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back in the day, i used to tweak rigs for a living. yep, i built
custom racks and helped guitar players get the tone they wanted. there isn't much money in that line of work, but it was fun
anyway. with that experience, i will try to shed some light on Billy's current rig mojo.
the core old tone is still done
the same way as it was back then...with an amp that distorts only when you dig into the strings with your pick. the Mojave
amp does that for him. the hard dunlop pick takes care of the coin pick issue. usually only one particular guitar or kind
of guitar will give him the rest of the tone he needs for the older songs.
the new gear is all about consistency. all guitars are ran through
a graphic eq and individually tweaked to sound exactly like his favorite guitar. so no matter what guitar he picks up, the
pickups make no difference because the tech has already eq'd around them. even the gain is compensated for, so there is no
more drive from one guitar/pickup to another. good news for us...you can put a parametric eq in front of any amp in the eleven
rack and do the same thing! some of my presets feature an eq up front to do exactly that...change the pickups.
next up; Billy uses
7's on his guitars! those strings are so light that most people couldn't play a simple chord without it sounding out of tune.
i once setup a rack for a guy in Orlando Florida and he used a similar set of strings. what i found was that the guitar sounded
thin, but played really easily. Billy's amp reflects the compensation for the lite strings by boosting the bass wide open
and cutting the highs. that is the same thing i had to do on this guy's rig. the point is that you can't just buy all the
same gear as Billy and copy his settings, unless you are willing to also change string gauges.
most of what i've talked about
so far is things that change the type of distortion you get out of an amp. i call those things "pre-eq". strings, picks, pickups
and guitar wood all change what the amp sees and effects the distortion.
the reason most people think Billy uses a strat on some solos
is because of the things like strings that change his tone. you can watch videos where he clearly plays with a humbucker equipped
guitar and gets those stratty tones. next time you watch one of those videos (or better yet watch him live) notice what he
does with the volume control...he turns it down. thin strings = thin tone, lower output from the pickups + thin sound = single
coil tone...but not quite. by varying where you pick, you can actually emulate a number of out-of-phase to wah like sounds.
i personally use a treble bleeder circuit in my high output guitars to do what Billy does with his pearly gates equipped guitars.
see link for schematic:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=treble_bleed
many people
hear things that sound great to their ears, but don't know why. the brown tone is one of those things that just sounds right
to most of us. EVH may have coined the term, but older guitar players found the tone first.
i made money tweaking
rigs for others in search of great tone, and the one thing that all "great" guitar rigs had in common is this: they were all
"brown". my definition of "brown" is this: 1) when you roll back the guitar volume, the amp must clean up completely somewhere
near the end of the volume pot travel.
2) in addition to cleaning up, the tone must get more chimey or have more treble content.
3) in addition to all of that, the distortion (at guitar full
volume) must vary depending on how hard you pick.
the way i tweaked professional guitar players rigs was to play their guitar (with
their pick), roll back the guitar volume control and tweak the pre-eq until the rig felt "brown". the pre-eq adjustments would
always start with pickup height settings, then the amps tone controls (in the case of amps like marshall that setup the tone
controls before the gain stage, then an actual eq before the amp, then an eq after the amp.
in the rack days it was common
to have all of those components in one massive rack. then Rocktron made a preamp that did everything in one rack space. most
rack preamps followed suit and allowed for eq placement anywhere in the chain.
fast forward to us; we have most decent amps and effects in one
box...called the eleven rack.
so to get Billy's tone you have to use an eq before the amp and cut the lows/boost the highs (or use
very light guitar strings).
next, use just enough gain to allow for pick attack to cause more distortion.
the third ingredient
is what i haven't mentioned...power tube distortion. one way to help out the shrill distortion you may have created is to
push the power tubes into clipping. this clipping results in a fattening of the lows and some compression (which helps to
get that live in front of the amp feel).
the reason my JCMmmmmm preset sounds good is because it follows all of those "brown" rules.
to ice the cake,
place another eq after the amp and find your own midrange frequency happiness. we all love the feel of the brown sound but
we don't all agree on the sound of the mids. the mids are what gives you your own tone. the mids help you cut through a mix.
i would like to challenge
everyone to find their own brown tone. i would bet that 90% of us end up with basically the same rig. make it easy on yourself,
download the JCMmmmmm preset and tweak it to work with your guitar. make sure you use setup an eq before and after the amp.
you don't have to use them, but they should be available to help you tweak your pre-eq and post-eq depending on the guitar
used and the venue played.
you now owe me $250 for the lesson and tweaking your rig. lol.
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