Hone Your Tone - Feel The Blues

Getting nuanced, expressive blues tone is surprisingly difficult – here’s five ways to improve yours

1 Find The Amp First

Daniel Steinhardt of TheGigRig says you need to match your guitar with the ideal amplifier before you think about adding overdrive pedals to the equation. “The most important thing for good blues tone is to make sure that you’re 100 per cent happy with the sound of the amp itself before you add any other effects,” he says. “Without anything else on, plugging straight into the amp, you need to be able to express yourself – and the sound of that amplifier has to connect with you. Until you get to that point, even the best overdrive pedal in the world is not going to be a magic bullet.”

2 Be Dynamic

“Blues is very much about self-expression, and to carry that off, you need good dynamic range [the nuances of hard and soft picking],” says Daniel. “I’ve had guys come to me with ultra-high-gain humbuckers in their guitars who wonder why they can’t get a good blues sound.”