Searching for that great Strat tone

[Chevy]

Sounds pretty good....

Here's that hollow tone from a neck pickup. This happens to be a noise canceling design, but it wounds like a single coil. Excuse the "fake" amplifier.

Neck pickup

a little cleaner (and way sloppy... just making it up as I went along)

Neck 2

David,
Thanks for your effort to get these tones on line.... hmmm; That does have some of the hollow quality I'm talking about. But the distortion is kinda messing up the overall picture; can't tell if it's got the top and bottom there; any chance of hearing that clean through a stock old Fender(-like) amp? What is that pickup, by the way, and what's the rest of the guitar makeup?
Thanks kindly,
Chevy

[Chevy]

The "it" that you're looking for is that cool growl that SRV's number one had, right?

Hmmm.... not sure if that's the same thing, but may be part of it; it's really pronounced tonal quality that SRV gets doing a heavy vibrato as an accent on the 12th fret, G string; man, just sends me. You get more of this vibe in the 12th fret area, but some strat seem to have that vibe elsewhere, too.

You can't plan for that or buy a guitar that has that sound consistently, you have to stumble across, or search for one. It shows up in weird places, too. I have a '76 Gibson SG in the shop. Got it set up for the customer and went to play test it earlier today. Dead on SRV tone. I NEVER would have expected it from this guitar. I have one 'strat' style guitar that has the growl ...get ready... it is a Baltimore, which is Johnson's BUDGET line! The body is Chinese mystery wood but it has the tone. Years ago, I played a Danelectro made single pickup amp-in-case Silvertone that also would do 'Flooding Down in Texas' just like the record.

Interesting. I was kinda wondering if pickup microphonics had something to do with it as well. That might explain the SG thing... (humbuckers, right)?

When you find one of the 'magic' guitars, it won't matter what pickups are in it, that sound quality will come through, but you can push a guitar closer to where you want to go with certain pickup choices.

That's what I'm hoping!

Also remember that Stevie's #1 had been routed extensively under the pickguard, which contributed to the 'hollow' sound. My cheep-o Baltimore also has a huge, deep universal rout which may be part of the magic.

Right; Anyone try one of the Warmouth or whichever bodies with the cavities routed out? Seems like they might contribute to a tone like I'm after.... but don't know.

You can't find the tone in any Strats you've played? The horrible truth may be that your 'finger tone' is not the tone you want, but may be the tone you are stuck with.

Well, I'm going to hold my ground on this one..... I hear what you're saying, but I think I can get what I'm after. Why? Pretty much all the Strats I've played thru sound slightly (or majorly) different, one to the next. Three Strats I've had recently all sound different. My friend's Strat sounds different. Same family of tone, yet all different. Like I said, I don't have the benefit of a large store to shop and compare at, and haven't had the luxury of being able to sit down with a coupla dozen or so in a suitable environment and look for one I really like. So the quest continues....

[David Schwab]

David,
Thanks for your effort to get these tones on line.... hmmm; That does have some of the hollow quality I'm talking about. But the distortion is kinda messing up the overall picture; can't tell if it's got the top and bottom there; any chance of hearing that clean through a stock old Fender(-like) amp? What is that pickup, by the way, and what's the rest of the guitar makeup?
Thanks kindly,
Chevy

It's a mutt I threw together. It's an alder Charvel body with a birdseye maple Tele neck. It has an old ESP Flicker tremolo.

The neck pickup is part of an experimental pickup I'm working on. Very standard, alnico magnets, forbon flats, etc. It's about 6K. I'm doing something to it to make it noise canceling, without changing the tone. It's all passive.

Here's clean.

Clean neck

Also remember that Stevie's #1 had been routed extensively under the pickguard, which contributed to the 'hollow' sound.

The Charvel I was playing also has the "swimming pool" rout.

[Chevy]

OK, got the clean one...

[QUOTE=David Schwab;68954]It's a mutt I threw together. It's an alder Charvel body with a birdseye maple Tele neck. It has an old ESP Flicker tremolo.

The neck pickup is part of an experimental pickup I'm working on. Very standard, alnico magnets, forbon flats, etc. It's about 6K. I'm doing something to it to make it noise canceling, without changing the tone. It's all passive.

Here's clean.

Clean neck


David,
Thanks for posting that! OK, the clean has some of the hollowness, yes. But the whole package isn't quite there for me.... it sounds too hi-fi or sterile, and lacks the top end, mids don't sound vintage..... it sounds nice, but the overall tone I'm after is vintage, with great top and bottom. My 2 cents.

[David Schwab]

David,
Thanks for posting that! OK, the clean has some of the hollowness, yes. But the whole package isn't quite there for me.... it sounds too hi-fi or sterile, and lacks the top end, mids don't sound vintage..... it sounds nice, but the overall tone I'm after is vintage, with great top and bottom. My 2 cents.

OK first you say it's too hi-fi, and then you say it lacks highs. That's a contradiction. Hi-fi implies a clean tone with a wide frequency response.

What are vintage mids? My buddy has a '64 Strat, he had it since it was new. You know how it sounds? Warm and dark. Less highs than my pickup. Very mellow. That's what old pickups sound like. What vintage guitars are you using as a reference? If you are going by old recordings, they weren't vintage guitars then, and sounded like new guitars.

"Vintage" is a lot of hype and is overrated. I'm personally not interested in vintage anything. It's like people talking about PAF tones, and they have never heard a real PAF. They all sounded different. It's a big myth.

The pickup you are hearing is a regular real Fender pickup. It's actually from a US Fender. The hum cancelation I'm doing has softened the top end a little, but I also didn't have it EQ'd that way. It actually has a lot of highs and lows, so you need to get better speakers, or use a good set of headphones. And don't forget, who would play with a clean tone like that? I wouldn't. You are used to hearing the amps influence on the pickup's tone.

What I like is the way the pickup sounds slightly dirty, which is how I would use it, like the first couple of clips. Played like that it gets that great round hollow tone. SRV wasn't playing clean ether, and he usually used about five different amps simultaneously when recording.

So if you aren't getting that tone from any of the Strats you are trying, it's not the guitars, it's what you do with them. Don't expect to just pick up a guitar and it gets what ever tone you hear in your head. That part is up to you. Otherwise everyone would sound like Jimi!

[David Schwab]

I have a '76 Gibson SG in the shop. Got it set up for the customer and went to play test it earlier today. Dead on SRV tone. I NEVER would have expected it from this guitar.

I knew a guy that had a Gretsch with the Hi-Lo trons. He plugged it into this little Marshall combo, and got the perfect SRV tone from the neck pickup! All it took was boosting the highs, and rolling the lows down.

I can tell you that you're likely to get closest with some Texas Specials, or Don Mare pickups. The custom shop '54's ain't gonna satisfy. They are to be avoided!

Amen to that. I can't figure how Fender can make such poor pickups these days.

Regarding the Tubescreamer: I think most players don't 'get' it. They dial up too much gain and lose all the dynamic range. IMHO the key to using a Tubescreamer is to turn the distortion way down and use the pedal as a sort of filter before a Fender blackface or silverface amp.

That's the best tone from those pedals. Almost just a clean tone. Rats work well like that too.

You can't find the tone in any Strats you've played? The horrible truth may be that your 'finger tone' is not the tone you want, but may be the tone you are stuck with. I realized a long time ago that it didn't matter what guitar I played, because it always sounds like ME! A while back, I was working on a guitar for a player that I admire and whose style and sound I am familiar with. I played a few licks and handed him the guitar to check out. I was really startled when he played some licks and it sounded like a completely different guitar! In fact, it sounded... just like he ALWAYS sounds on stage and record.

Yep. We all have a tone, and it evolves over the course of our life playing. You learn something you like, and you stick it anywhere it will fit. After a while it's in there even though you aren't aware of it.

Rather than trying to cop someone else's tone, listen to your tone and cultivate that. (that's directed to the OP, not you )

I know I sound like me no matter what instrument I'm playing. There's that story about the time Van Halen was playing with Ted Nugent. Ted asked Eddy if he could try his guitar and amp out... he wanted to see how Ed got that "brown sound", and swore it was the guitar and amp. So Nugent pickups up Ed's Frankenstein and plays through his Marshall... and he sounded just like Ted Nugent!

And I'd bet Ed would have sounded like Ed playing Nugents rig. Gear doesn't give you tone, it's just a tool.

What's wrong with music these days is everyone is trying to sound like everyone else.

[Robert M. Martinelli]

HUH? I'm with Dave on this one. I've NEVER heard anyone in person or print talk about thermal noise in a guitar pickup. It does exist, but is sort of like the outer planets in the solar system...they exist, but you need specialized equipment to detect them, and they have absolutely no effect on your everyday life here on earth. You say that it only becomes a problem when you start putting stompboxes in the signal chain. I'd say you're not hearing as much thermal noise from the pickup as you are from the stompbox circuits, which are injecting hundreds of times the noise that your pickup does. A single transistor, or vacuum tube in your amp will have MUCH more noise than your pickup. ANY test that would be able to measure the thermal noise of a passive pickup would just confirm that induced hum (even in the quietest humbucking design) is going to be by FAR, the primary cause of noise. Some quickie calculations showed that for the audio spectrum(or the chunk of it that guitars/amps use) - the noise level does not appreciably increase throughout the commonly used impedance ranges for guitar pickups. We're talking a noise component in the nano-volt range riding along with the pickup's output- probably around a tenth of a volt.
Basically:
Thermal noise, in relation to passive guitar pickups, is essentially a non-issue. It cannot be eradicated, but exists at such an inconsequential level, that no one cares. If you're listening to remnants of the big-bang in deep space, amplifying microvave transmissions, or have 40 pounds of copper wrapped around an earthquake sensor, that's when you care. I kinda think that not winding higher impedance coils because you're concerned about thermal noise is like constantly waving your arms to scare away elephants.

Ok folks, I am with you and I completely agree that induced hum is BY FAR the MAIN issue when talking ' bout "noise" in guitar pickups, nonetheless I must say that, experimenting with "commercial" stompboxes tied in chains, I was able to hear a difference in the white noise coming out of the chain when ( not ) playing a stock Strat pickup or a hi-output humbucker, I think firstly because "commercial" stompboxes use low grade components with high thermal noise ( and this was one of the reasons I started building my own using mil-spec & low noise components, ) and secondly because noise gets multiplied by the various gain stages, and, after a long FX chain the difference could have become audible.....I must recognize this is probably not an issue in the real world though, so I beg your pardon if my post misled someone, it surely was not my intention, I tried to give Chevy a rough idea of
the factors behind a certain sound, and still I believe most of the info I posted on this subject to be helpful, but, hey, I' m here to share the little knowledge I have and to learn as much as I can from others, I believe this to be the right attitude, and this is one of the reasons I joined the forum ( it' s also a good chance to keep practicing - hopefully improving - my English, and I encourage you to correct my spelling-writing-grammar errors, I' m neither English nor American as all of you might have already guessed, so I hope my English is good enough ).
Peace
Bob

[Sweetfinger]

it' s also a good chance to keep practicing - hopefully improving - my English, and I encourage you to correct my spelling-writing-grammar errors, I' m neither English nor American as all of you might have already guessed, so I hope my English is good enough ).
Peace
Bob

You have a better command of the english language than our president! ...the one who called out to Berlusconi at the G8, "Amigo! Amigo!" A comparison to GWB could seem like faint praise, because the standard has not been set terribly high. IMO your english is on par with the other forum members here, a fine group to be associated with.

[Robert M. Martinelli]

You have a better command of the english language than our president! ...the one who called out to Berlusconi at the G8, "Amigo! Amigo!" A comparison to GWB could seem like faint praise, because the standard has not been set terribly high. IMO your english is on par with the other forum members here, a fine group to be associated with.

Thanks Sweetfinger, you really made my day a better day, I appreciate your praise, all the more so because of the huge laughter it caused

...and you' re right, this is indeed a very fine group to be associated with, makes me kinda proud of it.

Have a great day

Bob

[Steve Conner]

You can conciously change the way you pick, strum, and finger notes, but it is a LOT of work because so much of the mechanics of playing is at the sub-concious level. My $.02

I totally agree. I've been playing guitar for about 20 years now, and tried all sorts of guitars, amps, and pedals. But the single greatest change in my tone I ever got was last month, when I crashed my mountain bike and took a quarter-sized divot of flesh out of my right hand, in exactly the place where I lean it on the guitar bridge. (I started out playing metal, and this position makes it easy to shift between regular and palm muted.)

This forced me to change my right hand position completely until it healed up, and made a huge improvement in my tone. I ended up playing further away from the bridge and attacking the strings straight on with the pick instead of at an angle, and the result was a crisper pick attack and a fatter sustain. Now I know about this, I can choose either hand position, but it took pain to make me notice in the first place.

So I guess what I'm saying is "garbage in, garbage out"

*edit* Oh, and I'm pretty sure thermal noise does exist. Using a high-gain amp, you can hear the difference in white noise with the volume on your guitar maxed vs. with it at zero. I believe it comes from the resistance of the volume pot, which is large compared to the DCR of the pickup, and the inductance of the pickup prevents the DCR from "loading" the noise source.

[jrfrond]

I might get flamed on this, and I really don't care, but my close to 40 years experience in music is that there are FAR too many musicians of ALL kinds, not just guitarists, who take all of the minutia FAR too seriously and think that endless tweaking will give them what they want, when in reality, it really lies in musical ability and technique. Just f***in' PLAY and work on the feel and chops and develop ears and a good touch and the rest will follow.

I've been building and tweaking guitars, basses, amps and drums for many years. It never ceases to amaze me how many musicians get so wrapped-up in everything but the musical end of the instrument. Sure, I've made a lot of money accomodating them, because they are ALL multiple-return clients, but as an old-school musician, I'd like to quote Mr. Zappa and say "Shut up and play yer guitar!".

"Garbage in, garbage out".....you are SO right Steve!

[Robert M. Martinelli]

Amen to that. I can't figure how Fender can make such poor pickups these days.

Rather than trying to cop someone else's tone, listen to your tone and cultivate that. (that's directed to the OP, not you )

I know I sound like me no matter what instrument I'm playing. There's that story about the time Van Halen was playing with Ted Nugent. Ted asked Eddy if he could try his guitar and amp out... he wanted to see how Ed got that "brown sound", and swore it was the guitar and amp. So Nugent pickups up Ed's Frankenstein and plays through his Marshall... and he sounded just like Ted Nugent!

And I'd bet Ed would have sounded like Ed playing Nugents rig. Gear doesn't give you tone, it's just a tool.

What's wrong with music these days is everyone is trying to sound like everyone else.

You scored some good points, David;
first of all, I wonder if Fender is still capable of producing decent pickups; months ago a friend of mine proudly brought to me his Jazz Bass along with a couple of Fender "Custom Shop" pickups, still in their box, asking me to install them....I read the writings on the box, and they said the pickups were "manufactured to the highest standards", "they had been carefully wax potted " and inductance and DC resistance were shown too. I opened the box expecting to find the "holy grail" of Fender pickups in front of me and - guess what - I found they were no wax potted at all, the outer windings were so loose they were falling out of the coil, and, electrically speaking, inductance and DC resistance were way off spec.

I wrote to Fender' s customer support to complain and - guess what - no reply at all - Sheesh!

Having people trying to emulate other players' sound is not a problem by itself - a lot of people - including me - started off as a wannabe-guitar hero, the real problem is, pretty often, sticking too much to their heroes' style, they simply don' t come to the point of developing THEIR OWN sound and playing style, and they get trapped by this mechanism....and THAT is not good. So your advice to everyone to cultivate a personal tone and style and to treat gear for what it is, a tool ( I would also say "a toy" to "play" with, in more than one sense ) to achieve something we long for, is a sage advice.

I have another story about Eddie: back in the 80s an Italian journalist was interviewing him in his hotel room in Rome, and Eddie had his guitar with him - the journalist asked Eddie to play some lines with his guitar, Eddie did it without plugging the guitar to an amp, and the journalist swore in his article that the sound he heard was exactly like hearing some VH record...and he still wondered how was that possible....

To me, along with the story David just told us, this is the best demonstration that "tone" it' s all about touch.....

As Steve said...Garbage in, garbage out!

Regards

Bob

[Chevy]

OK first you say it's too hi-fi, and then you say it lacks highs. That's a contradiction. Hi-fi implies a clean tone with a wide frequency response.

What are vintage mids? My buddy has a '64 Strat, he had it since it was new. You know how it sounds? Warm and dark. Less highs than my pickup. Very mellow. That's what old pickups sound like. What vintage guitars are you using as a reference? If you are going by old recordings, they weren't vintage guitars then, and sounded like new guitars.

"Vintage" is a lot of hype and is overrated. I'm personally not interested in vintage anything. It's like people talking about PAF tones, and they have never heard a real PAF. They all sounded different. It's a big myth.

The pickup you are hearing is a regular real Fender pickup. It's actually from a US Fender. The hum cancelation I'm doing has softened the top end a little, but I also didn't have it EQ'd that way. It actually has a lot of highs and lows, so you need to get better speakers, or use a good set of headphones. And don't forget, who would play with a clean tone like that? I wouldn't. You are used to hearing the amps influence on the pickup's tone.

What I like is the way the pickup sounds slightly dirty, which is how I would use it, like the first couple of clips. Played like that it gets that great round hollow tone. SRV wasn't playing clean ether, and he usually used about five different amps simultaneously when recording.

So if you aren't getting that tone from any of the Strats you are trying, it's not the guitars, it's what you do with them. Don't expect to just pick up a guitar and it gets what ever tone you hear in your head. That part is up to you. Otherwise everyone would sound like Jimi!

David,
Thanks for the feedback . Didn't mean to put down your pickup.... By hi-fi I meant it sounds like you're playing your guitar plugged into a solid state home stereo system.
Of course I'm used to hearing an amp's influence on a pickup's/guitar's tone, and that is the only true and useful reference I have; as I play live thru vintage Fender amps, and listen to recordings like SRV Live at the El Mocambo, which is played thru vintage amps as well. So I'm obviously not likely going to hear what I want if you play your pickup direct to the computer. I do have good speakers... that's how I can tell you're not playing thru an old Fender amp (at least that's what it sounds like to me).
One of my references is a set of old Van Zandt Vintage Plus pickups that I've owned for many years.... they have real nice shimmering highs and lots of detail, and do in fact sound sorta vintage, if you'll excuse the term.

You seemed to be tracking with me earlier and then even produced a guitar/pickup that has some of that "hollowness" quality to it...... which is awesome..... but now are you telling me that every guitar you play has that characteristic because it's in your hands?

I dont' disagree that guitarists have a certain sound unique to themselves, ... All I'm trying to say is that the guitars sound different, too. You evidently have just proved that point by demonstrating this on the mutt Charvel of yours.
Chevy.

[jrfrond]

Musicians such as SRV, EVH et al who have such distiguishable and unique styles will sound like themselves on ANY guitar, electric or acoustic. So much for cloning someone's rig to get "their sound".

[David Schwab]

I have another story about Eddie: back in the 80s an Italian journalist was interviewing him in his hotel room in Rome, and Eddie had his guitar with him - the journalist asked Eddie to play some lines with his guitar, Eddie did it without plugging the guitar to an amp, and the journalist swore in his article that the sound he heard was exactly like hearing some VH record...and he still wondered how was that possible....

Well it was not a distorted tone, but I bet all the pick harmonics and stuff were there, because that's the things you create with your fingers.

I spent a lot of time practicing without an amp, mostly just because it was late at night, or I was also watching TV or something, but after a while you do learn how and where to pick the strings, and stuff like that, to get certain tones from the instrument. In my case I was always working at getting the high notes on guitar to sound silky smooth when soloing. Nothing sounds worse than someone who just started playing and they get that "plink plink" tone! So after a while you learn to do things that directly translate into your amped tone. Also I pluck pretty hard on bass, so I always have to change my technique when I play guitar.

I know Eddy used to just sit and play all the time, because he says he came up with the tapping thing when he was standing in front of the toilet taking a leak! You just have to play so much that you have eliminated the mechanical part... you don't have to think about it, and then you discover other cool things. I know I sound different when I've been playing a lot, then when I haven't picked up an instrument in a few weeks.