[relient nelson]

Originally Posted by ibanez_dude

Bingo. I think that's a great point. Adjusting both the gain of your overdrive and the attack of your playing can make a huge difference. Too much gain can definitely subtract from the chimey effect you're looking for, even if it doesn't sound like your sound is terribly distorted. The Fulldrive is definitely a pedal that can help you achieve what you're looking for too, so don't let it go anywhere.

also a great point. I guess I should clarify my statement, as I agree with this post. The compressor will help more in bringing out of the punch of the chime-y sound once you've mostly nailed it, so make sure your rig is most of the way there before you add a comp.

I'm realizing more as I try to improve my technique that turning up your amp and softening your attack... it's the tone that everyone is hearing in their head and just can't seem to find.

Right, we do indeed agree on how to use compressors.

OP, if I were to advise you as to what you should do to improve your tone, I would say to keep it simple for now. The important things you need to get good tone for worship are "Guitar>OD>Delay>Amp". If you start adding other stuff before you like those four elements and your overall tone, then you're just going to be wasting your money. Trust me. I did.

Originally Posted by gitaryzt1985

You hit the nail on the head with the overdrive. I find that it is better to have more "level" and less "gain". I rarely use the Satchurator and only really have it for home use.

My main distortion comes from the Egnater. I tend to use more of the EL84 tubes than the 6V6's on the Egnater, but I play mainly through the clean channel and the Fulldrive 2 when I play at church.

There are a couple songs like "until the whole world hears" where I will use Egnater distortion, but the Satchurator is never turned on.

Actually, the church I attend now has a praise band, but they are comprised of mostly 16-18 year old boys who play death metal guitars through Line 6 heavy metal settings. It is almost overbearing to hear their distortion. I'd love to tell them to turn the distortion way down and the level up, but I don't know how to go about it, and the church seems to dig it so I leave it alone. I am 24 and would LOVE to join in, but I don't want to see rash and pushy.

Thank you so much! I actually used to use a Strat exclusively, but over the past two years I have sold close to 18 guitars and bought two very nice PRS guitars, a Gibson Les Paul, my Egnater Stack, and a Classic Player 60's Strat. I just realized that having a few good guitars was more worth while than 18 Squiers and Ibanez's lol.

So it would still be very helpful I think if you could post some links to guitar tones that you really like.

As far as the OD "level vs. gain" thing that you talked about, I don't think you completely understood my point. What I mean to say is this: I find that there are a few prevalent elements (settings, whatever) that are very important to achieving a worship overdrive sound using pedals.

The first, is a good amp set to a pretty clean tone. So for the amp, you do want to increase your level and dial back your gain until when you're playing your loudest, your amp is still not overdriving until you turn on a pedal.

The second, is to balance your pedals to complement your amp. This doesn't always mean the gain knob down and the level knob up. I usually set my first OD pedal in the chain to something similar to that, and then mix it up after that. What I mean when I say "complement your amp" is that you don't want to add too much signal to your line that is contrary to the character of your amp. You don't want to get to crazy with the distortion. You want your ODs to be set in such a way that they hit the amp just hard enough and then you rely on the amp to add the finishing touches to your tone by how it reacts.

I'll post more later.. I'm hungry.

[gitaryzt1985]

Originally Posted by relient nelson

I'm realizing more as I try to improve my technique that turning up your amp and softening your attack... it's the tone that everyone is hearing in their head and just can't seem to find.

Right, we do indeed agree on how to use compressors.

OP, if I were to advise you as to what you should do to improve your tone, I would say to keep it simple for now. The important things you need to get good tone for worship are "Guitar>OD>Delay>Amp". If you start adding other stuff before you like those four elements and your overall tone, then you're just going to be wasting your money. Trust me. I did.



So it would still be very helpful I think if you could post some links to guitar tones that you really like.

As far as the OD "level vs. gain" thing that you talked about, I don't think you completely understood my point. What I mean to say is this: I find that there are a few prevalent elements (settings, whatever) that are very important to achieving a worship overdrive sound using pedals.

The first, is a good amp set to a pretty clean tone. So for the amp, you do want to increase your level and dial back your gain until when you're playing your loudest, your amp is still not overdriving until you turn on a pedal.

The second, is to balance your pedals to complement your amp. This doesn't always mean the gain knob down and the level knob up. I usually set my first OD pedal in the chain to something similar to that, and then mix it up after that. What I mean when I say "complement your amp" is that you don't want to add too much signal to your line that is contrary to the character of your amp. You don't want to get to crazy with the distortion. You want your ODs to be set in such a way that they hit the amp just hard enough and then you rely on the amp to add the finishing touches to your tone by how it reacts.

I'll post more later.. I'm hungry.

I was speaking generally. My Fulldrive 2 is used as a soft overdrive/clean boost. The Ice 9 is a bit more aggressive OD, mainly for more rock oriented songs...I rarely use anything other than a clean boost. My Egnater's clean channel is set so that it is almost breaking up the tubes, and I roll back on the guitar's volume just a touch so that I can achieve that little extra when necessary.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Originally Posted by relient nelson

I'm realizing more as I try to improve my technique that turning up your amp and softening your attack... it's the tone that everyone is hearing in their head and just can't seem to find.

Right, we do indeed agree on how to use compressors.

OP, if I were to advise you as to what you should do to improve your tone, I would say to keep it simple for now. The important things you need to get good tone for worship are "Guitar>OD>Delay>Amp". If you start adding other stuff before you like those four elements and your overall tone, then you're just going to be wasting your money. Trust me. I did.



So it would still be very helpful I think if you could post some links to guitar tones that you really like.

As far as the OD "level vs. gain" thing that you talked about, I don't think you completely understood my point. What I mean to say is this: I find that there are a few prevalent elements (settings, whatever) that are very important to achieving a worship overdrive sound using pedals.

The first, is a good amp set to a pretty clean tone. So for the amp, you do want to increase your level and dial back your gain until when you're playing your loudest, your amp is still not overdriving until you turn on a pedal.

The second, is to balance your pedals to complement your amp. This doesn't always mean the gain knob down and the level knob up. I usually set my first OD pedal in the chain to something similar to that, and then mix it up after that. What I mean when I say "complement your amp" is that you don't want to add too much signal to your line that is contrary to the character of your amp. You don't want to get to crazy with the distortion. You want your ODs to be set in such a way that they hit the amp just hard enough and then you rely on the amp to add the finishing touches to your tone by how it reacts.

I'll post more later.. I'm hungry.

All this stuff is good info on how to sound like the CCM Worship® cliche, but I tend to when I have played worship music taken very, very different tactics. Yes I get more distortion, but I can get chime in spades.

My method is something like this.
1) Turn your tone knob full bore. Leave it that way.
2) Put your amp just bairly dirty for chime, on channel 2. (You really need 3 channels for this. Most of us need a clean channel and something more aggressive than chime.)
3) Set your pedals on just barely adding a bit of hair and volume. Do not cut your treble.
4) Chain about 2-3 drive pedals this way, possibly throwing a treble booster in front of it all.
5) Use your amp eq to sculpt the tone. Here is where you can cut treble, but be careful doing so. Chime is in the upper mids and treble frequencies.
6) add delay. Delay softens things up.

If you look at this and think, what a noisy muddy mess, you need to first turn all the levels down to unity and then play with the gain knobs.

Each distortion character from an overdrive pedal that is decent should add a bit of grit and harmonics. Now, when you add in several layers, very subtely, you have a lot of harmonics by the time you hit the amp, even though if done well, you may have less than what you normally would do with one pedal. However, you still control main gain from the amp, and I really dislike the trend to lower gain in secular and Christian music, but I can do it well, and I have a different philosophy than some. I leave channel one metallica clean, (you know, the no possible hint of any dirt at all clean that you could get away with playing a nylon string guitar on) and channel 3, which is where I set up my crunch. Stacking can really yield you an incredible on the verge of breakup tone. But I think the key thing is to use the gain knobs while at unity gain if you want the harmonics which in my mind is what really brings the chime. Using the volume knob will essentially yield you a boost, which can be nice, but will slam your amp's front end. My idea is about giving it something bigger to process and not really filtering it till after it goes through the preamp. That way you hit the preamp with a lot of highs, which do not distort nearly as harshly as your lower bass tones and yield you more chime, less crunch.

You can actually get too much this way fairly easily without going into heavy metal distortion. (Which I really like anyway)

[mulletman]

If you're missing the chime, run an LP into a cranked JCM800. Game over.

[gitaryzt1985]

Originally Posted by The Phantom Mullet

If you're missing the chime, run an LP into a cranked JCM800. Game over.

I think my problem is that I was looking into getting a Tenth Avenue North type of chimey delay sound. I think their guitar player plays an LP through a Fender Blackface.

So, last night I tried a Strat and LP through the clean channel and it sounds awesome until I turn the Ibanez delay on...that killed it. So, I bought a Boss DD3 last night and hope that fixes the problem.

[thesteve]

Which Ibanez delay are you using?

[relient nelson]

Originally Posted by gitaryzt1985

I think my problem is that I was looking into getting a Tenth Avenue North type of chimey delay sound. I think their guitar player plays an LP through a Fender Blackface.

So, last night I tried a Strat and LP through the clean channel and it sounds awesome until I turn the Ibanez delay on...that killed it. So, I bought a Boss DD3 last night and hope that fixes the problem.

Please post links of specific songs that contain guitar tone you really want to achieve.