That is very interesting Philip- I'm surprised the Crate V30 amp worked best for you since I've never gotten one to sound good...
-----But, I've learned an important lesson... What sounds good with my fingers might not with someone else's. There are amazing pieces of gear that I sound like crap playing because its just isn't a match for the way I play. It's also the main reason I'll never recommend a particular piece of gear on here--- just cause it sounds great (or horrible) when I play it doesn't mean it will for someone else!
We did an experiment last week:
I set up a Fender Princeton amp with several overdrive/distortion pedals and had me and three other guitarists play as we switched between pedals. All the pedals were either boutique or had been modded to sound as good as possible. We had a custom 808, Fulltone Full-drive, C4 (aka Direct Drive), Boss DS-1, Danelectro Daddy-O, Boss OS-2-- later I also tried a ProCo Rat.
The strange thing was that there wasn't a clear winner. Each of us had a pedal that sounded best when we played it. My friend Charlie said, "What have we learned here? We have learned that we can never recommend a pedal because it depends on who is playing it!" Mind you they all sounded good, were played through a good guitar and a great amp... but there were different stand outs for each of us depending on our attack, approach and a bunch of other factors I can't fathom. It was a great lesson though. Tone is first in the fingers!!!
There was similar experiment done when Clapton, Hendrix and Page all played through a Marshall JMP 50 (the one I've got yeah!!!!), a strat and some Roger Mayer pedals and they all sounded very different with the same gear, proving the point that a lot of tone is in the way we play. However, that said, some gear is of course objectively good - a Fulldrive will always sound pretty good whoever plays it but may suit some folks more than others.
ReplyDeleteClass blog, I'll be on here lots!!! Sweet life giving tonme, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.