Could you do what you do with the right amp/guitar pairing?

[tlarson58]

Maybe the title should read: What is your minimal rig?

I think that my pairing* is capable of achieving the tone(s) I want - save an overdrive for flavor and a delay for some special sauce. That said, I only jam weekly with friends, play the rare gig and have no need for a pallet of tones.

What is your ideal amp/guitar pairing?
What are your "can't live without" pedals?

* Princeton Reverb and 335 copy

[Tonray's Ghost]

Maybe the title should read: What is your minimal rig?

I think that my pairing* is capable of achieving the tone(s) I want - save an overdrive for flavor and a delay for some special sauce. That said, I only jam weekly with friends, play the rare gig and have no need for a pallet of tones.

* Princeton Reverb and 335 copy

What is your ideal amp/guitar pairing?
What are your "can't live without" pedals?

My minimal rig is my home noodling rig: a tiny Mooer White Hornet solid State amp and a Valeton Gp-100 multifunction pedal. I've set one of the clean settings on the Mooer to no Mids, upped both the treble and bass to near max and everything else comes from the pedal and my tone is a mix of low-fi vintage edge of breakup blues. I would love to have a situation where I could crank an AC30 or Fender Twin but for me my minimal is optimal for my situ.

[Partscaster]

For me, not well enough, as far as I know.
Usually i play thru my Gibson Falcon 19rvt (63') and with a maybe 4sqft pedal board,
I just went minimal last night at our weekly jam practice by only bringing an LP tribute and my 76' Champ, no pedals. It sounded good, but not as good/rich as the normal amp and pedal combination.
The Falcon sounds fuller and warmer than the Champ in general, plus its built in reverb and tremolo is stellar.
I do gain better sound by using some pedals like Strymon Deco or Keeley 30ms to enhance the sound with some saturation and doubling with no extra drive. And I dont tend to turn up much drive on my od pedals. I use them, even stack them, to add a little hair and to add some voicing they might have like my honey-bee and silver -bee. I tend to like edge of breakup best. I got plenty of breakup with Champ and Tribute, but I dimed the amp and turned down at guitar alittle. Champ was breaking up more than the Falcon usually does. But I didnt think it sounded as lush as I usually get with the pedals into bigger amp.

[LancerTheGreat]

Guitar>Tubescreamer clone>Amp
That’s my jam session, band practice, mindless riffing/noodling, and gigging setup.

[tonebender]

Les Paul P90 and a Peavey Classic 30. All I would need is a Snark and a cable. The clean channel and the drive channel give me all the tones I need. That is the absolute minimum that would get me through any gig.

[glasshand]

Guitar > Rat (always on) > Orange CR120 is my go-to rig for pretty much everything. Occasionally I throw a wah pedal in there. It's nice not to have to worry about pedals much, honestly. I see a lot of bands where a guitarist has something like 10 pedals on his board and spends the whole gig messing with knobs and jumping on and off pedals, and about 90% of the time it makes no perceptible difference to what the audience hears.

[honyock]

I am a total hack, so I always sound about the same no matter the amp. Maybe some day I will find some people to play with, until then it is all for my audio pleasure and pain of my wife...

If I had to pick one amp amongst all those I have owned, my Monoprice 50w would be the one. It sounds great with every guitar I've tried through it unlike some of my amps that need just the right pickups or pedal in front to nail the "sound in my head" that really make me want to just dig in and vibe.

Best part, I think it still sounds great throttled to bedroom volume. I can't say the same for the throng of amps I have tried in the sub $400 range. If I ever needed go play it in anger, I am sure it would have more than enough oomph as my ears can attest to the few times I've let it rip when I have been home alone.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk

[BatUtilityBelt]

Could I do what I do with the right amp/guitar pairing? Exclusively? Sometimes, but not usually. It completely depends on the song being worked. Some are perfect with minimal gear, others need specific effects that don't usually sit in my signal chain. I don't think either category is especially better than the other. It's all about the piece of music though.

[toomanycats]

I play gigs like that all the time using either a Les Paul or Strat plugged straight into a tube amp.
Set the gain on amp with guitar volume on '10' at what you need to get over the top of the rhythm when soloing, and use retrained pick attack and adjustment of the guitar volume knob to clean up the tone (tube amps dynamically respond to pick attack).

To achieve a full pallet of varied tonal textures you can:
*Alternative between using the sharper attack of the pick and the softer attack of the fingers.
*Roll back the guitar's tone knobs to achieve "cocked wah" sounds.
*Vary between contacting the strings either closer to the bridge (for a thinner and brighter tone), or directly above the neck pickup (for a more diffuse sonic mood).
*Use the tips of the fingers and meat on the edge of your palm to access the notes above the fretboard, the angelic chorus of harmonic tones floating above the fundamental like ghosts, which only manifest for those who know the conjuring trick.

[Rollin Hand]

For many, many years, my rig was Ibanez RG410 -> Peavey Classic 20. Need cleans? Roll back the volume. Now I have more stuff, and I have somewhat lost my ability to sound good through less stuff. And less gain.

I am thinking hard about simplifying things. New year and all that. I have a lot of stuff just sitting there, and that isn't good.

[SamIV]

I wish is could. I would love an amp to have nice Fender or Vox cleans, nice overdrive and be able to sound like a tube amp when I plug headphones into it. To get even close enough to that now, I need several pedals/devices.

[tonebender]

Thursday night I gigged with the C30 and the only thing I stepped on all night was a tube screamer and I only did that because I did not hook up the channel pedal for the amp. I could have used the drive channel on the amp. Next time I may just plug in the pedal and not even take the pedal board.

[andrewsrea]

Minimlist rig? Depends on what the job is:

Classic Rock & Blues Gig: my Epiphone Wilshire Custom (2 vintage PAF style humbuckers, 2 vol, 2 tone & coil splitting) > Dunlop EP3 Echoplex pedal > AMI Range Booster > AMI Lil Giant 50w tube amp. I'd use the amp gain and turn the volume down for cleans.

Pop-up Recording Session: where I was not familiar with the songs, I'd bring my AMI Les Paul, my Squire Affinity Strat and my Takamine E340S acoustic. I'd bring my AMI Range Boster, my AMI ODR-1, my AMI Dumblicious, a wah and my AMI Lil Giant. For a recording session where I knew the songs, I'd pick gear specific to the songs.

Practicing at home: my go-to is my AMI Les Paul > my pedal board > Lil Giant > GT Speaker Emulator > Focusrite 2i4 PC USB interface and playback through my studio monitors. i generally play along with MP3's, primarily using my AMI JTM45 pedal (Marshall Plexi) or AMI Bare Essentials (Fender / Dumble) with some Echoplex and reverb.

I get a lot of my tone with my fingers and the guitar's controls.

[tlarson58]

@andrewsrea what's AMI? Is it your brand?

[andrewsrea]

@andrewsrea what's AMI? Is it your brand?

Yes, AMI = 'Andrews Music Innovations,' which I drummed up in 1985 after refinishing a guitar for a music store and it stuck. It sounded official enough that I worrmed my way into accounts with EHX, Groove Tubes and other suppliers and became a Saint Louis Music (Crate, Ampeg, etc.), Rose Morris (Marshall & Vox) and Ensoniq warranty repair center, back in the day.

Most of my pedals, pickups, 4 of my amps and 3 guitars that I regularly use are all my brand, so logically you'll see it a lot when the topic is gear.

[slowhand84]

Maybe the title should read: What is your minimal rig?

I think that my pairing* is capable of achieving the tone(s) I want - save an overdrive for flavor and a delay for some special sauce. That said, I only jam weekly with friends, play the rare gig and have no need for a pallet of tones.

What is your ideal amp/guitar pairing?
What are your "can't live without" pedals?

* Princeton Reverb and 335 copy

I can make do with just about anything, I use my Spark 40 amp more than I ever thought I would because of the sheer convenience...but nothing beats the main rig and every time I hop back to it I'm reminded of how insane it is.

[andrewsrea]

I can make do with just about anything, I use my Spark 40 amp more than I ever thought I would because of the sheer convenience...but nothing beats the main rig and every time I hop back to it I'm reminded of how insane it is.

It is a shame those Hiwatts aren't very loud.

(awesome rig!)

[slowhand84]

I can make do with just about anything, I use my Spark 40 amp more than I ever thought I would because of the sheer convenience...but nothing beats the main rig and every time I hop back to it I'm reminded of how insane it is.

It is a shame those Hiwatts aren't very loud.

(awesome rig!)

Yeah my neighbors complain all the time, they're like "hey only 3 of our 4 windows are broken!"

[golem]

Honestly, I'm starting to use my Helix for any time where I'm concerned about bothering the neighbors. Cheaper than getting a Fryette Power Station and head phones. I don't think it's particularly minimal, but it could be a one stop shop for everything I do.

[tlarson58]

Tonight at band practice I went straight into the amp (335 clone into a Princeton Reverb). The 10-watt amp dialed up to six produced a nifty tone. I didn't have to worry about pedal tones/settings and was able to concentrate on strumming dynamics and my elementary solos.

It felt good. I wouldn't say liberating, but good.

[slowhand84]

Honestly, I'm starting to use my Helix for any time where I'm concerned about bothering the neighbors. Cheaper than getting a Fryette Power Station and head phones. I don't think it's particularly minimal, but it could be a one stop shop for everything I do.

I lucked out in that regard in that my only neighbor who can ever hear me play just randomly happens to also be a guitar player, so he doesn't give a damn how loud I crank it . Stuff like the Helix is great for that kind of stuff though, I use my Spark 40 pretty much the same way when I wanna jam late at night.

[glasshand]

Somewhat related to this topic, Guitar World has an interview with Ryan Roxie, one of Alice Cooper's current guitarists, and he has some stuff to say on the issue.

The Alice Cooper band has been using Kempers on tour, right? Do you prefer the Kemper, or would you rather have a Marshall stack behind you?

“Well, I use what I guess you'd say is a hybrid of three different types of systems. What happened was that there was just no room for cabinets up there because of the Alice Cooper stage show and all the props. So because of that, we had to remove the cabinets and try something more digital.

“We started experimenting with putting Kempers into the set, and a Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 model, which you can have a cabinet with. We can go straight through the PA as well with that because they have the red box outs, but we've been using the Kempers a lot.

“I still love my Marshall JCM800 setup, and there's always a cabinet on stage, just in case the Kemper does go down. If the digital kicks out, we have the good old Marshall tube amp or the Hughes & Kettner to back us up.

...

“I'm lucky enough to have several classic Gibson guitars that I use throughout the set. I love vintage guitars, but new ones can be cool, too. I try to use what sounds best for the song, with the tone of the amp, and also what looks aesthetically pleasing.

“So, for instance, if it's classic Alice Cooper, maybe I'll break out a Gibson ES-335. Or if it's something from the more modern era, maybe I'll bring an Explorer. And I actually have an Epiphone Explorer, which shows that you can play Gibsons and Epiphones back-to-back, and they will sound similar. It doesn't matter if it's a Flying V or a Les Paul; Epiphone makes great guitars.”

So that sounds like a guy who definitely feels like he can get his job done regardless of equipment specifics!