preamp a lot like the sex drive does. It really amazing. The only downside is that the compression is set in that mode.
Interesting! I assumed reverends had the bass roll-off thing instead of having a treble bleed. Sorta weird that they have both since they'd act fairly similarly, I'd think!
Andy demoing the Dimension C pedal sounds like what Johnny Marr should’ve sounded like if he’d played through a tube amp and the Smiths had been recorded with a more analog, less 80s sound (which I very much wish had been the case) 😃
I like to have a nice clean platform for lots of pedals. I like to use a DI box when I can, or multiple solid state amps chained together so I can get the needed volume without cranking the amps too much; Nobody likes the sound of old solid state distortion after all. Old Peaveys have served me really well.
Something that can’t be said enough is try using the volume knob in the guitar turned down with a dirty amp. I can’t go back now. My regular clean sound currently is a modeled high gain Friedman with my guitar’s volume turned down. Complimentary pickups and an amp that does this well are crucial to doing this (pickups with stronger mids and an appropriately lower amount of bass) and an amp that doesn’t always have to be boosted to have good overdrive and not crazy amounts of compression in the distortion (hot rodded plexi’s, 5150’s). Experiment. If you can find a rig that can use the guitar’s volume, it’s so liberating (you can tailor your distortion/cleans on the fly, per the song/section).
I know this is off topic, but I just got a Starcaster, the one's from the late 90s that have the center block, but I still want to use my muff and rat and was wondering if you could do a show on using overdrive, distortion and fuzz with semi-iollowbodies. There's a whole list of issues to deal with such as low end and feedback. Anyhow, love your videos as always.
Do you find there is too much or not enough low end? Too much could be the wide range mudbuckers on them. As for the feedback, stick some duct tape over the holes. That should help :P
To help with feedback- (cheap & easy) turn down/ move further away from your amp ( involves investing) use in-ears on stage ( I hate this feel-wise & the guitar doesn’t react/ resonate in the same way) use eq ( Boss GE7 or similar) simply dial down the frequencies that tend to go crazy, or use a parametric equaliser (the type where you dial in the frequency to cut ), you often get these in acoustic preamp pedals like theBossAD2. Or use a gain pedal that has eq on it ....if you’re playing in a band context don’t forget that you can often drastically reduce your lower frequencies, rolling your bass right down ( which sounds awful in your bedroom , but leaves room for the bass player in the mix, and sounds clear & well balanced when you all play together) - I wish someone had told me this stuff 25 years ago when I looked cool but sounded s#@%👍🎸🇬🇧
Princeton reverb / deluxe as well, the two greatest clean sounds ever. Unfortunately... Some JC amps can have a humming issue. I have a microcube and although it's cheap, it has that humming issue I hear of. I still adore roland, and I still want a JC one day but I have to admit that the hum is a worry of mine
Arthur Veldhoen I had a JC120 in the early 1980s , and was amazed that it could go to dirt or dirt and chorus with a footswitch! ( pedals were not available in the same way as today , and a pedalboard was science fiction!) ....Oh if I could only tell that handsome young idiot what I know now...I could’ve been a contender...I could’ve been on Top of the Pops.....👍🎸🇬🇧
A great way to enhance clean tones is with "always on" style subtle tone shaping pedals like the Xotic EP booster(with gain all the way down) or Voodoo Labs Giggity
Good question! A change to your guitar volume has a huge effect on your pickup's freq response and everything else after it in the signal chain (think about how it may affect clipping in drives or dynamic effects like comp and envelope filter) So, choosing the low input on the amp can be a way to get a cleaner tone without changing the state of the signal path up to the amp's input.
I came here with a similar comment. The sound also depends on which volume pots you have controlling a particular pickup. I've found that can - often but not always - make a much larger difference in how a guitar sounds, even at full volume than different pickups.
Need a pedal that goes into the negative try a did mystic blues overdrive not the best overdrive but it goes well into the negative and I used to use it as a clean channel on a one channel fender I had with better overdrive than the pedal pushed but I still wanted a clean channel and the volume knob on the guitar change the tone too much so I found out unity gain on the mystic blues overdrive was at 12 o clock and negative db from there thus my most useless pedal had a use after all
wes mitchem I had a similar thing when I discovered that the volume slider on my Boss GE7 (eq pedal) did that - by going below unity, it even has a name ....” underdrive” you can set the eq & level so that when you turn it off it pushes your amp to the sweet spot.....I don’t need it now as I use a Fender blues Deluxe , which has super clean tones for days, and more headroom than any amp I’ve used, so I get all my dirt from pedals.... but yes “underdrive” ...I just like that term, more players should be told......👍👍🎸🇬🇧
For half the price of the Source Audio EQ the latest ver of the MXR 10-band EQ has pre AND post boost, which is a pretty nifty combo for shaping clean tones. You do lose the programmable functionality tho.
Clean tone is indeed a matter of definition. To some it's just the dry amp on 1, to a metal player something else. My pure clean tone needs to have something going on, usually plenty of reverb, some ambient delay and perhaps a chorus, played on a strat.
Yes, but it’s a gray area because some of the best ‘clean tones’ actually have breakup-SRV’s Little Wing and Dick Dale’s Miserlou are prime examples. Regardless, these tips can be used by players on either side of the fence. Thanks, Andy
Butler Crow I believe it to be a correct modern usage of the term “clean”, which appears to now include tones that I would refer to as “ very nearly clean” or “ on the edge of breakup” or “slightly hairy “ etc...🧐👍🎸🇬🇧
EQUALIZER !!! I have an equalizer for every amp I own !! The eq700 is $25. You set your tone controls at noon on your amp, and use the EQ to tailor your sound. Remember, if your tone sucks, then it's in the mirror not the gear.
On my setup mostly i just use the second input on my amp Andy,,,,maybe sometimes by rolling down my guitar volume (best with treble bleed) ,been doing that only more than 20 years on several amps i got due those eras,but works well for me,,,i dunno what you guys think about those methodes i got,hopefully it can be the option,,,,i made a really amateur video about that if you got time to check it Andy 🤔 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZNdLW5aLnv4.html
You could also play a Rickenbacker but a JM will do just fine lol Also this was in my play list ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s6tQAM44Y8Y.html
Reverb you should hire Pete Thorn or Brett Kingman to do the demos. Andy lacks on various musical styles wich impedes him in showcasing the products in different styles of music.
Everybody but you loves and he’s playing. And we all know Pete thorn does the same thing on his own channel, so why don’t you just go watch his channel dumb ass
Lol a whole episode about “not a clean tone”. I prefer those dirty cleans over squaejy cleans. However when using 80s chorusy sounds it should be clean as f%^*k