EQed

Saturday's amp EQ. The EVH 5150III, despite its lunch box dimensions, churns out quite a handful of bass. It's true at the other hand as well- excessive treble- especially at higher gain settings. 

Sunday's amp EQ. Tried to emulate some Gambale tone with an Ibanez & my Blackstar, the treble was subtracted entirely. The resulting tone was quite fat & smooth but nowhere near Gambale's sonic frequencies. I missed out the JB pickup in the equation, quite obviously. 

Metal 'burn

Before leaving the house last Monday, I managed to pair the John Page Ashburn with Blackstar's HT Metal. The objective was to hear if a high gain amp like this one could be useful with single coils if it's running on lowered gain. 

The Blackstar HT Metal range is pure distortion mayhem when cranked up. It has no crunch channel, you deal with clean or super saturated distortion, nothing in between. The only way to enjoy some restrained drive is to back the gain down. Some amps sound half dead with such settings but the HT Metal is no such amp. 

The Ashburn Classic here features a trio of vintage output single coil pickups. They don't sound useful at high gain settings. In fact, they inject frustration with the lack of punch & make you wonder if there's something wrong with the instrument. These Bloodline pickups thrive on mild drive; a Tube Screamer pedal or anything of similar performance would generate an awesome outcome. So how did they fare with a tamed beast like the HT Metal?

Simply put, they are impressive. If you fancy how Nick Johnston sounds like, this pairing generate tones as such. My version simply lacks a little warmth due to the maple fretboard there.

Knowing

Song writing mode ON (again). On days when I wish to be efficient with very little distractions, I have my single pickup guitars to go to. That's right, single pickup guitars prevent pickups selection so that I can focus on the task at hand. In this case, I always solo in the neck, so the bridge pickup is my riff focus reference. The Gibson MM above helped tremendously.

Also, having the right tools get the job done well. I need an intense distortion source & the pedals brought out & chained up did not fulfill this objective. I'm glad I have more than one amp to see things through & the Blackstar here did it with ease- if you need to get the right tones going, go to the tone source; it's the amp, not effects pedals.

On the subject of pedals, the ones left in the mix was an OD whose function was no more than to saturate the signals & one that kept irrelevant noises out of the way.

So my friends, knowing what to use & when to use it is rather crucial in this aspect.

Smaller metal

Never second guess the small time players. Definitely not in this day & age. You might put them down for being too novelty without the substance some years ago but manufacturers today are the more listening type, so they know the needs on the ground. As with Blackstar, the people there are active musicians a large number of whom are gear nuts as well. If you want to place some good bets on stuff that works, this might be the name to go to after all.

The HT Metal series is an all out intense distortion type amp so the default drive doesn't do anything mild & smooth to appease some players out there. I definitely like the intensity & the workable cleans. Yes, the clean channel is likable but not exactly the bells & whistle type in the Fender vein. You don't need any more pedals in terms of distortion if you own this one, you might do well to invest in other details, namely delay & modulation.

Duncan metal

Since my 805 was lying around the amps vicinity, I plugged it into my HT Metal for some gratifying saturation. Blackstar's HT Metal, to me, is one which doesn't need much help in terms of drive. It has loads of intense drive, together with upper level volume saturation, it's one angry amp not to be missed by all you metal fiends out there. The 805, well, this pedal holds its own when it comes to drive anger. It doesn't quite deliver the metal tone per se (it wasn't conceived to be one) but it has some very rowdy drive at the later drive settings. Coupling this resulted in some obscene drive delivery but there are enough EQs to see you through some clarity.