Beginners Guide to Using a Guitar Amp
Remember at school when you were shown how the various knobs and features of a guitar amp work? Me neither. You don’t want to be figuring this out on the fly when you turn up to your first jam, or when you’re trying out an amp in front of a pushy salesman. With that in…
Classic Amp Sounds
While describing the tonal characteristics of an amp or pedal, people will often reference classic amp sounds. No doubt you’ve heard terms like “Fender cleans”, or “cranked Marshall” to describe how something sounds. That’s not very helpful if you have no idea what they’re referring to. Hopefully we can fix that by having a look…
Intro to Pedals Part 5: Signal Chain
Effective pedal order is a subject that used to be treated as a great mystery, as though the correct signal path for each guitarist can only be known by them exclusively, and even then only after some kind of mystical revelation. That’s absolute rubbish of course. People have been experimenting with their signal chains for…
Intro to Pedals Part 4: Pedal boards
By now you’ve probably got a few pedals and have a fair idea of how to power them effectively. Let’s look at how to hook them all up together on a pedal board. Why Should I Bother? The point of mounting your pedals on a board is to keep them together in a manner that’s…
Intro to Pedals Part 3: Power Supplies
So far we’ve looked at why you might want to alter your sound with pedals, and outlined a sensible approach to discovering which pedals might be relevant to you. I’ve covered how multi effects units aren’t completely useless, but that few people stick with them, they don’t hold any re-sale value, and as such aren’t…
Intro to Pedals Part 2: Choosing Pedals
So you’ve decided that you want more from your guitar sound than what you get when you plug straight into your amp. It’s time to get a pedal or two, but which ones should you be checking out to begin with? Multi Effects Units A fairly common way to get an idea of what’s what,…
Intro to Pedals Part 1: Why Pedals?
As I was piecing together my own pedal board from scratch, I stopped to reflect on all the mistakes that brought me to this point. This whole blog was started to provide others with the information I wished I had when I was starting out, so they could avoid wasting money on the wrong gear…
Cheap Clone Pedals
If you’re on a tight budget but have found yourself hooked on pedal acquisition, you’ve no doubt discovered the wonderful world of “clones”. Thanks to a peculiar quirk in intellectual property law, it’s the look of a pedal and its name that you’re not allowed to replicate. You’re free to copy the circuit to your…
How much should a guitar really cost?
There’s a huge price variation from one end of the spectrum to the other on the guitar market. Somewhere between the $50 “beginner” guitar and the $50,000 “collectors dream” lies a sensible sweet spot for your every day musician. I’m going to try to help narrow that down. With the aid of a little perspective…
WARNING: Does your guitar have a nitro finish?
A lot of vintage guitars (and vintage re-issue guitars) have been finished with nitrocellulose lacquer. It’s usually applied fairly thinly, so you can still kind of feel the grain of the timber underneath. There’s an argument that not encasing your instrument in a thick layer of poly allows it vibrate more freely. Many folks swear…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Tone Quest 