pumeco opened this issue on Sep 29, 2014 ยท 51 posts
pumeco posted Tue, 30 September 2014 at 3:28 PM
Well this has proved to be a lot more interesting than I was expecting!
A big-time thanks to you all for that
So the one thing which seems certain then, the thing most of you seem sure about, is that a "Vox" amp plays a role in the sound. Truth is I know so little about guitars and the associated hardware that a Vox could have meant a brand or type for all I know, but I checked and see it's a brand. You might think that's funny but I tell you what, coming from a synth guy, some of your guitar stuff has really nonsensical names!
I almost missed out on a pedal I really wanted just because it was made by "DigiTech". I'd never owned anything by DigiTech and had nothing against them other than the name. But I was strictly after analogue pedals and was not going to stick a digital pedal in the chain under any circumstances. Then of course I discovered it was actually a real analogue pedal. I mean you really expect that, don't you, a real analogue pedal to be made by a company called "DigiTech".
:blink: :rolleyes:
In the end I bought their Death Metal pedal, in fact I bought two (one for each channel).
Right, I'm looking into Vox amps now, although I think I'd better clarify something regards the guitars that have been mentioned. I believe you're all basing this on what Bjorn of ABBA played, but bear in mind the track I posted isn't actually an ABBA track, I believe it's from a project of her and a songwriter friend after she left ABBA. It's funny really because I was in two minds of using one of ABBA's tracks to ask the question.
The reason I chose that one is because of the power chords really, they seemed pretty distinct and I thought it would be easier than using ABBA who sound good no matter what they do. But yup, as far as I'm aware, the only relation to ABBA is Agnetha and the fact that it was released on Polydor. I'm not even sure it's an analogue recording despite how old it is. Just doesn't seem to have the balls of analogue to me.
If it's analogue I'm very surprised the overall sounds is so thin!
Right, I'd better explain what I'm up to. Basically, I'm slowly but surely creeping back over to analogue mixing and recording. I have proper hardware sequencers so linking them up with my analogue mixer and recorder effectively relegates the DAW to history, just like the good old days.
I want to do it a bit different this time though, so while I envy guitars and being able to play one, I'm not about to give up my keys and I can always learn a real guitar later. The idea right now is that I keep my keys/synths, but I want to have a bash at guitar music by putting those machines through real analogue "guitar gear" and mixing/recording it in real analogue. This is why I'm currently playing around with digital simulations so that I can get a better idea of what I need to buy in the real analogue version.
There must be millions of pedals and amps out there, all with their unique characteristics, but I don't want tons of pedals, I just want, say, two very versatile types of pedals (two on each channel) that will allow me to mix-up and get the sort of sound I want and allow me a good amount of experimentation to get other tones.
For example, the reason I bought the DigiTech Death Metal is because I never saw a bad thing said about it, they all seem to love it, and even watching documentaries about Death Metal, bands say that whenever they get asked the secret of their "big sound", they just tell them it's down to that pedal.
So that's what I chose, and I'm glad I did. Thing is though, I bought that version for the ballsy full-on distortion it gives, so now, I need another to compliment it, and it's that other one that is going to be dictated by what I find out here in this thread. See now that I have that aspect of tone sorted, I want one to compliment it, something I can stick in the same chain and tweak along with it and hopefully, along with the analogue recording techniques I have up my sleeve, I will get something like the tone I'm after (the ABBA tone I suppose) but also lots more besides.
To have the tonal controls to do ABBA to Death Metal and back again, that sort of thing. Now that I have a better idea what to listen to and tweak, I will be able to look closer and narrow things down better.
I suppose my next question has to be, now that we know the amp, and if you were forced to do so, what other pedal (absolutely must be analogue) would you chose to compliment the one I already have if you wanted to have them combined and be able to give the widest choice of tones from mild to full-on?
Click for another example of the tone I like
So that's really "ABBA" this time.
Reckon that's the same guitar and amp setup?
Would be comforting to hear if it were!