I picked up guitar a couple weeks ago, and my (gracious) parents bought me an amp and electric guitar. I'm having a lot of fun, but I'm considering returning the amp, I feel like it often sounds muddy and doesn't have good tone for metal. Looking up demonstrations on youtube seem to concur. I am happy with the guitar itself though. I'm not sure what I should do. I could return it, but I don't really want to then get a more expensive amp. Maybe I should pay the difference myself, like 60 bucks for another amp that might be better. At the same time if I'm gonna get tired of this and want to get rid of it later, maybe I should get an amp to keep long-term. What should I do?
What amp is it
Oh I forgot to mention the third option is to return the amp and buy a used one for the same price
>>31136482Fender lt25, maybe wasn't a good buy for heavy music. I don't think it's my beginner playing because it sounds muddy often on simple chords
>>31136456Which amp is it? You can throw a distortion pedal in front of it and play all the metal you want. Unless the amp is too small to play and jam with a drummer, that’s your main limiting factor right now. But for your bedroom it should be fine with a cheap distortion pedal. I played in rock bands with “country” amps, jazz amps. Marshall stacks, and everything in between. You haven’t learned yet how to pull the tone out of the machine and new gear won’t solve your problems most of the time as long as you have the basic elements. You don’t know enough about gear to waste money on upgrading yet because in a few months you’ll want something else and end up spending more in the long run.
>>31136493>>31136504Ok now that I know which amp, I think you’re fine and just need to learn to lower the bass EQ and boost the mid. Just dime them one direction if you have to. The only limiting factor with your amp is jamming with a loud drummer, you’ll want 50 or 100 watts solid stare or 20w or more of you get a tube amp. Start saving your money for a tube amp and keep playing the one you have.
>>31136493Also if it sounds muddy it might be your pickups. Don’t have single coils or humbuckers? Which guitar is it? If it’s a single coil fender style you have to wrangle the metal tones out of it, if it’s a humbucker you have to tame it and wrangle the beast in, they are very different in practice but you can learn on either.
>>31136529Ah it could be the pickups. It's an Ibanez RG, they are humbuckers.
>>31136564Ah ok, those humbuckers should shred for metal. It’s what they were made for. Do you have the toggle switch all the way down to just the single bridge pickup? For most things and least mud keep that toggle switch pushed all the way down to the setting towards your feet. Tap your pick on the pickups and you’ll confirm which one is live and active. You want the pickup that’s furthest to your right active, next to the bridge. For warmer tones with single notes or for clean chords swing the toggle switch up towards you all the way to the neck pickup. Then for metal chords and metal solos leave it down at the bottom. There are many exceptions but thats the gyst of the settings. I can tell you right now I could take that guitar and amp and play anything. There are a ton of amp models in that thing. Then start saving for a used tube amp for around $500+ down the road, but that won’t be good for bedroom those are made to be cranked and jammed with band mates.
>>31136564Also playing basic open chords with high gain will sound muddy on any setup. You’ll want to start out playing power chords that are just two notes and learn to wrangle that in to sound good. Overall I’d recommend just playing clean channel now without distortion and getting the fundamentals down, playing along with a metronome at all times. If you start jamming with people and have poor rhythm you’ll sound sloppy and kill the vibe.
>>31136612I guess power chords don't sound as muddy, I feel like even clean full chords sound muddy though.
>>31136648You’ll have to adjust the EQ for both channels. Configure your clean and overdrive EQ differently. And the way your strum changes things a lot. If you insist on spending more money you could order an open box picrel for $175 from guitar center. It has less digital features and is more bare bones rock, but it still just has a small speaker and can only do so much in your price range, and I don’t know if the Orange includes a foot switch, so you can’t channel switch and have to buy one separately, and both channels might share the same EQ on that. I haven’t shopped for these kinds of amps in 20 years so I am not totally informed. You can also try for a Marshall. You’re very limited under $200. I recommend always buying used gear or open box, saves money. Especially when you start shopping for tube amps or new guitars.
>>31136711Okay I'll consider it. I'm just kinda unsure, when I got my gear I spent a lot of time looking for the right guitar and trying as many in my price range as I could, I definitively liked the feel and tone of the one I got over any others that I tried. I think I should've spent more time trying out different amps. If I would like another amp more, like the Orange you mentioned, it would be a shame to keep the one I have. Idk
>>31136727I’ve been chasing the amp dragon for 30 years now man, it doesn’t end. What you feel now is what you’ll feel with every amp once the “new purchase” wears off. Just be aware your current amp has more digital modeling features and effects, and the Orange is more basic and watch some reviews to ensure it has enough gain for metal. So it depends on what you’re into. Either way both your amp and the orange have a little 8” speaker and will never sound big and clear at higher volumes like a 12”, it’s just physics. Maybe you can find an amp with a 10” speaker, that Marshall I saw has one, but who knows if those are good. I’ve owned amps that are $4,000 and I doubt anyone could tell it wasn’t the $300 amp I was using a few years before that. All of these solid state amps in your price range will have a sort of sound that doesn’t sound like crisp clear metal recordings from big Mesa or Marshall tube amps.
>>31136756I play at quite low volumes though. I also want to be able to record into a DAW and have it sound at least passable, not that my compositions will be good for a couple years but I also want to learn music production and composition along with learning technical skills. I just feel like even at low volumes there's something missing, I tried out another digital modeling amp (50w and used) at the store and I feel like it might have been better. Maybe it wasn't and my mind is just playing tricks on me. I really don't know, I feel like I should maybe go to the store and try out more amps.
>>31136727For shows and jamming I play a $3,000 vintage Marshall from the 70s. But for my bedroom and just jamming by myself I use a little 10 watt picrel for $99. It is fun but your Fender is louder (25 watts) and has a bigger speaker and I’d rather play that.
>>31136769For recording you can send the clean signal from that Fender into your computer and emulate any number of amps and speakers using other software. They sound pretty good these days and you won’t be limited by your amps watts and speakers. Sending a good clean tone into the computer then overdriving it in software could sound great.
>>31136769But yeah go to the store and try out amps. I know the feeling. But for recording you don’t even need an amp at all just plug directly into an interface. But someday I recommend getting a microphone and a good recording interface and put that mic in front of a good tube amp speaker. I don’t think anything beats that and most albums are recording that way to this day. That’s still how it’s done at concerts as well. Good old microphone in front of the amp speaker.
>>31136770Hmm, I'll think about it. It's just that I always try to make the optimum purchase and maximize my value. Also while you're here, because you're experienced, I feel like my intonation is off. I tune it and it's in tune on the open strings but further up the board it sounds a little sharp or flat on some notes. Is that an issue with my strings? it's fixable right?
>>31136456no stick with what you have and adapt to limitationsno one ever got better just for having the perfect gear
>>31136793Don't most bands use digital amps live? >>31136779I'll consider it, but again I'm not sure how I feel about the clean sound. I think I just need to go demo other amps and then decide. I definitely like the guitar though.
>>31136795Yeah you’ll have to adjust the intonation using the screws on the bridge to move those little saddles the string sits on forward or back. Watch a youtube video on how to adjust it, you basically use a tuner and get the 12th fret on each string to match the pitch of the string plucked wide open, or get the 12th fret to match the pitch of when you pluck a harmonic on the 12th fret. So if the 12th fret is showing up sharp on your tuner compared to it wide open, you’ll have to screw the saddle for that string so that the saddle moves slightly away from the 12th fret to flatten that note a little bit. And thus the opposite if that 12th fret were flat. Do that for each string. Also when playing chords and notes higher on the neck they can sound out of tune if you’re sort of not playing gracefully, fretting too hard can sharpen the note, sort of depends on the guitar, and often chords of more than two notes up that high can sound weird, so there are tricks on how to do those without sounding out of tune. You’ll also kind of battle some tuning if you have a whammy bar, and cheaper guitars just in general won’t have perfect frets and can sound a little out of tune sometimes.
>>31136821Alright, I'll do that soon. It's not too bad, but it's noticably a little worse than my acoustic from my dad. Maybe the intonation isn't even bad and it's just my ear, because I only really hear it when I'm not plugged in. I don't have a whammy bar, I'm kinda glad because it seems like a pain in the ass to deal with and I don't even usually like the sound of it.
>>31136800Okay, but should I then try to find a better amp for the same price?
>>31136805I can’t think of a single show I’ve ever seen where the guitars weren’t analog tube amps with a mic in front feeding into the PA system. I’m sure there are exceptions these days. Guitarists often have digital pedalboards with some effects but they are ran through a tube amp. But that is mostly for delay or phase effects not for distortion/overdrive. That has to be done with preamp tubes or driving the power tubes by diming the master volume or pushing it with an overdrive pedal. Wait until you get into attenuators. I play love with a Marshall single channel amp dined to 11 and run that signal into an attenuator to lower that insane volume down about 70% that goes into the amp’s speaker and then a microphone is set in front of that and fed to the PA system. I change channels by using the volume knob on my guitar to play clean parts and then quickly roll it back up for distortion. I use analog delay pedals, phase and a wah and that’s about it. Oh and a tremolo pedal.
>>31136841Okay lol, that's a whole lot of jargon
>>31136805Give me the name of a band you like and I’ll look up their rig or spot it in live videos. Curious as to the sound you like and maybe that’ll help. It’s possible the sound you want is just out of your price range right now due to only being able to get solid state amps. I’m not a tube amp snob, even though I’ve said it a million times today, but it’s just industry standard and 90% of rock recordings you’ve heard in your life were captured that way and your ear might be used to it.
>>31136856Dimebag used solid states didn't he? I like lots of stuff lol, most main metal subgenres, classical, new wave, scattered other rock.
>>31136866Ah yeah Dimebag is famous for using solid state very true, and that’s a unique sound and hard to pull off. He also recorded albums by having pretty nice speaker cabinets mic’d up and good speakers are a decent chunk of the equation. I just looked it up and I guess he switched to Krank tube amps towards the end of his career, and in the 90s he would use an amp switcher to toggle to tube Mesa Boogies live for the clean parts. Interesting. When you go to the music store play one of these DSL40s and see how you like it, Marshall is my favorite and under $1,000 that circuitry has stood the test of time.
>>31136902Okay, I suppose. I don't know, it's very overwhelming. I gotta go to bed, I'll think about ir
>>31136905I still maintain that you keep that Fender amp because I remember making my mom return stuff for me and ending up being unhappy and sorry for being ungrateful for what I had, and that the new amp wasn’t much better. It was just me being spoiled and sucking at guitar. If you go for that Orange remember that you’re swapping all the cool effects in the Fender for a simple clean/dirty raw amp. The Fender has a lot of programmable effects to toy around with and since you don’t own and pedals, you’ll miss out on that. Maybe the best all around would be the Marshall Code 25 or whatever it’s called. Good luck. Listening to boomer lectures on amps is a right of passage.
>>31137663Well you've convinced me to certainly not return it and buy something more expensive, I'm still not sure if I should try out more digital modeling amps in the same price range to see if any others are better though.
Try it thru headphonesHalf the big heavy sound is the half or full stack - 4x12 or 8x12 used to push the airYour combo is a 1x8. Simple physics will limit it no matter how good the amp models areI have an 80s 100w 4 input Marshall but I practise using a line6 pod and headphones. Sounds close enough
>>31137915I do play it through headphones. I'm not sure, it just kinda sounds off, but that could just be my playing.
Bump, now I'm considering maybe just getting an audio interface instead and using free digital amp software, but then I'd be tied to my laptop
>>31136456It’d keep it OP, your parents are inevitably going to ask how it’s fits and when they see that you returned it, it might break their heart a little. And if they truly don’t give a shit, which is fair, I think that’d still be super stoke and happy that you’re using it. Don’t be a dipshit and keep it around, at least for a little bit, then maybe trade it in sometime down the road.
>>31139440I've already talked to them, I think they'd be fine if I return it as long as I keep playing the guitar and don't try to get them to spend more money.
>>31136805>Don't most bands use digital amps live?Depends, if they're not boomer classic rock bands, they're likely to be using amp modelers like axe fx or kempers which nowadays easily compare to le big Valve meme amps that need to be mic'd up.However, if the band has a member over 45yo it's likely not going to be the case and you'll see lots of cabs and cringe heads as if the stage were a recording studio.
>>31136902I went full solid state Marshall, haven't looked back since. The "warmth" from tubes is pure snake oil and boomer cope. A proper pedal rig and decent DAW skills out-do any marketing hype equipment anyways.
>>31140378Should I return my amp though?
>>31140378Imagine being this poor.
>>31140322For real and all those boomers that still bring literal drum sets to shows as if it’s a recording studio or something. Get a Roland V kit or a sampler it’s 2024 lmao. A perfected snare and kick on software blows away a real drum set that’s likely out of tune. If you want perfection go digital.
>>31142394This has to be bait. Virtual drums are great for electronic music but acoustic drums are still superior for the sound they want. Just like an acoustic guitar can't be simulated by a computer. Amps are different because they're electric by default.
>>31143251Traditional, normal amps are electric but not digital, there are no 1’s or 0’s and the signal path from the guitar pickups to the speaker is analog. If someone wants to make “rock” sounds in the way that it’s been heard their entire life, it makes sense to just have an analog signal path and not convert the signal to digital until it’s been captured by the speaker cabinet via microphone, to capture what the person in the room would be hearing, capturing the signature of where it was recorded. Most recordings we’ve ever heard of rock guitar have a microphone in front of a speaker pushing physical air from a valve amplifier as well as the nuances of the dimensions and material in the room it’s being recorded. And the position/axis of the microphone in relation to the diameter of the speaker, all of it adds rich harmonics that make it sound rich, or thick, big. I’m not saying that’s the only way electric guitar should sound, I’m just saying that’s the way to get a certain sound that might be in your head from decades of hearing rock music recordings. If that’s not what someone wants then just plug directly into a computer and record, doesn’t matter to me. But when guitar pickups send a signal to a speaker, the amplification of that signal through overdriven valves create different harmonics than solid state or digital, it’s just how it is. One is not better or worse but it does matter if someone is trying to get a certain sound, in the same way a digital snare won’t work for some musicians because a real snare with a real microphone makes a big difference, as well as the room microphones for the drums when recording. Famous albums have a unique sound that can’t ever be replicated because that band chose that room to track that instrument, it’s great. Somewhat related, there’s a reason people pay thousands for synthesizers that are analog circuits, sounds rich and it’s fun.
>>31143491I know there's a difference lol, it's just that the difference between a digital and analog electric guitar is far less than the different between acoustic and electric instruments. Digital and analog are competing in the same space, acoustic and electric are just completely different.
>>31143623Not really, a snare drum with a mic vs an amp speaker with a mic are equally silly to try and emulate with software. They are both an acoustic signal as far as the microphone is concerned.
>>31144448You emulate the signal the amp is sending to the speaker, not the mic. Why can't digital be as good, hypothetically? As fidelity improves the gap will close naturally. Your recording is gonna be digital at the end of the day anyways.
>>31144493I think for clean guitar tones without overdrive then digital does fine, clean isn’t as complex as valve harmonics and circuitry. Overdrive is so unique in than way, the strumming of a guitar string and how the player palm mutes or yanks tone out of the string physically is so tied to that feeling of an analog signal driving valves and pushing a speaker in a room, it’s such a wonderful experience and that high adds to the writing of music and capturing that with a good engineer is magic. All the hit rock albums from all the decades were recorded this way. You can start removing more and more of that process and digitize and get something similar but in the end it’s just losing more and more do that soul. But yeah if you were to record a really good song using midi or a drum machine and emulators the essence of the notes and catchy hooks of a song will be there and people would listen to it, as they do with pop radio, but then you’re just getting further and further away from “rock”. All I’m talking about is whatever rock sounds are. If we talk about playing guitar and making whatever song you want then who cares what you use, but digitizing that concept in your head of what rock and its legacy has means by using emulation to mimic what guys in the 70s did by overdriving the circuits of a hand wired British made 100 watt amp with a hand made Marshall cab is just sad. It would be better to take guitar emulation and make a whole new genre that blows people away, make something new that becomes a scene and a sound that people want to pay tickets for because it’s never been heard before. I don’t want to pay for a $50 concert ticket to hear a guy try and have a vintage guitar tone through a modeling head fed right to the PA system. That’s not what I’m paying for. But if he takes emulation and elevates it and blows my mind then cool, just be original. It’s been 20 years since rock did something new that the masses idolize.
>>31144780You realize that playing a digital amp is still playing the guitar, right? Don't you think people would've said the same thing when electric guitars first came out? That it's taking the soul away from the acoustics? And behold, acoustics are still around. Was Pantera soulless because Dimebag used solid states?>It’s been 20 years since rock did something new that the masses idolize.I don't think that's ever gonna happen, and that's fine.
>>31144817Dimebag used 100w solid state Randalls through a nice speaker cab mic’d up. He elevated guitar playing and earned that. If your idea of playing a modeling amp and copying sounds from the last 50 years then that sounds like a waste of time. Using a digital amp with software overdrive is playing guitar yes, just use it to do something new, don’t try and program the sound of something recorded 30 years ago. Also I should point out that I’m only picky about these sounds if you were to record and produce and album or play live shows. Writing and or practicing in a bedroom using a modeling amp is great.
>>31144817> Don't you think people would've said the same thing when electric guitars first came out?Yup for sure, but those guys weren’t using electric guitars to emulate acoustic guitars, they were revolutionizing music.
>>31144957I want to make music but it probably won't be any good until the point where I could afford good recording gear and tube amps anyways.>>31144969Why are you so hung up on me trying to emulate old sounds? You're creating a point of conflict that doesn't even exist. The sounds I'd want to take from the 20th century are mostly in composition, vocals, and new wave, which honestly I think fits with digital amps. You've just created some fiction in your mind and projected it onto me.
>>31145273> Why are you so hung up on me trying to emulate old sounds? I have been mostly stating my opinions more as a general argument about tone, but this thread was started because you had an issue with muddy METAL tones and then proceed to ignore anyone trying to explain that you’ll have a rough time doing that digitally. I don’t expect you to go spend a bunch of money but had said multiple times when you have learned enough and know what you want, you can spend more money. If people want to complain about how they aren’t getting a rock/metal sound that they hear on their favorite albums, and then don’t want to listen to someone that’s been playing shows for 20 years and have albums on Spotify, makes no sense to me. But you mention new wave so maybe you’re not OP and can disregard my comments.
>>31146186Because I know that I want a solid state modelling amp. At this point I know that the muddy tones were my beginner playing from what I've been doing over the past few days, but I still might want a different amp for other reasons. You've just begun being a dick for absolutely no reason. This doesn't have to be an autistic boomer shouting at digital technology. >have albums on SpotifyAnd how many listeners do they have? Anyone can put their music on spotify.>But you mention new wave so maybe you’re not OP and can disregard my comments.People can like multiple genres, you realize?
