Most people don't realize they're using more Gain...

[Dru Edwards]

Do you think that most people don't realize that they're using more gain on their amps than the original covers they're playing? Led Zeppelin had very little gain, especially on those first couple of albums. AC/DC has very little gain as well, just the wonderful sound of a tube amp being over driven.

It's one thing to use more gain and realize it (to suit your own needs) but I get a kick out of someone asking for more gain on their amp because they think those originals had it.

What do you think? Do people realize it? Or is it more that beginners don't know but most experienced players do?

[Davis Webb]

I think it has to be used sparingly. The generic Line 6 gain sound is all over television in commercials, show themes, you name it. Most of the classic rock was done with low gain settings, even Hendrix did not use a lot of it, he used feedback to take his sounds out there.

When Black Sabbath hit, full gain really took a leap forward. Metal is gain, classic rock is dirty lead, where you turn up the guitar volume knob when you want dirt. High gain sustains notes and I find that it takes moderate gain with compression to hit that sweet, fusion jazz sound for legato lines.

High gain is hard to listen to unless you are a metal head. In that case, there is never enough!

[muscmp]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Do you think that most people don't realize that they're using more gain on their amps than the original covers they're playing? Led Zeppelin had very little gain, especially on those first couple of albums. AC/DC has very little gain as well, just the wonderful sound of a tube amp being over driven.

It's one thing to use more gain and realize it (to suit your own needs) but I get a kick out of someone asking for more gain on their amp because they think those originals had it.

What do you think? Do people realize it? Or is it more that beginners don't know but most experienced players do?

i agree dru. jimmy played thru a small cranked supro amp and didn't need the gain. ha!

you are right also in that it is up to the player to adjust the gain to suit their music! newbies may believe that they have to crank the gain but it may also hide their newness in playing.

play music!

[Bob Womack]

It's a funny thing. Towards the end of the '60s and through the first couple of years of the '70s the fuzz box was in, and we are talking heaps of gain there. A lot of blues guys started that way and went to cranked amps. Even Duane Allman started with fuzz and carefully hoarded used batteries to use in his unit.

At the same time the move was beginning towards cranked amps so you hear low-gain cranked small amp stuff with 69-70 startups like the Allman Brothers and Doobies and such. By '72 there were still lots of British bands using fuzz. Justin Haward's sound was based around a Marshall fuzz through the '75 Blue Jays album with John Lodge. When Zep started up, Page was using a Tone Bender fuzz with his Supros. Uriah Heap used fuzz at least through '73. Steve Howe kept a Colorsound or Muff fuzz on his pedalboard until he went Line6 a short time ago. David Gilmour still bases many of his sounds around high-gain and fuzz. He just has his boxes built by ultra-high-end boutique guys like Pete Cornish and B.K. Butler.

But Mesa Engineering came along with the MkI and it started moving into the market by the mid-'70s and the gain war was joined.

So there was a small window of low-gain in there in the '70s and everyone began to revert. These days many of the guys who were low-gain, such as Clapton, are doing everything they did low-gain with higher-gain amps. The Allman Brothers are an interesting example: Derek uses lower gain and pulls down his volume to where is extremely low gain. Warren Haynes is pretty gained up and fizzy most of the time.

My core sound is moderate gain (think somewhere around Joe Walsh) but I've been trying to accumulate some fuzzier sounds in case they are called for on sessions.

Bob

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

I think it has to be used sparingly. The generic Line 6 gain sound is all over television in commercials, show themes, you name it. Most of the classic rock was done with low gain settings, even Hendrix did not use a lot of it, he used feedback to take his sounds out there.

When Black Sabbath hit, full gain really took a leap forward. Metal is gain, classic rock is dirty lead, where you turn up the guitar volume knob when you want dirt. High gain sustains notes and I find that it takes moderate gain with compression to hit that sweet, fusion jazz sound for legato lines.

High gain is hard to listen to unless you are a metal head. In that case, there is never enough!

Hey Davis, I'm a metal fan but not the 2010 high gain stuff. '80s Iron Maiden is great. Even Iron Maiden today has a nice gain tone that isn't over the top and still maintains that cranked Marshall tone (JMP-1 and DSLs).

Originally Posted by muscmp

i agree dru. jimmy played thru a small cranked supro amp and didn't need the gain. ha!

you are right also in that it is up to the player to adjust the gain to suit their music! newbies may believe that they have to crank the gain but it may also hide their newness in playing.

play music!

Those small amps could really rock in the studio, as Jimmy showed. Then again, those cranked Marshall JMPs/JCMs really rocked too without over the top gain.

[alnico5]

More gain=more compression. On stage one foot from your amp you may be in gain heaven but the audience hears a swarm of angry hornets on the distant horizon. I heard a video once of a band I played with on a big stage outdoors and mic'ed thru a concert PA setup. The other young guitarist had a floor multi-effects box, max metal gain. I could not make out a single note he played. It was all buzzing mush. For myself I use as little gain as possible, just enough to get sustain.

I saw CCR years ago. The studio songs were really clean. Fogarty's live tone was very distorted. Something about playing live makes people crank that gain up.

[J Patrick]

...i hear what your saying about high gain overdose but i'd note that the sophistication that presently exists with regards to pedals allows savvy players to get some very convincing replications of classic studio tones from the day...i too was one of those players that ditched my Maestro Fuzz in favor of a cranked tube amp back in the late sixties but am very grateful that i don't have to do that now to get the tone i'm after...

[noledog]

I agree Dru, I loved my two tweed Vibroverbs tubes natural overdriven tone, clear and crunchy..tho I had mine tweaked. I ran them in stereo mainly with a Les Paul and the ZZ and AC/DC was right there!

[jersey]

What is gain?

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by jersey

What is gain?

Gain is an increase in voltage of a signal beyond the natural state of the input source. Gain is created by circuits after that input source called "preamps."

These days guitarists often misuse the term to refer to the amount of gain-based distortion in a guitar signal. It arose in the days of tube amplifiers. Most vintage designs were originally built to be played clean and followed an industry standard of the middle-1900s that a properly-operated amp won't be operated with the volume control over 12 o'clock. Very soon guitarists who owned small amps that couldn't keep up with the loudness demands of larger gigs pushed the amps past 12 o'clock and discovered that really cool things happened when you made an amp distort. The more they used that distortion the more they wanted. The result was guitarists adding secondary preamps before their amps to get more of it.

The first guitar amps had preamps with moderate gain. From 1960-1970 some amp manufacturers didn't understand that many guitarists liked more gain so they structured their preamps with less gain in order to get a louder clean signal. As a result, the guitarists began using fuzz boxes (little solid state preamps with multiple gain stages) to simulate that gain. Starting around 1970, a guy named Randall Smith founded a company called Mesa Engineering where he began adding preamp stages in series to existing Fender amps that increased the gain and caused more distortion and compression. One of his first clients, Carlos Santana, popularized the high-gain sound and a race began to provide that sound, either within amps or from external pedals. Electro Harmonix built their LPB-1 pedal around that time as well. The LPB-1 was nothing more than a preamp that boosted your guitar's signal before it was plugged into your amplifier.

These days many amps have multiple channels that allow various levels of gain to be used and switched between during songs.

Bob

[moon]

You could say volume is how loud it is. Gain is how distorted it is. At higher gain the tubes start to distort the signal.

[arie]

i play tons of death metal. fast, loud, super aggressive, and i don't use a lot of gain at all. just enough to "break" the sound up. at speed the notes need to be understood. too much gain turns stuff into mush, chords have no definition, tone turns into a dirge, palm muting looses impact, etc..

also, most juvenile guitar heroes i see in the stores don't turn the gain down as they turn the volume up making their latest conquests sound really bad. few things sound as grating as a line 6 spider set to "insane" and turned up to ten.

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by moon

You could say volume is how loud it is. Gain is how distorted it is. At higher gain the tubes start to distort the signal.

+1, Moon.

Originally Posted by arie

i play tons of death metal. fast, loud, super aggressive, and i don't use a lot of gain at all. just enough to "break" the sound up. at speed the notes need to be understood. too much gain turns stuff into mush, chords have no definition, tone turns into a dirge, palm muting looses impact, etc..

also, most juvenile guitar heroes i see in the stores don't turn the gain down as they turn the volume up making their latest conquests sound really bad. few things sound as grating as a line 6 spider set to "insane" and turned up to ten.

Good post Arie. Your post makes me think of bands like Slayer where there isn't nearly as much gain as people think there is. Kerry King uses his signature JCM800 2203 and I imagine he probably uses an OD on the front end but it's nowhere near a Triple Rectifier or a JVM with the gain on 10.

[arie]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

+1, Moon.


Good post Arie. Your post makes me think of bands like Slayer where there isn't nearly as much gain as people think there is. Kerry King uses his signature JCM800 2203 and I imagine he probably uses an OD on the front end but it's nowhere near a Triple Rectifier or a JVM with the gain on 10.

exactly. hanneman (rip) and king tuned to E flat on their earlier work, and set the controls for minimum noise and actually king used no OD on the front end as of 2002.

http://www.guitargeek.com/slayer-ker...-diagram-2002/

especially in twin guitar bands you gotta keep it clean.

[Sombras]

I'm learning A LOT on this thread. Thanks, guys!