Frustrating guitar setup tone problems
Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2018 12:25 pm
My setup continually goes south. Help me out with how you deal with this issue. Do you get a different amp, change all tubes, talk to repair guy, different guitar, new strings, or just hang in there and keep trying to fix things. I am by no means a professional but I do have an ear for tone and know if I am satisfied and continually try to get what I like. Yes I know different guitars and amps sound vastly different but if I like what I hear at one point then its very frustrating to later hate the sound. That happens to me even when I have not changed any pots in the setup.
I am a back porch picker and all I am trying to do its get 'one' or 'two' tunes down and play them somewhere. In other words I don't want to go out and spend $20,000 on new gear and go on tour. Obviously I am into Chet big time, have been for 56 years. Right now I am working on 'I love how you love me'. I realize that I can't get the 'exact' sound that Chet gets however if I like what I hear one day, why can't I get that sound the next day or even later on that day.
A have a modifed Fender Deluxe and play a Japanese Country Gent. I use a SIgnal pad to adjust the input to amp and run the guitar pots on full with bridge pot turned back a tad. I know the on board fx loop works fine because I have used a Stryman big sky (for reverb and some delay) in it followed by a 31 band EQ and have been very satisfied at times. I have changed out the 12AX7 used by the loop to a JJ. The Eq actually lets you dial in or dial out some tone. However, I believe that if things are set up properly your tone without any eq changes at all should be satisfying and that the eq should just be a minor tweak to get the tone to sound more exact. As of late I have been using the tremolo intensity and speed. I don't use on stock onboard spring reverb. I have also changed out ch2 preamp tube to a JJ.
As an example of my latest problem I started the day telling my buddies that my setup sounded awsome. Then by the end of the day I was disgusted with it. At the end of the day the first 2 strings (E,B) especially it sounded like a tin can with poor tone. Overall nothing was mellow and balanced. And all the stryman presets didn't sound as good. Does that mean that the amp developed an issue during the day ? I also have an issue with the country gent in that at times the b string develops a very nasal sitar tone. I do know that the 1st three frets have an issue with the e b strings. But on this day it was very minor and was able to tweak it out at the start of the day with the 31q band eq by messing with the 500 to 1k bands.
Here's a checklist of what I can do. Can you give me your recomendations of what you would do ?
Possibilities:
Discard the fender deluxe and look for a new amp.
Talk to an amp repair man about the issue.
Discard the Country Gent.
Have the Country Gent refretted.
Change strings. (I have always used 10,12,20w, 28,38,48 pure nickel)
Change the 6V6 power tubes
Have the amp rebiased again.
Swap out the ch2 premap to a 12AY7
Change every single tube.
Have all tubes tested.
Have all the 'small' electrolytics changed out.
Change out to Fender spkr with a Patriot Canibus Rex
Today I plan to put on new strings and and go back to basics without and stuff in the fx loop and go from there and incrementally add on stryman and eq. I also plan to play the guitar through a Deluxe hot rod to try an isolate the problem.
Help
I am a back porch picker and all I am trying to do its get 'one' or 'two' tunes down and play them somewhere. In other words I don't want to go out and spend $20,000 on new gear and go on tour. Obviously I am into Chet big time, have been for 56 years. Right now I am working on 'I love how you love me'. I realize that I can't get the 'exact' sound that Chet gets however if I like what I hear one day, why can't I get that sound the next day or even later on that day.
A have a modifed Fender Deluxe and play a Japanese Country Gent. I use a SIgnal pad to adjust the input to amp and run the guitar pots on full with bridge pot turned back a tad. I know the on board fx loop works fine because I have used a Stryman big sky (for reverb and some delay) in it followed by a 31 band EQ and have been very satisfied at times. I have changed out the 12AX7 used by the loop to a JJ. The Eq actually lets you dial in or dial out some tone. However, I believe that if things are set up properly your tone without any eq changes at all should be satisfying and that the eq should just be a minor tweak to get the tone to sound more exact. As of late I have been using the tremolo intensity and speed. I don't use on stock onboard spring reverb. I have also changed out ch2 preamp tube to a JJ.
As an example of my latest problem I started the day telling my buddies that my setup sounded awsome. Then by the end of the day I was disgusted with it. At the end of the day the first 2 strings (E,B) especially it sounded like a tin can with poor tone. Overall nothing was mellow and balanced. And all the stryman presets didn't sound as good. Does that mean that the amp developed an issue during the day ? I also have an issue with the country gent in that at times the b string develops a very nasal sitar tone. I do know that the 1st three frets have an issue with the e b strings. But on this day it was very minor and was able to tweak it out at the start of the day with the 31q band eq by messing with the 500 to 1k bands.
Here's a checklist of what I can do. Can you give me your recomendations of what you would do ?
Possibilities:
Discard the fender deluxe and look for a new amp.
Talk to an amp repair man about the issue.
Discard the Country Gent.
Have the Country Gent refretted.
Change strings. (I have always used 10,12,20w, 28,38,48 pure nickel)
Change the 6V6 power tubes
Have the amp rebiased again.
Swap out the ch2 premap to a 12AY7
Change every single tube.
Have all tubes tested.
Have all the 'small' electrolytics changed out.
Change out to Fender spkr with a Patriot Canibus Rex
Today I plan to put on new strings and and go back to basics without and stuff in the fx loop and go from there and incrementally add on stryman and eq. I also plan to play the guitar through a Deluxe hot rod to try an isolate the problem.
Help