The Official Guitar Thread

alavaz · Sep 24, 2018

I use a Line 6 Pocket POD Guitar Amp Emulator Line 6 pod for pretty much all my home playing. I either plug in headphones or go directly to my speakers.

I also have a bigger Line 6 amp that I really like when I want to play louder. I always hated rigging up pedals and chaining them together and all that. That's one aspect of playing that always eluded me. Even when I was in bands and stuff, I had a JCM900 and only used the jcm footswitch to go between channels that I would usually have set to distortion and clean.

I think nowadays if I were to play live again I'd use the line 6 valve stuff.

Alex · Sep 24, 2018

I played a solid state amp a couple weeks ago for the first time in over 10 years maybe. Fucking garbage. You lost almost all dynamic touch with a solid state amp.

Noodleface · Sep 24, 2018

alavaz said:
I use a Line 6 Pocket POD Guitar Amp Emulator Line 6 pod for pretty much all my home playing. I either plug in headphones or go directly to my speakers.

I also have a bigger Line 6 amp that I really like when I want to play louder. I always hated rigging up pedals and chaining them together and all that. That's one aspect of playing that always eluded me. Even when I was in bands and stuff, I had a JCM900 and only used the jcm footswitch to go between channels that I would usually have set to distortion and clean.

I think nowadays if I were to play live again I'd use the line 6 valve stuff.

I typically don't fuss with pedals. I have an OD and noisegate in the chain that I don't touch when they're on. I then have a delay and BOSS GE-7 for solo boosts. Just pressing the two pedals kind of sucks for me.,

alavaz · Sep 24, 2018

Alex said:
I played a solid state amp a couple weeks ago for the first time in over 10 years maybe. Fucking garbage. You lost almost all dynamic touch with a solid state amp.

Gonna be honest, I don't really know what "dynamic touch," is.... I wouldn't gig on a solid state, but for home jamming they are way less hassle. My line 6 stuff sounds pretty awesome to me, but I also mostly play metal(ish) stuff so clean tone isn't a big priority for me.

The line 6 DT25 (which is what I meant by valve stuff) is a tube amp with the modeling shit built in and it sounds awesome to me.

Alex · Sep 24, 2018

When I punch the strings I want that to come through. When I palm mute and lightly play I want that to come through. Solid state amps tend to just amplify everything to the same level.

Noodleface · Sep 24, 2018

I think something like line 6 is perfectly fine for a practice amp/home setting. For gigging I prefer tube amps for sure. These days it's all engl or axe-fx/Kemper, but I like the Dynamics of a 5150 any day. Been my workhorse for years.

Borzak · Sep 24, 2018

alavaz said:
I use a Line 6 Pocket POD Guitar Amp Emulator Line 6 pod for pretty much all my home playing. I either plug in headphones or go directly to my speakers.

I also have a bigger Line 6 amp that I really like when I want to play louder. I always hated rigging up pedals and chaining them together and all that. That's one aspect of playing that always eluded me. Even when I was in bands and stuff, I had a JCM900 and only used the jcm footswitch to go between channels that I would usually have set to distortion and clean.

I think nowadays if I were to play live again I'd use the line 6 valve stuff.

What I use most of the time. I play really clean and use the compressor on the pocket pod and feed it thru headphones or my amp. Mainly use it for headphones and just use the compressor since it works and I already had it and it was apparently the one thing I kept handy moving around. Fit in top pocket of gig bag is why mostly. I've done the pocket pod to the speaker directly as well but I don't have that good of speakers so either play thru the amp or headphones, or switch to the other amp.

I have a solid state amp that I've had about 15 years and a tube amp. Both work well for what I use them for, but the solid state fender is little easier on the ears in the restricted space I am in now. Both fenders, but like a lot of fenders it goes from barely any sound at 2 on the volume to kind of loud at 2.1 on the volume lol. The good thing about my tube amp is if I turn it up my neighbors that are more than a mile away can hear it so they've said, I only use that amp during the day.

At some in the past I replaced the speaker in the solid state amp with an upgrade. The Ragin Cajun speaker which worked out really well for a 25w amp.

alavaz · Sep 24, 2018

Yeah unless you buy those really tiny tube amps (which actually sound pretty nice) it seems like volume is always an issue. I honestly can't tell the difference at low volume between a nice modeling amp and a time amp.

Kemper will definitely be my next purchase. Those things sound so sick.

Borzak · Sep 25, 2018

Have a Fender Deluxe Reverb. The solid state is a Fender Frontman 25R I picked up 15 years ago when I picked up a MiM Telecaster. Both were to keep at my girlfriends house cause I didn't feel like hauling the amp back and forth all the time and didn't want to leave my other Telecaster over there. Both of which go from no sound to really loud in <1mm of volume knob movement, at least it seems like.

Alex · Sep 25, 2018

Yeah I have a Fender Deluxe and it gets stupid loud. The office is a really big warehouse/loft style space and I brought it there where I can turn it at most to the whopping level of 4 (out of 12) when I stay late and want to crank it. It vibrates the entire floor of a seven story building at that volume. It's ridiculous. I have no use for that amp really.

My Orange TH30 is switchable all the way down to 7 watts and that's what I use in my apartment.

Gamma Rays · Sep 25, 2018

I've got an audio related question, but not specific to guitars. But I figured you guys might be the best ones to ask here.

Re: new headphones needing 'burn in' time.

I just ( yesterday ) received a pair of headphones that I ordered, Ebay purchase. I'm not going to say what they are, I don't want to bad mouth the brand. The reason for that is, I have owned a pair of their headphones for something like 15 years and really liked them. They've been my main set for that long, I'm a clumsy slob, they've been dropped on the ground knocked about and still have worked fine, the audio = really good. But they're showing their age and I decided to buy a new set, a different model by the same manufacturer. My old type isn't made anymore. I did a decent amount of research. Some were saying ( in Amazon comments ) "These are some of the best studio quality headphones you can buy, I swear by them, I'm a long term professional . . blah . . blah"

With zero negative comments, other than minor picks at the weight or some slight thing. So they arrived and the audio is way off, it's super heavy with the bass, the mid and higher tones are muted and muddy. I'm testing them by playing CD's some that I've listened to through various setups for close to 30 years.

I go back to the Amazon comments to see if I had read wrong, or what was up. It's then I pick out that a bunch of the remarks are saying they need burn in, 40 hours of play time.

???

With a hour or so per evening and making up time on the weekends, it's still going to be a few weeks before I can judge if they're good or not. Did I get a defect pair, Oh yeah I'll send it back a month later.

Has anyone here got experience in burning in a new set of headphones?

My plan is to do the burning in, without listening to it as I do. So that after the 40 ish hours. Only then will I give it a fresh listen. I will give an update in about a month.

alavaz · Sep 25, 2018

The best sounding amp to me is a mesa boogie dual rectifier. I played with the kemper at GC and they had a dual rectifier model (or profile or whatever their buzzword is) and it sounded pretty dead on to me.

Alex · Sep 25, 2018

Gamma Rays said:
I've got an audio related question, but not specific to guitars. But I figured you guys might be the best ones to ask here.

Re: new headphones needing 'burn in' time.

I just ( yesterday ) received a pair of headphones that I ordered, Ebay purchase. I'm not going to say what they are, I don't want to bad mouth the brand. The reason for that is, I have owned a pair of their headphones for something like 15 years and really liked them. They've been my main set for that long, I'm a clumsy slob, they've been dropped on the ground knocked about and still have worked fine, the audio = really good. But they're showing their age and I decided to buy a new set, a different model by the same manufacturer. My old type isn't made anymore. I did a decent amount of research. Some were saying ( in Amazon comments ) "These are some of the best studio quality headphones you can buy, I swear by them, I'm a long term professional . . blah . . blah"

With zero negative comments, other than minor picks at the weight or some slight thing. So they arrived and the audio is way off, it's super heavy with the bass, the mid and higher tones are muted and muddy. I'm testing them by playing CD's some that I've listened to through various setups for close to 30 years.

I go back to the Amazon comments to see if I had read wrong, or what was up. It's then I pick out that a bunch of the remarks are saying they need burn in, 40 hours of play time.

???

With a hour or so per evening and making up time on the weekends, it's still going to be a few weeks before I can judge if they're good or not. Did I get a defect pair, Oh yeah I'll send it back a month later.

Has anyone here got experience in burning in a new set of headphones?

My plan is to do the burning in, without listening to it as I do. So that after the 40 ish hours. Only then will I give it a fresh listen. I will give an update in about a month.

I've honestly never heard of this being a thing with headphones. I've heard of this for brand new speakers in amps when you need to break them in. They say you're supposed to play brand new speakers at very high volumes but I always thought that's just audiophile ridiculousness. I'd wait for someone else to jump in but I would think you have a faulty set.

Noodleface · Sep 25, 2018

A few years ago I got Klipsch S4's that sounded pretty blah to me. Read reviews and people said to burn them in too, so I did.

I just plugged them into my PC, left songs on repeat, and started using them after a few days of this. They still sound pretty good now (but they fit awful).

I figure if speaker cabs need burn-in, then headphones might too - although the real person to ask is

Brahma I think.

I burned in a Marshall 4x12 a few years ago that I bought brand new. It was kind of insane. I basically put the cab on my mattress, speakers down, and plugged my guitar in so it started feeding back. Then I just went to work and left it. It felt weird just leaving it, but I guess that's how it's done.

Gamma Rays · Sep 29, 2018

Okay then . . . the new headphones, they're great.

After only 6 or so hours of 'burning in' - also important to note: I wasn't listening to them as I was doing this. I put them on just now, as I had a bit of time and was curious. Fantastic!!!!

They are Koss Pro-4AA headphones.

Amazon product ASIN B00004Z7G9
I went for them as i had owned the old set, which I had forgotten were kinda cheap, but were great sound wise. So when it came to choosing the new ones, I liked the fact that the design has been exactly the same since 1970. And I dig that retro look.

And they're not too costly either . . . like, kinda cheap price wise really.

Part of my reason for not naming them in my original post, as I knew I was in for a barrage of "What do you expect from a sub $100 set of headphones!"

Anyway, so a big take away from this is 'Burning in' really does work, dramatic change so far and I figure it's going to get better.

Noodleface · Oct 1, 2018

Kinda forgot to learn the songs needed for our halloween cover set, so I crunched this week and learned them all. I always thought I had a terrible ear, but really I think I was just lazy. There are 0 tabs for this band (there are technically two that are awful), so when forced to learn songs I'm actually pretty good. And it's death metal too, so not too simple.

Just gotta learn two solos

Alex · Oct 1, 2018

It's extremely rare that I'll learn a solo note-by-note in a cover. I might play the stand-out licks or if it's a song with an iconic solo that you just have to play. I typically improvise every solo.

Noodleface · Oct 1, 2018

Alex said:
It's extremely rare that I'll learn a solo note-by-note in a cover. I might play the stand-out licks or if it's a song with an iconic solo that you just have to play. I typically improvise every solo.

I typically pick up the main points and throw my own flavor on top

alavaz · Oct 1, 2018

I got pretty good at picking up songs note for note when I was younger and learning to play along with my CDs. It always bugged me hearing people play imperfect covers too. Especially songs that people fuck up a lot like Master of Puppets or Crazy Train.

Depending on the song I also learn the solo note for note as well. Ironically, Death Metal solos are generally cleaner (as in time, tempo , key, etc.) than like classic rock solos where they basically just fucked about for a few minutes.

pharmakos · Oct 1, 2018

yeah, as long as you have the technical skills to play them, death metal songs are generally "easier" to learn in that the parts are usually written in a logical manner. rather than most rock, which is more often written by throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

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