Sustain / Gain

Simple problem..

To get the tone i want, like sweet child o mine, i have to put the overdrive channel gain on 10 and reverb on 5. BUT this isnt strictly a clean tone as its supposed to be. Beacuse you cant obviously play chords in that setup with all the cruch and breakup it causes. The problem is also when i play wide fast vibrato on, say the first string, my finger is obvoiusly gona touch the 2nd string and get it vibrating leading to a dirty sound. So how do you get that clean tone with lots of sustain and reverb?? How can slash have a marshall amp on full gain and full volume and you dont hear nasty noises? even when i so much as tap my guitar when its loud the amp picks it up. i have seymour duncan high ouput pick ups by the way.

Later Axl

In my opinion, it's all in the fingers. Perfecting the way you touch the string, and how you play it, can cut out a lot of noise. Or at least, that's the conclusion I came to.

But I think maybe you are just using too much gain/distortion. Which is a mistake a lot of guitarists make. When using little distortion, you will automatically have less noise. Yet, it will be harder to play, cause the distortion won't cover up any mistakes.

I hope this helps, if not, ignore this post. ;)

Slash's distortion is due to the volume, not the gain. I'm not a tech head, but I know there are two sets of valves in an amp, and if you get the power ones to distort (not the preamp ones), your sound will be much smoother... I know that's what Angus Young does too.
Also, the guitar has a large part to play in the sustain... Les pauls are known to "play, go grab a bite, it's still playing" as our friend from Spinal TAP puts it...

My first post, I guess...
I'm not a huge tech-head either, but I think Slashs sound comes mostly from volume... I've noticed that in my experience with tube amps, which is fairly limited you get a little more of a crisp overdrive the louder you turn it up... Without the array of string noises that tons of gain causes. I don't know where you're playing, if its a small room or a big room, but try a little less gain and some more volume. Less noise, and more noise all at the same time... Or maybe if you want put a capacitor in line with your signal somewhere around your volume know and give your guitar a more crisp sound with the volume pot turned down when you go the chords...
I probably made no sense at all, which is normal, but anyway... Just try it...

J.D.

This mod is described Here if you want to try it.

My guess is that you have the common problem of trying to get 'cranked' tone out of your amp without cranking it.

Guitars will have a lot to do with sustain, and also a healthy touch of good old compression. Compression will help clean up your tone and give you more sustain without needing to up the gain. Guitarists always use a lot less gain than most people realise though. Also, Slash would be using an overdriven sound got by cranking the amp volume rather than the gain, as mentioned earlier. This is very hard to do if you don't want to kill your eardrums and you don't have a recording studio however. We just have to live with it. Or make an amp like Lordathestrings (by the way, how is that going?)

Boosting your mids will help too.

Originally posted by Bardsley
... Or make an amp like Lordathestrings (by the way, how is that going?)

I built a 'breadboard' test circuit with the 6AQ5A power tube and a 6X4 rectifier. It sounded great. I'm satisfied that the miniature 6AQ5A tubes are equivalent to the full-size 6V6, within the voltage ranges specified for them. The 6V6 will tolerate a bit higher plate voltage, and the larger size of the plate allows more plate disipation, so they can be made to produce more output power. I'm not looking for more power, so the smaller 6AQ5A is just fine for me.

I'm now in the process of modelling the 6X4 with a solid-state rectifier/regulator so I can control the plate voltage independant of the heater filament supply. The tricky bit is to get a realistic amount of voltage 'sag' in response to the signal level. I'll post something in the Tech Talk section when I have something I think is worth copying.

Heh, good to hear it's going well. Not actually any good with electornics at all, so I'll just take your word on the rest of it. Not aobut to try to copy your desing, but soemday down the line maybe... Living in college, I absolutely crave a small amp, but I can't bring myself to buy a crappy "practice" amp. Right now I'm going through my computer, and it kind of defeats the purpose of me buying a new strat. Electric guitars just don't sound that good without an amp colouring it a bit.