Reference Tones

[duzie]

Schenker’s tone seems to only have gotten better over the years.

 

[jellodog]

Unfortunately, I'm still a sucker for what has typically been called "LA Lead" in whatever MFX units. For me, until this day, *the* role model of that tone is the outro solo of "Rosanna".

Absolutely Luke has to be in here.

 

[State of Epicicity]

The live version of Memories by Joe Satriani is to me an ideal touch sensitive tone. If you have the time to listen to the whole thing, it's just amazing what he does with just the tone knob. God I love that man. Even if you just listen to the intro, to me it's pure magic.

 

[kartikg3]

The live version of Memories by Joe Satriani is to me an ideal touch sensitive tone. If you have the time to listen to the whole thing, it's just amazing what he does with just the tone knob. God I love that man. Even if you just listen to the intro, to me it's pure magic.

I love Satch. And this song too. Wonderful reference tone for touch sensitive tones.

My favourite reference tones are:

Touch sensitive, softellow melodic cleans to screaming rage: Mistreated by Deep Purple from Live in London



For more clean to saturation, Satch's Made of Tears live



And ofcourse, for that singing sound, Steve Vai's Whispering a Prayer



And finally, for that heavy heavy rock/metal tones, none other than Still of The Night by Whitesnake

 

[State of Epicicity]

For more clean to saturation, Satch's Made of Tears live

I thought the tone was fine here, but that performance was goosebump inducing. I can say I thoroughly love that man.

 

[PLX]

For me the toanz that I love the most can be heard on Fair warning

 

[TSJMajesty]

These 2 from Muse give me goose bumps:

 

[TSJMajesty]

I can't describe what it is about this that I love, but here it is:

 

[Deadpan]

I'm addicted to the signature tone of Vinai-T Emotive Pack IRs by LiveReady Sound. That is an ideal tone for me. What I love most about it is that it instantly gets me the tone that I want without tweaking nothing but the Amp B/M/T, and I do not find it harsh on the high frequencies. The mids are mellow, and it can cut though the mix like a Samurai blade.

I normally use it with the Axe-FX JS410 Lead Red, Orange, or Carol-AnnTucana Lead (and now incorporating the new Lead Green) but also with many other amps, from vintage Fenders to Vox.

A great thing about this pack is that it only contains four IRs, therefore you don't get options paralysis. When I bought it in 2021 I selected the first one, and still haven't even used the others.

@Deadpan would you reveal for us what cab and mike did you use there?

There are many examples of this IR at Vinai-T YouTube. He normally uses it with a Helix

Apologies, just seeing this. I remember these being made with a Mesa Black Shadow 90. Unfortunately that's all I recall. Glad you like them. They have been very popular.

 

[State of Epicicity]

These 2 from Muse give me goose bumps:

These two were interesting to me. I've never listened to this band. The primary thing with this guitar tone for me was the dead on doubling of the bass. I'd love to compare the actual stem of the guitar by itself outside of this context, because it seems like the guitar tone was completely made to be one with the bass, in the best way possible. It was a lesson in great engineering in that context.

 

[State of Epicicity]

I can't describe what it is about this that I love, but here it is:

To me the cool thing here is the performance really. It's just so balls out; it puts across the energy perfectly. I feel like some guitar tones do a disservice to a great performance by overly glossing or sugar coating what's going on with the player, but that's not the case here at all; here it just sounds like a heavy compressor doing most of the work on a punchy and raw take. Very cool indeed.

 

[State of Epicicity]

To me the Horrorscope album by Overkill is an example of a perfect thrash tone. My favorite song by these guys is Nice Day...For a Funeral. That song segues to the last song on the album, so here they are together:



I wrote Merritt Gant, who was one of the guitarists on that album, if he remembered the gear they used. This was his response, if anyone likes this tone and is interested:

"Album was recorded & mixed at carriage house in Connecticut. Board was ssl4000. Recorded to 2" tape. 30 days to complete. Date used same drum tones from years of decay & panterra. Basic setup. Hard gates from board on toms with gated verb eventide. Same for kick. No sample replacements & no click track. Guitar rhythms are Ada mp1 preamp into carvin power amp into 4x12 Marshall 1960b. Triple tracked left right & center with 57s. Solos were laney head into 4x12. Bass was Peavey heads into 4x10 miked with DI blend. Don't remember any other details. Wasn't a gear head back then. I remember a lot of eq on the board. After tracking it took an entire day to prep studio to mix. Date never touched anything. There were 2 engineers that patched everything he wanted. He also brought his own rack of compressors, etc that he used for mixdown. Mixdown went to 1/2 tape then off to mastering where no one was allowed to attend. That's all I got. But I remember one common theme. Simplicity. No tricks. Just good playing, basic miking, and great gear."