Dimensional weekend

It's a Saturday without distortion. Kept things clean today to appease the Dimension C application. I'm not a clean tone person by any means but today was enjoyable. There's something about the chorus & clean tones that everyone should embrace. Not to mention, a touch of reverb. Also, cleans & single coils are good friends. 

Clean supplements (2)

For a good clean tone to happen, I still believe that the amplifier is it. It's the make / break component in making one's tone great. You'd be surprised that an appealing level of clean can be achieved with just the guitar & amp if your amp is worthy. OK, there's some controversy as to what makes a good clean tone when it comes to amps. My first & foremost reference is always a Fender.  When Leo started it all, he was working with cleans. Back in those days, the overdrive would take centerstage much later in guitar / amp developments. Cleans were pretty much it & Fender did it right from the start. Fender amps have that clean chime that's still very difficult to beat. In fact, the good amp names that are not Fender, presented their own iteration of good cleans instead of competing against the Fender standard. In the non-boutique realm, we can agree that Vox & Marshall did well in this aspect. 

As for my personal reference, the Fender name wins it because it goes well with reverb. I have no idea if this was Leo's intention back then but pair up a Fender amp & some dedicated reverb unit, say a Strymon BigSky, & you'd be lost in dreamscape for days. That goes to show how good the Fender clean is even with digital implements.

Safety first

This should be a required procedure once Phase II kicks in come Friday (19th June). Handled gear in stores should be cleaned. It concerns the safety of both buyers & sellers. The last thing we want is a second wave of infections plus another episode of semi-lockdown & movement restrictions. Enough already.

PIC: Rotosound

Clean

This was unplanned, I wanted to play the acoustic. However, I have not really played this clean since the day I got it. So it was plugged into a clean setting throughout. Not very inspiring. The mini humbuckers do not possess the thumping tone of the full-sized counterparts. They lack bass. The midrange & treble were more audible but this isn't something you'd want to hear coming from a clean tone. Even the average acoustic guitar, unplugged, has more depth than these pickups. 

I love these pickups for overdrive & hard distortion. The lower frequency's less prominence helped with single note definition. As such, you won't hear the Clapton-esque woman tone much. Also, it's good for those brash sounding black metal numbers ala Darkthrone. I have no plans to swap these pickups out in the mean time. 

Nu-clean

My bout with Vox continues. It's the year-end sale anyway 😁

The clean end

Had some playing time in the evening so ended the day with some great cleans. That's right- clean. Coming from someone who doesn't give a hoot about driveless tone, it means a lot. The formula: Single coils + chorus + boost. The chorus you see here is One Control's Little Copper Chorus & I have good things to say about it in the next instalment. 😁

Clean living

The real reason why I purchased the Marshall MX112 cab is seen here. I need a good, working clean tone. The best bet is to invest in a Fender amp but I'd like to capitalize on what I currently own. The cab is supplementing my JCM800 & I know what you folks out there are thinking; that's the wrong amp to be taking my cleans to another level. You are absolutely right. The 800 is known for its bark; the more distortion you pump into one, the more menacing the 800 becomes. Provided of course, you crank things up which I'm not planning to do to keep things clean. I've been plugging the 800 into a Blackstar cab all this while but I hear excessive bass in there so in the name of keeping things all Marshall-y, the MX112 was factored into the equation.

Still on the MX112 cab, the driver in there is a Celestion Seventy 80. It's best described as an outstanding no reaction model, often equipped into a budget range across manufacturers. Translation- there's nothing outstanding this driver has to offer except that it makes what you already like to hear a little more appealing. You know, removing that wee bit of harshness from the top end & making sure the bottom end doesn't boom too much that it kills definition. If you are into this kind of offering, the Seventy 80 in any manufacturer's cab should be considered.

Finally, a good clean isn't a good clean if you don't understand what goes into making a good clean; it's not the amp per se. I must say that the Tele & chorus played this one nicely (no pun intended). On that note, I'm not after a pristine, chimey type of clean, it's my type of clean- something that propels me to play & not mess up motivation considering I'm not the clean type to begin with. Also, if I'm sick of hearing too much cleans along the way, then I know what the JCM800 is good for. 

Happy Tuesday, everyone. 😆

JCM twang

Guitar geeks out there would know what it means to pair a Fender with a Marshall amp for some good cleans. Hendrix did it to good effect. That was a Strat with a non-fiery Marshall, of course. Following my 'discovery' of how a JCM800 clean proved to be more appealing than I thought it would be, plugging in my Tele into this set up was a clear winner. The Tele honk as they call it (playing both pickups via the middle position selector option), opened up some enjoyable finger picking ideas which I dwelled on today from start to end. Once again, some tools were meant to address a certain approach & it's a matter of stepping back to embrace the stuff beyond one's comfort zone. 

OK, maybe I'm getting old & prefer those distortion-free tones instead. 🙉

JCM clean

I'm beginning to love this amp more. Whatever drive tones it was fabled for, the cleans in here were much overlooked. It accepted the chorus pedal well. The JCM800 wasn't known for go-to cleans. Its JTM/JMP siblings have more appealing cleans & that legendary break up tone unlike the excessive manifestation by the JCMs in general. Yes, I'm still wallowing in clean tones. Not after chimey, crystal clear voicings, just that appealing measure which helps get my ideas through. I'm not looking to buy any more Marshalls in time to come, I'm treasuring what I have right now. 

Lush (2)

More lush tones last night as I ended the day with my Edwards (E-ST-90ALR) seen here. The pickups on board are not Seymour Duncans & I can hear the difference between this guitar & my Strat played the day before. Maybe it's not about the brand name but how they were wound at the factory; these pickups are in-house models with no special trimmings to enhance the sonic responses of this guitar. As such, the cleans coming out from this one was rather harsh. I might just add an EQ pedal in the set up next time.

Lush

Had some playing time yesterday (public holiday); no overdrive, just the Strat & my chorus. I still believe that the single coil pickup does better for cleans compared to its humbucker counterpart. If you wish to get out of a rut, one way to do it is to employ a different set up, one which is preferably not your cup of tea & compel your way through it. 😁

A chorus of approval

I'm ending July with this sharing. I've been plugging solid body guitars into my acoustic amp for clean tones. The tone benefits from the onboard chorus feature, making it a little brighter so that the instrument's tone knob can be of more use to vary proceedings. Many of us are guilty of ignoring the tone control, letting it be at maximum setting regardless of what we play, be it driven or clean tones.

That's right, the key consideration there is chorus; it makes clean tones happier & more defined in terms of clarity. Fellow chorus users, I don't know if you hear this but I am very happy with that slight push in gain when the chorus is activated. I went out to hunt for the most affordable chorus pedal out there to make sure I wasn't tripping on make belief. The Danelectro Cool Cat chorus here was less than $40 & it generates a range of very inviting tones. I'm not a modulation fan, effects like chorus, phaser & flanger are very annoying (to me) & they get in the way of single note definition. However, the chorus is something beneficial for clean tones & shouldn't be written off for its less than appealing performance with distortion in general. 

Cleaning

If you think getting that perfect drive tone is a headache, playing clean would put you in equal hardship. I'm not much of a clean fan but I do indulge in clean tones time & again for variety's sake. Also, playing clean is a sure check for techniques. If you are hiding behind high gain for much of your fretboard gymnastics, playing clean is a reality check.

OK, where do I begin? I don't have a dedicated, clean-only amp to begin with (after selling off my Vox) but I always overlook what my Marshall JVM could do in this aspect. The JVM is one of the best non-Fender clean performer out there, that awesome cleans without being too chimey (think Fender) to begin with. What does one complement clean tones with? A chorus would make perfect sense for ambience & depth. This is especially crucial for amps without reverb. However I ditched the chorus for a compressor instead. If you remove your gain laden tones & listen to all things clean, you'd realize how uneven your volume could become when playing fast especially. Those thinner plain strings can sometimes be too soft & you wouldn't want to hit the strings harder as this results in inefficient picking (for high output pickups, this would induce drive) & mistakes. I have always preferred single coils for cleans & the Edwards you see above got picked. So last weekend, I was a clean camper but that's because I was bored. 😁

The clean drive through

Back to my EVH tinkering. Actually, there's nothing to tinker with, everything's there for the taking. The EVH 5150III LBX has a clean channel. OK, so it's a clean channel not like what you'd expect from a Fender. No bells & whistles here for sure because it drives if your signals are of the high output type or if you expend undue pressure on your picking to somehow flux the output. Yes, it's a little frustrating for those of us who are looking for a no-frills clean tone for, maybe, a clean chord episode in front of a crowd with some volume expectations. I've kept my gain pretty low for this attempt but the phantom drive manifests itself every now & then due to some careless manipulations. 

I gave up trying to highlight good cleans from this one. It wasn't made for a through & through clean performance anyway. I ended up coupling a distortion pedal to it for some crunchy manifestations. Never ask a brute to exemplify some gentlemanly attributes.

Clean: Re-visited (sort of)

Confession: I'm not a clean fan. OK maybe the jazzy stuff- that, I can tolerate. Lately, due to a single coil preoccupation, I'm appreciating clean tones. The cleans which contain traces of drive when cranked up. Nick Johnston- that's my best reference. So the adventure requires me to add a pedal into the signal chain because the single coils I'm dealing with are not the high output type; the Ashburn's Bloodline pickups are polite entities. A clean boost is added as seen above, it's a Protone Clean Boost which turns into an overdrive at maximum setting.

What's the benefit of approaching tone from this perspective? It allows the player to clean up the signal via the volume control. Not all pickups-boost combo will give you this luxury, it's a matter of trial & error.

Stain- gone...

Remember the cleaning fluids I mentioned? No? Here: CLICK ME

This is proof of their worthiness:

• Left: Fret's slight corrosion
• Right: After treatment- the fluid is strong enough to remove light stains/ rust

Little helper

I received a call after playing last night, while talking, my daughter picked up a rag & helped wipe down my guitar.

Thanks darling...