How do you get your sound?

[beckstriad]

I know we all love gear, and all have different preferences. What is YOUR sound, and how do you get it?

I always thought of myself as a "Les Paul/Marshall" guy until I really spent time thinking about what I was after. Now, I think about my sound (and kind of always did) in terms of non-guitar instruments I want to sound like. Those are saxophone, violin, and piano. I love that guitars, amps, speakers, and cabinets can synergistically combine to make that happen.

I now realize that amps that I love just absolutely sing at all volumes and whether they're clean or overdriven. It's more about the voice of everything together making the sound than it is actually trying to make that happen.

Anyway, enough from me. What do you say?

 

[FlyingVBlues]

I belong to two bands, a blues band and a fusion jazz band, I do some straight-ahead jazz gigs as a sideman, and I also frequently do session work for National Geographic Documentary Films and Discovery Channel Documentaries. The sound that I strive for, and that inspires me, is a combination of a guitar and an amp that give me great clarity, and articulation, big, bold cleans, smooth overdrive whenever I want it, organic sounding violin-like sustain without any distortion, great harmonic complexity, touch sensitivity with a great response to picking dynamics, great string-to-string balance, and no notes that sound thin or weak.

For the blues band I mainly use Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul’s or Terry McInturff Carolina’s, vintage Blackface Fender amps (1966 Princeton Reverb, 1964 Deluxe Reverb, 1966 Vibrolux Reverb, 1966 Pro Reverb, 1964 Vibroverb) and a pedalboard.

For the fusion band I mainly use C.P. Thornton Legend guitars, my 1983 Dumble or one of my D-style clones (Amplified Nation, Sebago, Louis Electric, Mark Kane, Bludodrive, Glaswerks, Redplate or Fuchs) and a pedalboard.

For the jazz sideman gigs I’ll use one of the Fender amps I mentioned above and a semi-hollowbody or hollowbody guitar (Gibson ES-175, Gibson L5-CES, Gibson ES-335, CP Thornton Improv or Professional, Sadowsky Semi-hollowbody, Gibson Pat Martino Signature, Benedetto Pat Martino Signature, or a D'Angelico NYSS-3B New Yorker).

For National Geographic and Discovery Channel documentaries what I bring to the studio is often up to the producer or engineer. I give them a list of my 57 guitars, 30 amps and other instruments and they will usually tell me what they want. I usually supplement the guitars and amps that I am requested to bring, and it is not unusual to bring as many as a dozen guitars, several amps and more than one pedalboard (I have six) to a recording session. Some producers have a very strong music background and they can be very specific about what they want. Other producers aren’t musicians, but they have a good idea of what mood or reaction they want to produce from the music, and they will describe what they want from that perspective. Or they may describe the sound of another record they want me to emulate. Then it is up to me to figure out how to meet their requirement. The guitars I most frequently end up bringing for these sessions include a PRS 594 Singlecut, a PRS McCarty, a 1959 ES-335, a 1963 Tele, a 1954 Les Paul Custom with a Staple neck pickup and a P-90 bridge pickup, a 1956 Les Paul Custom modded with 1960 PAF’s, a re-finished 1954 Goldtop (now with a Black finish) and my 1958 and 1959 Les Paul Standards. I will sometimes also bring my Godin LGXT and a Roland GR-55, a 1955 Martin D-28, a Felipe Conde Al Di Meola model classical guitar, a Ovation Custom Legend 1769, a 1943 Gibson F-5 mandolin, a 1950's four-string Gibson banjo, a Fender six-string bass, a 1950's Ramirez classical guitar, a Jerry Jones electric sitar, a dobro or a four-course Bouzouki. It just depends on what the music for the session requires. A lot of the sessions I do will have more than one guitarist, and so I may end up just playing acoustic instruments, playing just electric guitars, or a mixture of both. Most of the time the guitarists will sort out who plays what, based on their strengths and the gear they have brought with them. I know most of the guitaists I play with on these sessions, and figuring out who plays what is very straighforward. I started out playing classical guitar and I am a strong reader, so I often take the classical guitar charts. I'm not really a mandolin, banjo or Bouzouki player, I fake it by tuning them to D-G-B-E as you would with the four highest strings on a guitar.

I don’t currently own any Strat’s, Gretsch’s or Rickenbackers and if they want that sound I’ll recommend someone else. For amps it’s more variable, but my Dumble, my Suhr Jim Kelley reissue and my 1968 Twin Reverb with factory JBL’s are almost always requested. Also most studios usually have a Fractal Axe-Fx III or some other modeler and also a Kemper and sometimes I will be asked to use one of those devices. I really dislike modelers, but they do provide you with a lot of options. They just don’t feel like you’re playing through a real amp. And they require a lot of tweaking, which I hate to do. With my tube amps I can dial in great sounds without any effort. I’ve owned most of my amps for a long time, and I know how to get exactly the sounds I want.

 

[beckstriad]

I belong to two bands, a blues band and a fusion jazz band, I do some straight-ahead jazz gigs as a sideman, and I also frequently do session work for National Geographic Documentary Films and Discovery Channel Documentaries. The sound that I strive for, and that inspires me, is a combination of a guitar and an amp that give me great clarity, and articulation, big, bold cleans, smooth overdrive whenever I want it, organic sounding violin-like sustain without any distortion, great harmonic complexity, touch sensitivity with a great response to picking dynamics, great string-to-string balance, and no notes that sound thin or weak.

For the blues band I mainly use Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul’s or Terry McInturff Carolina’s, vintage Blackface Fender amps (1966 Princeton Reverb, 1964 Deluxe Reverb, 1966 Vibrolux Reverb, 1966 Pro Reverb, 1964 Vibroverb) and a pedalboard.

For the fusion band I mainly use C.P. Thornton Legend guitars, my 1983 Dumble or one of my D-style clones (Amplified Nation, Sebago, Louis Electric, Mark Kane, Bludodrive, Glaswerks, Redplate or Fuchs) and a pedalboard.

For the jazz sideman gigs I’ll use one of the Fender amps I mentioned above and a semi-hollowbody or hollowbody guitar (Gibson ES-175, Gibson L5-CES, Gibson ES-335, CP Thornton Improv or Professional, Sadowsky Semi-hollowbody, Gibson Pat Martino Signature, Benedetto Pat Martino Signature, or a D'Angelico NYSS-3B New Yorker).

For National Geographic and Discovery Channel documentaries what I bring to the studio is often up to the producer or engineer. I give them a list of my 57 guitars, 30 amps and other instruments and they will usually tell me what they want. I usually supplement the guitars and amps that I am requested to bring, and it is not unusual to bring as many as a dozen guitars, several amps and more than one pedalboard (I have six) to a recording session. Some producers have a very strong music background and they can be very specific about what they want. Other producers aren’t musicians, but they have a good idea of what mood or reaction they want to produce from the music, and they will describe what they want from that perspective. Or they may describe the sound of another record they want me to emulate. Then it is up to me to figure out how to meet their requirement. The guitars I most frequently end up bringing for these sessions include a PRS 594 Singlecut, a PRS McCarty, a 1959 ES-335, a 1963 Tele, a 1954 Les Paul Custom with a Staple neck pickup and a P-90 bridge pickup, a 1956 Les Paul Custom modded with 1960 PAF’s, a re-finished 1954 Goldtop (now with a Black finish) and my 1958 and 1959 Les Paul Standards. I will sometimes also bring my Godin LGXT and a Roland GR-55, a 1955 Martin D-28, a Felipe Conde Al Di Meola model classical guitar, a Ovation Custom Legend 1769, a 1943 Gibson F-5 mandolin, a 1950's four-string Gibson banjo, a Fender six-string bass, a 1950's Ramirez classical guitar, a Jerry Jones electric sitar, a dobro or a four-course Bouzouki. It just depends on what the music for the session requires. A lot of the sessions I do will have more than one guitarist, and so I may end up just playing acoustic instruments, playing just electric guitars, or a mixture of both. Most of the time the guitarists will sort out who plays what, based on their strengths and the gear they have brought with them. I know most of the guitaists I play with on these sessions, and figuring out who plays what is very straighforward. I started out playing classical guitar and I am a strong reader, so I often take the classical guitar charts. I'm not really a mandolin, banjo or Bouzouki player, I fake it by tuning them to D-G-B-E as you would with the four highest strings on a guitar.

I don’t currently own any Strat’s, Gretsch’s or Rickenbackers and if they want that sound I’ll recommend someone else. For amps it’s more variable, but my Dumble, my Suhr Jim Kelley reissue and my 1968 Twin Reverb with factory JBL’s are almost always requested. Also most studios usually have a Fractal Axe-Fx III or some other modeler and also a Kemper and sometimes I will be asked to use one of those devices. I really dislike modelers, but they do provide you with a lot of options. They just don’t feel like you’re playing through a real amp. And they require a lot of tweaking, which I hate to do. With my tube amps I can dial in great sounds without any effort. I’ve owned most of my amps for a long time, and I know how to get exactly the sounds I want.

that's fantastic! Thanks for sharing. You have an astounding collection and your playing is phenomenal.

why do you choose the fender amps/pedals with the blues band vs the ones you use for the jazz-fusion band?

 

[FlyingVBlues]

I love listening to Robben Ford and Joe Bonamassa playing through Dumbles, guys like Corey Congilio, Doyle Bramhall II, Josh Smith, Matt Schofield playing through Two Rock Amps, and many other great blues players using modern amps. But that is not the sound I want when I’m playing with a blues band. I was close friends with Mike Bloomfield, and he was a major influence on me when I was younger. Mike was often a spotty player, but when he was on the quality of his playing and the sound was incredible. He went through a Tele, a 1954 Goldtop, a 1959 Burst and then a Strat and a couple of Tele’s all played through simple amps, a Guild Thunderbird, a Gibson Falcon, Fender Super and Twin Reverb’s and finally a 1962 Fender Blond Bandmaster. His tone and his touch were phenomenal, and that’s the sound I want to try to produce when I play the blues. Guys like Mike, B.B. King, Luther Allison, Freddie King, Albert King and Buddy Guy just needed a guitar and an amp to get that singing blues sound. There is a purity to that sound that I strongly gravitate to. I started using pedals with blues bands after a lot of clubs wanted bands to reduce their volume. I couldn’t get the kind of sustain and overdrive I wanted at the lower volume, so I started using pedals to deal with that.

Playing with fusion bands is totally different for me. While I listen to a lot of fusion players like John Abercrombie, Bill Connors, Hiram Bullock, Al Di Meola, Mike Miller, Frank Gambale, Scott Henderson, Larry Coryell, John Scofield, Allan Holdsworth, Mike Stern, John McLaughlin, Wayne Krantz and Pat Metheny I’m not really influenced by any of them. I studied with classical guitarist Alexander Bellow, jazz guitarist Harry Leahey who was with the Phil Woods band, jazz guitarist Tal Farlow who was a family friend, and jazz guitarist Pat Martino off and on when he wasn’t touring. Those guys were my influences, and except for Pat’s Joyous Lake album, none of them played fusion. When I first heard a Dumble I was enthralled with its sound. I bought a HRM Dumble, found out it wasn’t “the one” and then bought the 1983 Dumble that I currently own. That amp is my voice. It gives me everything I want when I play through it. I used to gig with it all of the time. Now, I gig with it occasionally, and I own some D-style amps because I don’t want to risk taking it to most of the gigs I have. Plus it’s fun to have all of these cool amps to enjoy playing through. BTW, most of the guitars I listed above were purchased from Guitar Trader in Red Bank New Jersey in the early 1970's when they were just fairly inexpensive used guitars that no one was very interested in owning. I bought my 1958 Burst for $1500 and my 1959 Burst for $1800. Now they are "vintage" guitars and expensive collector's items.

 

[Voodoosound]

I searched for my “sound” for probably 20 years or more. The interesting thing is I knew how to get various sounds. And even the “right” sounds for whatever I was doing. From my days in prog metal bands, punk bands, Jazz. Even my almost 2 years at Capital as a session player. I knew how to get what was needed. However, I never really felt like I had my OWN sound.

That didn’t happen until about 2007 or so when I decided to focus less on electric playing and return to why I started playing guitar in the first place. Classical and Flamenco. Oddly, after finding myself and my sound on my Contreras and Ramirez Flamencos and classical guitars.

I realized MY sound was more acoustic in its character than electric. When I decided to transition the acoustic qualities of that to electric. I was able to find my sound on the electric. My sound even when overdriven. Sounds more like an acoustic bowed instrument rather than an electric guitar. As has been demonstrated by my various clips.

It’s that thing now that no matter how hard I try NOT to sound like me. Everyone knows who it is. I suppose that could be a double edged sword. But there’s no question. I have a sound.

 

[FlyingVBlues]

I searched for my “sound” for probably 20 years or more. The interesting thing is I knew how to get various sounds. And even the “right” sounds for whatever I was doing. From my days in prog metal bands, punk bands, Jazz. Even my almost 2 years at Capital as a session player. I knew how to get what was needed. However, I never really felt like I had my OWN sound.

That didn’t happen until about 2007 or so when I decided to focus less on electric playing and return to why I started playing guitar in the first place. Classical and Flamenco. Oddly, after finding myself and my sound on my Contreras and Ramirez Flamencos and classical guitars.

I realized MY sound was more acoustic in its character than electric. When I decided to transition the acoustic qualities of that to electric. I was able to find my sound on the electric. My sound even when overdriven. Sounds more like an acoustic bowed instrument rather than an electric guitar. As has been demonstrated by my various clips.

It’s that thing now that no matter how hard I try NOT to sound like me. Everyone knows who it is. I suppose that could be a double edged sword. But there’s no question. I have a sound.

Jazz guitarist Jim Hall, who was known for his distinctive and innovative playing style, said "Why would anyone want to sound like someone else?” In my opinion developing your own unique musical voice is really important. I’ve listened to all of the clips you recorded for Jim Kelley, and you clearly have your own voice, and sound great. Some people just have it, and some of us, like myself, had to work on it for a long time. But when you get there it puts you on a different level than guitarists who basically just try to emulate their idols.

 

[beckstriad]

Jazz guitarist Jim Hall, who was known for his distinctive and innovative playing style, said "Why would anyone want to sound like someone else?” In my opinion developing your own unique musical voice is really important. I’ve listened to all of the clips you recorded for Jim Kelley, and you clearly have your own voice, and sound great. Some people just have it, and some of us, like myself, had to work on it for a long time. But when you get there it puts you on a different level than guitarists who basically just try to emulate their idols.

I'm in a similar boat. I'm still trying to find my sound, but I'm having fun doing it!

 

[Voodoosound]

Jazz guitarist Jim Hall, who was known for his distinctive and innovative playing style, said "Why would anyone want to sound like someone else?” In my opinion developing your own unique musical voice is really important. I’ve listened to all of the clips you recorded for Jim Kelley, and you clearly have your own voice, and sound great. Some people just have it, and some of us, like myself, had to work on it for a long time. But when you get there it puts you on a different level than guitarists who basically just try to emulate their idols.

I agree about unique musical voice being the most important. I always felt it meant you stand out and have something to say.

Thank you kindly for your acknowledgement of my voice. Much appreciated.

 

[Voodoosound]

I'm in a similar boat. I'm still trying to find my sound, but I'm having fun doing it!

No you have a sound. You developed it rather quickly also. You may be refining it. But no question you have your own voice.