Most tech articles address the ins and outs of equipment. How to use it, what it’s made of, how it works, what the best parts are, and all the nuances of the craft of guitar equipment design.

This month, I’m going to go off the beaten path to cover a much more important subject—organic tone. What does that mean? YOU!! Organic tone is the product of your mind, body and soul.

Go Beyond the Gear

There is an abundance of great gear out there. Guitar, pedal, and amp manufacturers are creating wonderful sounding, well-built products to assist us with our tone sculpting. But you may have noticed that I’ve chosen to use the word “assist” for describing what our sonic tools do for us. This is because when you get down to it, the real source of tone starts and ends with you, not any of your gear.

Sure, you may have what you consider the best boutique amp on earth, and every flavor of the month pedal, all of which are built with the parts and components you and your friends approve of, write about in blogs, forums, and discuss in all those other places where musicians put their heads together and talk shop. But you have to ask yourself a couple of questions:

Do you want to create music? Or do you just want to make noise with expensive equipment?

Cultivate Perfect Tone

The pathway to great tone is through practice, not machinery. You can’t buy tone! Equipment is there to enhance, manipulate, and convey tone. It is not the source—you are. As a pedal designer and manufacturer, I consider myself a toolmaker, and tools are only as good as the mechanic who uses them.

I totally understand how a musician can buy a ton of pedals and spend more time tweaking knobs and obsessing over what parts operate the unit, than actually playing guitar. However, with this approach, you soon grow to dislike the latest answer to “tone in a box,” usually within a week or a month, and then you’re on to the next new box-o-talent. We’ve all been there, myself included. I know how it is. It’s much easier and seems more rewarding to play with a sea of knobs and switches to find great tone, than it is to sit down and practice creating great tone.

If you enjoy being a technician more than a guitar player, read no more.

Every Great Guitarist Does It

In the many years I’ve spent repairing guitar and bass equipment, designing and manufacturing pedals, attending guitar shows, events, and helping clients who walk into the shop, I’ve talked with and listened to many great guitar players. And I’ve found that they all have one thing in common—It really does not matter what equipment they play through—they ALWAYS sound great. Their wonderful tone follows them wherever they go. Hand them any guitar, plug into any amp, and they sound great. The quality, personality, and character of their sound are intact and superb. They all make it work.

How do they do it? Endless, constant, and effective practicing.

Have you ever noticed how your favorite guitar heroes sound nearly the same every time you hear them? From time to time you notice they’re playing through different amps, effects, and sometimes, guitars. But their sound is unmistakably theirs. That’s the result of practice!

Challenge Yourself

Teach yourself new things that are beyond your usual test riffs or the same songs you’ve played many times. Work towards eradicating your weaknesses and not just practicing your strengths. If you have already mastered it, move on to the next challenge. Learn material outside of your musical taste and technique.

A friend of mine, who is a monster guitar player and can play anything, has recently needed to play slide guitar regularly in a new band. He never considered himself a good slide player because there wasn’t any need or desire to invest the time practicing slide playing. However, now, when we talk on the phone several times daily for business, I hear him playing slide in the background while we’re talking. Nearly every phone call I hear him practicing slide. Sometimes through an amp, often unplugged, and it sounds great. He took what he considered a weakness and within a couple of weeks, eliminated it through effective practicing.

Side note: All great players say “Practice with a metronome!!” It’s the only electronic gear you really need for practicing.

How To Find YOUR Tone

You can go very far in your quest for tone just by unplugging your guitar and playing it. Find all the effects you can create with your fingers. Pay attention to the way they contact the strings and the fingerboard. Notice how much your hand contacts the back of the neck influences a variety of tones as well as how tightly you grasp the neck. Explore different picking techniques to command different sounds. How tightly or loosely you hold your pick, the angle and depth of attack when plucking a string, all this changes tone. Even the way you wear your guitar has an impact on tone. Want a little more sustain and feedback a bit sooner? Lean over and let your guitar hang off you by its strap. That allows the guitar’s body to vibrate more freely because it’s not dampened by your body. The point is to experiment, investigate, and discover all the tones that can be created by just you and the guitar. The majority of these nuances will reveal themselves through practice, not electronics.

I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg regarding the creation of organic tone. The rest is up to you, as most aspects of it can only be self-taught through practicing.

So put away your effects. Turn off your amp. Explore your guitar and discover yourself.

Subscribe in a reader

Rick Hamel of SiB Effects Pedals

Most every guitarist employs at least one effect pedal in his or her tonal arsenal, be it a $30 beater or a high-end “boutique” stomp-box. And, much like all things guitar, effects can be addictive.  Many of us start with one and end up with a chain of effects we simply can’t live without.  And just like every component in your signal path — from your pick to your speaker cone — effects affect your tone.

If you arrange them correctly, your effects pedals can be a transparent ally in your quest for good tone.  In order to figure out what works best for you, it’s helpful to learn what each pedal in your chain does to your signal.

First, a disclaimer: we all know guitar tone is subjective. What sounds heavenly to me may not do it for you.  My advice is based on my many years of experience and my personal sonic preferences.  You may not agree with everything I suggest, but I know that if you try some of my suggestions, my experience tells me you will have good results.

Much of the strategy behind effects pedal arrangement has to do with the sound you are going for.  Are you seeking out vintage Fender tweed tube amp raunch?  Or big, classic British Marshall or Vox?  Maybe that dramatic, processed 1980s sound?  Clean jazz tone?  What you are hoping to achieve has a lot to do with how you arrange your effects pedals. The following is an overview of some of the most common pedals, their characteristics and signal path preferences.  Take a look and see if there aren’t some ideas in here for you to clean up your guitar signal and enhance your tone, regardless of what style you play.

Auto filters and other envelope devices love to be first in the signal path.  These are dynamic units that require an unprocessed signal at their input to operate properly.  They work best patched directly to your guitar. It just so happens that they also sound great when placed first in your effects chain.

Wah-wah pedals are band-pass filters that boost a narrow band of frequencies, allowing you to sweep them up and down the frequency spectrum.  For a wide sweeping, natural sound, your wah should be next in you chain (after your auto filter or envelope device), and before any overdrive, distortion, delay or modulation effect.  This arrangement also yields more of a vintage tone as well.  However, if you are going for a more mechanical sounding wah, place it after your distortion or overdrive effect.  Another interesting tone is to have a mild overdrive in front of your wah and distortion after it, which will allow you to experience elements of both tones.

Compressor-limiters have a couple of uses; as a sustainer they amplify weak signals and attenuate strong signals, thereby increasing your guitar’s sustain.  As a limiter, they limit the amount of signal entering your amp or subsequent effect, helping to avoid distortion. A combination of both features – sustain without distortion — can be achieved with the right control settings. Compressor-limiters can also be used as simple boosts. These devices do their best work early in the signal path — before distortion, modulation effects, delays and reverbs, as they are best utilized after all dynamically-sensitive units.

Distortion and overdrive units are the cornerstones of many players’ tone.  These effects sound best early in the signal path, before most modulation effects, delays, or reverbs.  Placing them early in your effects chain will also cut down on unwanted noise, as it will amplify any and all noise generated by a previous device.  Distortion and overdrive pedals placed late in the chain may take that tiny bit of hiss from your delay pedal or reverb unit and turn it into a wall of white noise, and your echo and reverb effects will be hard to tame as well.  Another way to use a distortion or overdrive unit is to plug into the high gain channel of your amplifier rather than an external pedal, and treat the effects loop send of the amp (if so equipped) as your distortion effect output.

Volume pedals are great after distortion or overdrive units because you can increase and decrease your volume without altering grind level, just like the master volume in your amp (ummm, well…allegedly! I’ve yet to find a truly 100% useful master volume. Ed.).  They’re also very useful to have before any reverb and/or delay units, allowing you to create volume swells without cutting off reverb or echo trails.  Quite a few players gravitate toward putting volume pedals first in the chain, which is somewhat wasteful, as the volume control on your guitar serves the very same function.  But it is useful to have your volume pedal first if you want a hands free, pre-distortion volume control.  However, auto filters and envelope devices should not have a volume pedal before them in the signal chain, as they prefer a signal as raw as possible to do their job correctly.

Chorus and flanger effects are very short time delay devices that take your signal, split it, delay and modulate one half, and then mix it back together with the unprocessed half.  The modulation slightly raises and lowers the pitch of the processed half of the signal.  With a chorus, the resulting effect is similar to the sound of two guitars, or a 12-string.  Flangers have a shorter delay and a feedback control (sometimes called ‘resonance’) and cancel some frequencies as they sweep through their modulation range, similar to a comb filter.  These effects sound great toward the end of the chain, but before delays or reverbs.  If you play in stereo, and you use your chorus or flanger to create your stereo field, then you are effectively locked into using it at the end of your chain.  If you use a mono echo and/or reverb unit, it can sound great if you use it on one side only.  This will cause the sound to have more depth without getting washed out and buried in the mix, plus you can make everyone airsick!

Vibrato pedals raise and lower the pitch of your guitar’s signal.  And while we’re talking about this effect, I should point out that there is a difference between vibrato and tremolo.  A tremolo pedal is a volume-altering device; some pulse, and others fade your signal in-and-out, while the vibrato raises and lowers the pitch of the note or notes.  Some tremolo pedals even pan your signal between two amps.  You can place a tremolo early in the chain, before distortion devices and it will alter the gain of the distortion pedals as it trems your signal, or place it after for a more mechanical sound.  If you place it after a reverb unit, you can lop off reverb decay tails for.  Tremolo pedals are very useful anywhere in the effects chain.  The same goes for vibrato pedals.

Noise gates are best used after distortion and before any echo or reverb unit.  You may have to experiment with placing your noise gate before or after modulation effects (chorus, flanger or vibrato), depending on how noisy they are and if their sweep trips the gate open and closed.  Also, if your pedal has a side chain or external trigger input, this is very useful for having a different signal control the gate.  For example, you could split your guitar early in the effects chain, and control the gate’s behavior with a noise-free signal.  This way you can avoid high threshold settings and cutting off your guitar’s signal as it decays.  Another use is patching a drum machine in and turning your noise gate into a tremolo effect with rhythm.

Phase shifters are similar to flangers in that they have the same type of controls and the modulation is comparable.  But unlike flangers, phase shifters do not delay the signal. They do exactly what the name implies: shift signal phase.  They split the incoming signal, one half goes directly to a mixer, and the other half goes through two or more phase shifting stages, and gets mixed back in with the dry, unprocessed signal.  The resulting effect is phase cancellation of certain frequencies as it sweeps through its modulation range.  For a lush, subtle tone with a lot of depth and focus, they sound great before distortion.  Although some types of phase shifters may seem a bit noisy before a distortion pedal, in my opinion the effect is worth it.  For a more animated, mechanical effect, you can run it after your distortion pedal.

Ambient effects, such as delays (echo) and reverb sound best at the very end of the signal path.  It’s your choice: do you want to reverb your echoes or echo your reverb?  I tend to prefer running my echo before reverb.  Just because it sounds good to my ears.

And finally, a word about Fuzzface-like devices and octave up fuzz pedals: these two effects both love to have the guitar plugged directly into them.  Neither will not respond properly if running anything before them; wah pedals will not wah, and the units themselves will not sound or feel right.  They do work great together, running an Octavia into a Fuzzface sounds wonderful, but you must run your guitar right into them.  Octave down/distortion pedals can be placed anywhere you would put a distortion unit.

So there it is a basic understanding of the most common effects pedals, and where they like to reside in your signal chain.  There are many other weird, wonderful effects out there.  If you have one I haven’t addressed here, just do some research at the company’s website to determine what it is the pedal does to your signal.  Once you know this, you can use your know how to determine where it should lie in your path.

But, as always, the best – and most enjoyable — test is to plop your pedal down in between two others and see how it sounds.  After all, monkeying around with gear is fun, and you may discover something new in your eternal quest for good guitar tone.

Subscribe in a reader

The big problem when it comes to music instruction is that it is not necessary to have any diplomas or awards in order to set up a teaching practice. Conversely, the best teacher may not have a degree in music, just a phenomenal talent for teaching.

The first thing to understand when finding a good teacher is that the best teachers are not necessarily the best players. And it certainly goes that great players are invariably not the best teachers, possibly because they are far too wrapped up in their own playing to be concerned about anyone else. OK, a generalization but a theory with legs.

So let’s assume you are just starting out, an absolute beginner, so what do you do? Well, the first resource I would use is Sonic Weekly’s directory. You may have a friend or cousin that also took lessons and he or she may be able to recommend someone. Music stores often provide instruction and you can also look in your local paper for private instructors. It’s actually very easy to find a teacher, but can you count on them to feed you all the right information?

Let’s assume you have a short list of teachers in your area. I think it is definitely in your interest to make sure that they are teaching simply because they love to teach. Not because they are waiting for their “big break”. This is why I think it is important to find a professional teacher, not an aspiring pop star. So you might ask a series of questions:

• How long have you been teaching?
• What teaching qualifications do you have?
• How many other students do you have?
• Can you give me the phone numbers of two of your students?

This may seem harsh, but I just think it is so important to get the right person from the start. Why? Because as a student you have no idea whether your potential teacher actually knows what they are talking about. So don’t be shy to ask.

As an intermediate student you probably need to rely more on word of mouth to get the right teacher to take you forward. In your local neighborhood, especially if you have been playing a while, you are probably already hooked into who the teachers are so it may not be such a problem.

The other issue, aside from musical expertise, is that your teacher and you need to like each other. If you are to be successful studying together this is so important. I remember growing up that I would excel in the subjects where I actually liked my teacher. Of course I dreaded going to class with those teachers I didn’t like.

I’m happy to say that I really liked all my guitar teachers except for one, and that person lasted just a few lessons. I got lucky with the others there is no question. But other students may not be so lucky. I have heard a number of times that students realized much later that they did not have a good teacher. So at what point do you decide to move on and find a new teacher?

If you have done the prerequisite research I mentioned then this should not be an issue. However, guitar playing is such a personal undertaking that finding the right teacher is relative to each student. What works for one, clearly does not always work for another.

Your teacher should care about you and take an interest in seeing you advance as a player. I think this would be the biggest red flag to me if I was taking lessons all over again. I would want to know that there was some nurturing involved. If you feel that there really is no connection between the two of you then I think this might be a factor you can use to determine whether you move on or not.

It’s tricky. As a student you want the best teacher for you but you may not know if there is no barometer to show you.

I also think that many times the student is to blame for being a lousy student. I remember when I used to give private lessons that a few students would come back week after week and had not done any practice at all. I found myself explaining the same things over and over because we couldn’t move on until the essential groundwork was covered. These students eventually gave up because they had no drive or ambition to improve. This can be very frustrating for a teacher. Other times extremely talented players would come for just a few lessons because all they needed was a little fuel to go off on their own and practice. They were literally sponges. These students are heaven for teachers!

So do the research, then take a lesson or two and see if that teacher is right for you. If you are serious about working at your instrument then you shouldn’t be to blame for being a bad student. At that time it’s simply a matter of finding the right person. Don’t short change yourself.

Subscribe in a reader