The Gain Wars.

[KingsXJJ]

It used to be (for me anyway) that my 17 year old Army A$$ bought the pawn shop practice amp with the most gain. To my newbie butt that was what gave me the “stack sound” and tube amp feel for what my poor Army guy could afford. I chose Crate at a time when when they looked like an actual crate with wood trim.

Nowadays it’s different, usually you can get more gain than you need or can use from many suspects.

The EVH Red channel, the Marshall DSL’s, ENGL, Diezel, many more too.

It’s almost like a nuclear arms race but for gain instead of missles. I think the key towards understanding this is using the sometimes true adage that “more is less” at times.

I’d have probably gotten along with the DSL’s in particular, and others too obviously by realizing that. But that “Dime It Already Mentality” is a hard reflex to kick when you were raised in a time of scarcity. And gain is addictive.

Just some rambling thoughts about my tone journey.

 

[PLX]

gain is addictive

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

I thought this was gonna be about the Loudness Wars:

Loudness war - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

There is a point where there is too much gain. That's when your tone is so compressed that there are zero dynamics... not to mention the angry bees buzz on top.

 

[norminal]

I think the key towards understanding this is using the sometimes true adage that “more is less” at times.

My rule of thumb is to turn the gain down until I can no longer rely on the saturation to produce the tone, riff or lick Im trying to achieve, then turn it back up a little.

Some riffs and licks require a certain amount of gain to say, nail that pinch harmonic, sustain, or long legato line. Any more and you’re just adding noise.

I use a similar method when tracking guitars. If I’m double tracking a rhythm track, I actually turn the gain down a lot lower than I would if I were just playing or tracking one guitar.

That said, some amps like the 5150 have way more hair on tap that the average person would ever use.

 

[PLX]

There is a point where there is too much gain. That's when your tone is so compressed that there are zero dynamics... not to mention the angry bees buzz on top.

That tone only works for the chugga-chugga-power-chord players.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

That tone only works for the chugga-chugga-power-chord players.

"A pioneer in early death metal, Cookie Monster brought his pertinent message to hungry youth."

 

[KingsXJJ]

My rule of thumb is to turn the gain down until I can no longer rely on the saturation to produce the tone, riff or lick Im trying to achieve, then turn it back up a little.

Some riffs and licks require a certain amount of gain to say, nail that pinch harmonic, sustain, or long legato line. Any more and you’re just adding noise.

I use a similar method when tracking guitars. If I’m double tracking a rhythm track, I actually turn the gain down a lot lower than I would if I were just playing or tracking one guitar.

That said, some amps like the 5150 have way more hair on tap that the average person would ever use.

Well that is one solid post and I agree with your points.

I especially like having the volume down just a notch or two allowing for a “roll up” when needed such as in the scenarios that you mentioned.

Great tip on double tracking that I find true as well. I like Tom Morello’s use of this on RATM. Pinched harmonics on a track or two, sometimes panned, solid fundamental tone on L/R with a slightly latency between the two. Nice stereo spread with some nice surprises along the way.

 

[EOengineer]

One of life’s stupid ironies is that the truly amazing high gain stuff made its way into my life exactly as I was learning about how little distortion was actually in the guitar tracks I loved from 80s and 90s albums.

We snubbed our noses at JCM800s in the early and mid 90s. Not enough distortion. Even the 900s were for old timers, we thought. Stupid teenagers.

My first Dual Rectifier landed in 96 and I was off to the races. A couple years after that a Triaxis/2:90 happened and totally refined my approach to gain. Less is more, focus more on carving out a spot for yourself to cut through tonally.

There’s stuff I hear today that I think has WAY too much gain and I just assume I’m getting old and am yelling at clouds. I didn’t grow up on zep. I grew up on And Justice For All and Fear Factory.

Some people use CRAZY gain.

 

[RaceU4her]

What I’ve learned in my recording journey is rules and preconceived notions are a bunch of bullshit and there are no rules, it’s about what works for what you are going for in that particular song. Lower gain and tons of mids works great for Slayer, it’s not gonna work for and justice for all or Pantera. Jimmy Page’s pre-71 tones have a ton of gain compared to even TSRTS, and sounds much better to me. RATM wouldn’t sound good with early cannibal corpse crate tones which work perfectly for them. Once I figured this out, everything became much easier for me

 

[State of Epicicity]

I've been on all sides of the fence here, but I find that the tones that thrill me most happen to be lower gain, and you can go low gain with metal and still achieve a really powerful tone. This to me is a cool example of what you can pull off, especially if you go to around 1:10:

 

[GreatGreen]

Turn up the gain to the point where it sounds right for what you're doing. Sometimes what you're doing will sound best with less gain than you thought you'd need. Other times it will sound better with even more gain.

Oh, and the character of the gain matters a lot. A whole lot of tight, articulate gain is going to sound like less gain than just a little bit of low-end heavy, garbled, flubby gain.

 

[MatrixClaw]

In the last few years, I've used less and less gain - I typically play with the lowest amount of gain possible for anything I do. Sometimes it's fun to run it really high and get that super saturated sound, but I don't love what it does to the clarity on amps. On the 5150 III amps, this means I typically play modern metal on the Blue channel with gain at like 4.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Too much gain/saturation makes me play a certain way that I don't always like. There's definitely a line there of diminishing returns. Fuzz is an exception because it does high gain it in a different way I find pleasing. I've always been fairly distant from higher preamp gain amps because I played mostly clean with OD for many years, so it's what I'm accustomed to.

 

[RaceU4her]

It comes down to ones technique too, if I want to play with dimebag levels of over the top gain at some of the speeds he did, I gotta lighten up my grip and kind of choke the strings in a different way or it’s just gonna be a mess, where if I played that way with less gain it may be clear but it’s gonna be whimpy.

 

[0XI0]

anybody asked Santiago why JVM is like that? from 10 o clock upwards on the gain pot it's just insanity. and being that it's obviously not that way by accident, why the taper choice? it's like a light switch

 

[RaceU4her]

I've been on all sides of the fence here, but I find that the tones that thrill me most happen to be lower gain, and you can go low gain with metal and still achieve a really powerful tone. This to me is a cool example of what you can pull off, especially if you go to around 1:10:

Yeah see this to me is just too undergained, middy and kind of “barky” if that’s a term, it works for the strait rock parts but the palm mutes I think need more girth

 

[State of Epicicity]

Yeah see this to me is just too undergained, middy and kind of “barky” if that’s a term, it works for the strait rock parts but the palm mutes I think need more girth

Oh interesting! I hear it the opposite way. I think it's kind of cool that you and I are hearing such different things in it. I have no idea if any other bands have a tone like this, but I wonder if this is just a very uncommon tone for modern metal in particular.

 

[Genghis]

It comes down to ones technique too, if I want to play with dimebag levels of over the top gain at some of the speeds he did, I gotta lighten up my grip and kind of choke the strings in a different way or it’s just gonna be a mess, where if I played that way with less gain it may be clear but it’s gonna be whimpy.

I was explaining to one of my students the other day that high gain and low gain have different challenges. You have to play clean in either case, but it’s a different kind of clean. I told him high gain requires as much effort with a light touch for making the notes along with a certain touch for muting the strings you aren’t playing to keep things from sounding like a noisy mess.

 

[RaceU4her]

Oh interesting! I hear it the opposite way. I think it's kind of cool that you and I are hearing such different things in it. I have no idea if any other bands have a tone like this, but I wonder if this is just a very uncommon tone for modern metal in particular.

its a little bit of a dated sound i would say, though theres still bands doing it. something like this though just sounds so much thicker and more exciting to me