Beginner to electric guitar

how many amps below 15k have the fx loop btw

 

^ I have no idea.
I use EL CHEAPO MG10CD

That query is solved.
Its finally a personal call.

 

Sorry, Im gonna have to disagree. That doesnt work with my vypyr. I tried using the DS-1 in front of my vypyr once. The amp model was a TWIN REVERB. Didnt work. It sucked. The onboard distortion of the vypyr is just 10x better.

Yeah. Accepted. But its too much of a hassle. With all the patch and bank switching and looping and blah blah blah these days on multi effects pedals, Stompboxes are slowly becoming a chore.

The Korg AX3000G. I think its okay for just 13k(That's cheap).
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OP, nothin' to think about. The Yamaha Pacifica is probably your best bet. You wouldn't believe how good my rig sounds right now.
Ive played a washburn x series guitar and also the squeir bullet strat. The pacifica feels and plays much better. Im not sure about the sound though. But Humbuckers are much better for high gain shi*. Lots of mids and it'll give you a really chunky, think tone. Forget all the crap about agathis being a shity tone wood. IT ISN'T. It's pretty good actually! I wont be getting a new guitar any time soon because I just love my pacifica. Because it sounds that good. If I had a video camera, I could have shown you guys! But if I were you, I'd play all the guitars I could lay my hands on!

 

he meant a transparent clean channel meaning just the amp's speaker and nothing else
howz a school boy gonna save up 13k
he is right
u should try everything u can
all type of pickup configs and see the difference
all types of bridges and see the difference
and try different guitars in the same category
and then select the one u like the most

 

Tone wood concept is anyway total bullscat.

In an electric guitar, the strings are supposed to vibrate, which means the nodes at each end should be pure = Zero movement.
What are the nodes?
Nut and Bridge.

Which means the body and the headstock should NOT vibrate.
Any vibrations here will rob the energy off the string, and thus not get picked up by the PICK UPs.

Your amp is not plugged to the body of the guitar.
Its plugged to the pickups.
The pickups detect movement of the STRINGs and NOT the BODY.
Besides, they are housed in the body, and thus the body should vibrate as less as possible (otherwise you will have undesirable feedback from pickups also vibrating)



Had we been talking about acoustic instrument, then tone wood makes sense.
Because its the wood and the air that is supposed to resonate and amplify the sound.

 

^ seconded as the difference between different woods will be very subtle.. which is totally irrelevant for most of the guitar players here on this forum ...

 

i guess thats where active pickups come in
also(i think alpha1 already said it)
people play guitars with different pickups and classify them on the basis of their woods

 

At bare minimum price range, all woods are about the same but saying wood does not affect the tone might be inaccurate.

You are right in pointing out that for maximum volume, all components of a guitar except the string should be static. But therein lies the beauty of the instrument.

If the guitar was made of a ultra stiff(technically elastic) material like steel, there would be much less damping due to loss of vibration through the vibration of bridge posts and nut. But that would make your guitar an overtone monster with super bright, biting tone.
On the other hand, using wood makes it cut out the harsh overtones. Again the nature of wood determines how different frequency ranges are damped. You might have noticed a mahogany guitar tends to have a rich bass and low mid tone whereas an alder body tends to give you a very detailed high mids and top end.

Another thing that affects the tone is the mass of the body and the natural frequency of the guitar. I once saw a Steve Vai video on youtube where he explains how the guitars he picks are such that the natural frequency of the neck and body are in unison or a fourth or fifth apart. Such guitars will resonate better on certain notes so that you will have more 'sweet spots' on the guitar neck where the note sustains and you can get nice controlled feedback on command.

 

Let me ask you guys one small question.
I usually have to completely scoop the mids to get a decent tone. And even when I do scoop em up, it sounds pretty mid heavy. Many people play with their vypyrs and they usually have the mids past 12 o clock. Ive tried the same amp model and settings but it sounds completely different. And mine sounds like shit with that much mids. Don't get me wrong, I hate it when people play with 0 mids. It doesnt have a body. But I have to scoop it completely to get a tone that isn't overwhelmed by mids. Could this be because of the pickups or the wood of the guitar?

 

i think it should because your guitar is a strat
as wylder explained above

 

Could be a number of factors. But probably not wood unless its a really cheap soft wood guitar...

Are your cables of very poor quality? This can be a factor especially if you have weak passive pickups and use a long cable of poor quality.

Any effects in between with bad buffers?

Any problems with the guitar itself - loose contacts in wiring etc? If possible, try plugging your guitar into another amp and check for the same issue.

Is your amp alright? Loose contacts/tone pots not working?

 

OK.
Lets say we have two guitars: Fender Strat and Gibson Les Paul.
There is a considerable difference between the tone of these two (when played through an amp).
Where does this difference come from?
1. The pickups
2. The natural tone (which is what you hear while unplugged)

We all know Fender Pickups are different from Les Paul pickups. Which plays the most important role.
So lets go the the second point.

What comprises the most to the natural tone?
Strings.
Different material, different string length - affect the harmonic content of the vibration radically.

What about the guitar body?
For that we'll have to have a Fender Strat with Mahogany body, or a Les Paul with Alder body.
Has anyone really tried this combo to quantify the differences due to wood?

I am sure not many examples will surface, and if you do happen to come across - you will not hear much difference DUE to the wood.



The problem with most guitarists is that we tend to follow a tradition, and no one dares to question those traditions.
Ppl believe that since their favorite/"greatest" guitarists endorses certain view - they are the truth.
Far from truth. Greatest guitarist is a great player, not great investigator, scientist or physicist.
We all know about Placebo and group influence and belief system.

 

Oh ok... If you don't like a strat's hi-mid heavy nasal tones in general, you might have to change the guitar.

Check with mymusicmyguitar. He had similar problems with his strat. He tried a pickup change too.

 

One way you could check that out is by playing an Ibanez RG in Mahogany and Basswood or Alder.
I have tried it with the EMG 81/85 combo and there is a difference. Mahogany compresses the low mids and makes the tone fuller/warmer while on Basswood is pretty bland. It works the other way too - if you want a classic bluesy tone with nasal high mids, basswood gives nicer quack.

 

If possible can you arrange for a recording for us (to hear the difference) between the two?
(Of course keeping every other possible thing the same - like strings, tone knobs, volume knobs, amp settings etc)

 

Sorry man, don't have a Basswood RG lying around now. If you know someone in Bangalore who can lend one, I would be glad to be of help.

 

My amp is alright, there is nothing wrong wtih the guitar, it sounds okay.
The guitar is made of agathis.. So could that be a problem?

 

agathis...there you go

 

I am not very sure about agathis because I never had/tried one.

While wood can be a problem if your guitar is really a budget guitar, the problem can easily be due to cheap pick-ups/bridge/hardware etc. Check on specific reviews for your guitar for how others have got better tones out of it.

 

Wood becomes a huge variable factor in budget guitars. The quality of wood is not generic to the type. A particular wood may come from different species of plants. Eg: Mahogany has many variants - Indian, Honduran, Brazilian, African mahogany. These are not timber from the same plant grown in different places. They all have different densities and hardness values and hence tones. So when you get a cheap mahogany guitar, you never know what mahogany it is.

Also wood from a single tree can vary in tone depending on which part of timber is used - sapwood(soft) or heartwood(hard).
Moreover the sawing method used to cut the timber also matters. Flat sawing will waste less timber but produce weaker wood whereas quarter sawn wood is quite robust and consistent but wastes timber.