Great advice for a crappy tone.

EMGs tend to sound flat, sterile, and "plasticy."

Check out the tone on Morbid Tales. Rolled back tone, scooped mids, stock pups, JCM800>Tube screamer. Heavier than anything before or since. Well so much for your advice.........

Doesn't happen if you learn to play guitar at a pretty basic level. Djent tone is scooped all to fuck also. Loads of mids is where the sustain is, see SRV, loads of midboost from a Tubescreamer, no lack of sustain.

Do some really basic research into the tones of the people you are responding to.

Wrong. A djent tone is all mids.

Morbid Tales still heavier with scooped mids and rolled back tone. More sustain and much better for doom.

Same holds true of Triptykon. Stock Iceman (rolled back tone)>ts>JCM800>v30s. Still heavier.

Played in many djent bands then? Any bands? Ever used an amplifier or played a guitar? Familiar with how recording works, and the various ways recorded music does not directly reflect amplifier output? Sustain is all in the mids, that is the place that guitar occupies, that is absolute fact, one that becomes apparent if you actually play guitar into an amp in a band.

@Robert W

So basically you're suggesting boosting the mids with a pedal and taking them back out at the amp so you'd probably end up with fairly flat mids or not very scooped mids at all.

When you say rolled back tone are we talking neck or bridge pickup and how far back, just a bit or all the way?

Seeing as I'm posting in here, the Kerry King JCM800 might be suitable from what I can gather it's an eq boost built into a JCM800 but your tone sounds good as is so just deal with having to take a pedal or two to gigs. There's an old saying, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Oh also why are people discussing djent in this thread, that's a sound miles away from the Thorr-Axe stuff. I presume Foxen and Robert have actually listened to the OPs band right?

No.

What I'm suggesting is using the ts to shape the tone slightly. Example set the gain to 0, the tone at full, and the level 10 o'clock-ish. Not really all that dramatic sounding, but good for subtle tone shaping.

Am talking about the bridge pup. Depending on the pup, either roll it all the way back, or almost all the way. I have one guitar that if rolled all the way way sounds very muddy, so I keep that around 7/8. While another I can roll all the way back to 0 and keep it where I want it sounding. So it really all depends on the pup and trial and error.

Here's an example of the kind of "rolled back" tone I'm talking about,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAk4M_gNJt4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U58x3FtAEeI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzaI6jQM0wE

I did listen to the OP's music and think his tone sounded fine actually and wasn't in need of any major changes, only a few subtle ones to personal taste.

I haven't had a chance to use the KK JCM800 myself, but have had a chance to work with the Peavey VTM and think, for the money, it's probably one of the best metal/doom amps out there.

Djent was brought up, if you go back and re-read my previous posts, in order to illustrate a point, not as a tonal reference.

I still want to know what the paperclip trick is, guess its feeling out where pickups get grabby.

So it would appear.

http://youtu.be/ure4RqWP2EA

Dunno, judging from that video the pup is backed way out of the meat range. I wholly endorse messing with pick up height, but it's best done by ear and not some metric. I've basically nudged mine into the strings to the point at which the sustain started to drop and backed them off from there (kind of the opposite from the paper clip). With enough amp any "damping" the magnetic field from the pup does not snub sustain.

I guess I should mention I do play a strat, with single coil passives (you can all stop laughing now), so losing some HF harmonics is the last of my worries.



Have you tried swapping tubes? I take it you've messed with the DIP switches on the VTM and it didn't get you there.

My initial reaction was more boost on the front end, but I re-read that you're trying to pare back on pedals, so... might not be helpful.