treading new waters and would like some advice...

[soldierkahn]

For the last 10+ years, Ive been playing a Line 6 Spider 3 1x12 combo which never had an effects loop. I finally decided to go all out and get my favorite Line 6 amp since I found one for a great deal and my spider3 is starting to crap out. If I try to run too much volume when im playing, the amp will shutoff for a second and turn back on with the settings all jacked up and ends up blowing my ear drums away .fortunately, it has an MP3 in under the guitar input, so when it started doing that, if i turned it off then back on and help tap to put it in tuner mode real quick, i could my music audio just fine untl the amp cooled down and i could play agin. So now that I have a second amp and im not pushing two seperate signals through the same speaker anymore, i have some questions that are now popping up.

apparently my Line 6 Spider Valve MKII has an effects loop that i didnt know about and the MKI didnt have one. i have an ISP Decimator original pedal that i rely on so that everytime i stop playing the amp doesnt scream in my face because the on board gates sucked, but this was at the sacrfice of my clean tone because it will cut off my guitar with as tight as I had to run my gate. For the longest time i just settled on stepping on and off the gate, but now that i have an effects board i can work with, its worth the time to invest on setting stuff up right. to spare me from having to try and hit a channel button with one foot and the gate with the other.

problem is, i know how to set the threshold to keep the amp from screaming, but I would like to know what a "typical" range should be. I would like to make sure that im relying more on my playing being clean then using a noise reduction pedal to clean my sloppy playing up. generally i run it at -35db (approximately 10-11 oclock) and it seems to dance the razors edge between feedback control and choking signal.

 

[GunpointMetal]

turn your gain down, and use the gate in front of the input. It won't cut amp noise, but you can run it lower without chopping off your tone. Also if your pickups are shrieking like that, you might need to repot them or replace them if they've gone microphonic.

 

[soldierkahn]

turn your gain down, and use the gate in front of the input. It won't cut amp noise, but you can run it lower without chopping off your tone. Also if your pickups are shrieking like that, you might need to repot them or replace them if they've gone microphonic.

when i say shrieking, i am talking about that feedback that you get when you arent muting your strings in a live setting. I use my gate so that as long as i dont slap the guitar, it wont start to feedback, with it still being tight enough to help palm mutes stay clean. The pickups sound great (im not a big fan of the EMTY neck pup), but the louder i go with my volume, the tighter I have to set my decimator otherwise i wont have silence when im doing start-stop riffs. in between my triplets, youll hear the feedback whine.

 

[GunpointMetal]

when i say shrieking, i am talking about that feedback that you get when you arent muting your strings in a live setting. I use my gate so that as long as i dont slap the guitar, it wont start to feedback, with it still being tight enough to help palm mutes stay clean. The pickups sound great (im not a big fan of the EMTY neck pup), but the louder i go with my volume, the tighter I have to set my decimator otherwise i wont have silence when im doing start-stop riffs. in between my triplets, youll hear the feedback whine.

You mentioned making sure you're playing clean and not cleaning up your playing with a noise gate, hence the suggestion to turn your gain down. If you're technique for muting is tight, you should be able to set your gate at a low enough threshold that it won't mess with your clean tone much and will only be gating when there is no signal coming through. If you're gain is up high enough that the guitar just stars feeding back, tightening the gate is going to start cutting off sustain for dirty tones, too. Does that version of the Decimator have a loop? Ideally for high gain you'd run one gate in front of the amp to cut-out feedback and another in the loop to cut off amp noise.

 

[soldierkahn]

You mentioned making sure you're playing clean and not cleaning up your playing with a noise gate, hence the suggestion to turn your gain down. If you're technique for muting is tight, you should be able to set your gate at a low enough threshold that it won't mess with your clean tone much and will only be gating when there is no signal coming through. If you're gain is up high enough that the guitar just stars feeding back, tightening the gate is going to start cutting off sustain for dirty tones, too. Does that version of the Decimator have a loop? Ideally for high gain you'd run one gate in front of the amp to cut-out feedback and another in the loop to cut off amp noise.

Holy shit, i wouldve never thought to have one both in front of the amp and in the effects loop. Ive been trying to ustilize their onboard Gate and NR settings, so its gonna a while to really dial it in. I also found another problem last night that was causing a bunch of shit. I like using Tortex sharps and sharpened them a little more, but realized it was harder and harder to get clean accurate triplets all the time, not to mention trying to strum chords was terrible. . I kept missing the string at random times, so i decided to try some Ultex Sharps, but used them straight out of the bag instead of sharpening it more. Helped to balance my tone out a lot, took a bunch of highs out, and i stopped missing strings. Now that ive cut that bad practice out, my tone changed so again im back at the drawing board.

I would love to get my tone close to the opening track this guy plays. Checked out his gear, and there isnt any reason i shouldnt be abe to get my tone down to this. I cant foresee there being a terrible amount of "production" as others will point out to being responsible for the massive tone. I hear his eq sweep and how the notes sound open as well as palm muted, and thats definitely the area I want to be in. Its like a Gojira meets Nickelback meets Volbeat meets Breaking Benjamin, if that makes sense. Just enough gain to saturate the chord, but clean enough that when i can get faster, the notes will start sounding super crisp. I understand that theres a bass, and drums in the eq mix too that help bring up the low end, but this guys tone is just so clean, using a freakin $170 amp (grrr!)

 

[devastone]

when i say shrieking, i am talking about that feedback that you get when you arent muting your strings in a live setting. I use my gate so that as long as i dont slap the guitar, it wont start to feedback, with it still being tight enough to help palm mutes stay clean. The pickups sound great (im not a big fan of the EMTY neck pup), but the louder i go with my volume, the tighter I have to set my decimator otherwise i wont have silence when im doing start-stop riffs. in between my triplets, youll hear the feedback whine.

When you aren't playing you should either be muting your strings or rolling the volume knob on the guitar off, especially if you are playing loud with that much gain.