9 Ways To Transform Your Tone For Less

Improve your sound and you’ll upgrade your playing. Simple! Here’s how to do it on a budget…

01 GET A BIGGER SOUND!

Try a wet/dry amp setup

If you have two amps, this can be a fantastic way to supersize your guitar sound; splitting your signal to send some effects to one amp. We’d advise splitting after your drive pedal/s. Send one split to the first amp (this will be your ‘dry’ amp) and the other split through the effects placed after the drive pedals (modulation and timebased like delay and reverb) to the second amp (this is your ‘wet’ amp). It’s really a best of both worlds scenario because amp one is direct and dynamic, while the second adds more ambient textures. No matter what amps you’re using they need to be isolated electrically to avoid any ground loop hum and in-phase. An AB/Y box with a built-in polarity reverse switch from Radial or Lehle can help with the latter.

02 CUT THROUGH

Use a clean boost or EQ

You need a cut through for a lead or break so what do you do – add gain? Crank the volume? Gain can be an issue of diminishing returns because the more you add, the more clarity and headroom you lose through compression. Not good. And volume can be a bludgeon unless you’re thinking about how you shape it. The solution is simple; use a clean boost or EQ pedal and take the bass level down a notch and increase the upper mids and treble. Now we’re cutting through!

03 GET MORE HEADROOM

Put your amp’s effects loop to use