A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

Ok. This is a question for you giggin'/seasoned/veteran-bedroom-player guys.

Let´s say you go to a place, visiting a friend or family, for example, or you´re with your friends and you ended up in an open mic bar, there´s a guitar and an amp, and you´re asked to play guitar.

My point is: There´s an X amp, with clean and high gain channel, and an X guitar. I mean, it´s not your equipment, but it´s what´s there.

How would you set a cleanish/crunchy sound and a heavy sound as quick as possible to start playing?

Is there some kind of basic set of rules to achieve that for an "emergency" moment?

I don´t know if I´m explaining the situation in a clear way.

Would you just turn the amp on, set everything to 12 o'clock - volume, gain, treble, bass, middle - and there´s your cleanish/crunchy sound, for example?

What would be your way to achieve this?

Off the top of my head I can think of Jeff @tonebender , John @toomanycats , John @tobijohn , Steve @BatUtilityBelt , Tommy @tlarson58 , Deeaa @deeaa , John @jtcnj , Aaron @RiverDog , @Rollin Hand , Rob @andrewsrea , Nate @honyock , @glasshand , Damon @nomadh , Enrique @Narsh , Randy @redman , but everyone is welcomed to share their 0.02 cents.

In short: How would you quickly set those two basic sounds? May not be perfect, but you need them just to perform in an unexpected situation (cleanish for the start of the song, crunchy for the middle part, and a heavier sound for soloing or the end, something like that).

This is my dumb saturday question

EDIT: Found a starter point pic, look further below.

Fun question!

I play guitar and bass in a band. I showed up to rehearsal one night with no guitar amp.

The guy who plays bass when I play lead has a Marshall Origin 50 (through a 2x12 cab) that he runs a bunc of pedals into for his tonal variety.

I plugged straight into his amp, cranked the gain, brought up the bass and mids, lowered the treble (essentially, did a quick eq by ear following the gain adjustment).

I was able to ride my volume knobs to get the tones I needed.

We’re a bar band playing mostly classic rock.

So that’s my answer for your scenario, if it were a band performance. Bedroom is a different matter altogether. You would have to do more fiddling of knobs to toggle between tones on a single channel amp.

It's actually a very broad question - so many variables that there will be many answers, but right for different people, and for specific music genres. The more you know about that gear, the better. How close you can get to the sound you want depends on how well your gear choices align with the owner of the gear in question, or how you can tweak it. You might not have the same guitar and same amp, etc, but you may have gear that works similarly... similar pickups, similar tubes, etc. If it was me, I would work from what I already know about that gear. For example, humbuckers tend to sound darker, so if I want brighter sound, turn the bass down. If you want to play both clean and dirty, find the edge of breakup and go from there. But you're only going to get in the ballpark of what you're after, you're probably not going to nail it because it's not your gear. You're better off spending your concentration on reading the room's response to the tone and working with the other musicians than trying to achieve any level on your own. I rarely play out, so it's not really a question for me.

I was confronted with a somewhat similar situation as framed in your question. It was a gig with multiple bands on the bill where a backline was provided, though the specific amp was unknown. It turned out to be a Blackface Fender, which is not so bad. Anticipating such a contingency, I brought my Bogner Blue Ecstasy pedal, which is the the ideal tool for goosing the front end of a clean amp (that is, if your preferred tone is a dirty vintage Marshall). Fortunately, you don't have to take my word for it, as video evidence exists of the event I'm describing. Following a snippet of my performance of John Mayall and The Blues Breakers' "Steppin' Out" is a very short interview.

That is a very situational question indeed. If the playing live opportunity happened without any notice, I'd suggest what @Mr. Leyvatone suggested and give the other person's amp it some gain (ask the owner's permission first), turn the master volume to stun and tone to taste. For the gain and bass turn it to where it sounds good and then turn it down a smidge to fit into a band mix. Use the guitar volume on '2' or '3' for clean, '5' to '7' for crunch and above that for solos. I've been personally avoiding '10' and topping out at '9.5'.

If you are given a chance to prepare, then follow @toomanycats advise. Keep it simple and bring a nice drive that will give you cleans when you back off the guitar's volume.

I don't gig very often. I guess my MO1231231231231232132312313 (*) would be to find a good lead tone and then back off the volume. Sometimes, if a space is large enough and I have my own gear, I can bypass a pedal and use my amp's natural gain (10w Princeton Reverb) but most of the time I have to place a dirt pedal in front. Right now I'm using a tweed-drive but I always sound like me so anything works.

(*) cat just walked on the keyboard.

I don't gig, but in that situation I would get the appropriate volume set on both channels, then set all the knobs at half. Then bass up to 6, treble down to 4, and go from there. If the amp is high gain, then I likely won't need more than 5 on the preamp gain.

I would probably brighten up the clean channel too, or just use the volume knob on my guitar and skip the clean channel entirely if I could do so without too much noise. When my only amp was a Peavey Classic 20 Combo, that's what I did -- roll the volume off and switch to a single coil.

Failing that, I would do what TMC does and bring a box of dirt with me. Or run my HX Stomp straight into the PA.

I would have sworn I answered this yesterday
but my answer was basically what Mr. Leyvatone said: turn your guitar volume to maximum, set the amp to be as high-gain as you will need, then lower the guitar volume for cleaner tones.

@Mr. Leyvatone @BatUtilityBelt @toomanycats @andrewsrea @tlarson58 @Rollin Hand
@glasshand

Great, guys! Interesting suggestions and advices. I´ll keep them in mind.

But just to clarify, it was just an hypothetical question about an hypothetical situation. I was never in such situation. Just wanted to have a better idea about how to /quickly/ set up some *usable* tones out of the blue. I think it can also be useful for trying to tailor some presets on the Zoom G3xn.

I may have to start practicing using the volume control to get to some tones; I tend to play most of the times on the bridge pickup position with the volume pot cranked all the way up, but I can see the practicality of it.

The only real situation I can imagine could be visiting someone who just bought a guitar for his son or daughter and wanted me to help with some usable tones, or to play something to "see" how it sounds.

I really suffer from stage fright and I don´t see me playing for some public on a bar, at least not now My wife´s birthday was a couple of days ago, and she asked me, weeks ago, to play Hotel California for her. I started practicing, and that day it was only my wife, our son, his girlfriend and a niece -that is like a daughter for us-, and I was a little nervous and had sweating hands haha; needless to say that my performance was a solid 5 out of 10! LOL - but for them I played like a god, of course - I thought on sharing the video here with you, but it is so bad that I won´t. I´ll wait until I can play it better.

But, again, great advice was given here. I´ll take notes and will practice...

Thanks, guys!

Found this pic - or, to be precise, this pic found me; computers listen and see what you´re talking and writing about -; it´s like a general starting point, and then tweak to taste, guitar, room, amp, etc. Will try and see.

The clean channel at noon and the gain volume and distortion knob at noon and then I would control everything else with the volume knob on the guitar. That should work for a situation like that. It may not be ideal but with the parameters in the question that would be my approach.

Found this video, and I thought it was interesting. It´s what most of you have suggested. He uses a TS for the lead tone. Seems easy, but I´m sure it´ll take some delicacy to find those sweet spots.

Like every person is different so is every guitar and amp so every situation would have to be approached differently. I guess In general I would probably quickly set the clean tone to something usable then bring the gain up to a usable crunch. After that IMO it would be up to right hand technique or left hand for our left handed brethren. Things like palm muting and using a very small part of the pick and simultaneously letting a bit of the thumb to strike the string yada yada yada.

sabasgr68 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2023 4:16 pm Found this pic - or, to be precise, this pic found me; computers listen and see what you´re talking and writing about -; it´s like a general starting point, and then tweak to taste, guitar, room, amp, etc. Will try and see.


amp settings.png

That really depends on the amp and speaker. On a Fender Blackpanel type amp, the Bass technically is maxxed at '3.5'. Above that, the total circuit cannot handle the frequency and it turns to thickness, sometimes 'flub'and over compression. For rock with a 1-12" BF combo I would go volume on '7', bass on '1.5', mids on '5' and treble on '5' to '6'. Again using the guitar's volume for cleaning up and quieting.

For a Marshall tone stack, the Bass is maxxed at '5' and the treble (really high mids) are very strong. For rock with a 4x 12" cab, I would use: vol '7', bass '5', mids '7', treble '4' to '5' and presence '5' to '7'.

In a band setting, tweak to less bass and low mids.