My Tone

Many of you guys were asking me about how I get my tone, so here is a little guide:

Lets start with my guitars, as most of you know I am only using Gibson Les Pauls. They deliver exactly the kind of sound that I want, a very warm, fat and singing tone, with lots of low end and sustain without end. If you like this kind of sound then you should definitely go for a guitar with humbuckers, single coils would be the wrong type of pickups for that kind of sounds, also a mahogany body is recommended, cause this wood delivers this warm fat tone.

As I mentioned before I am using humbuckers in all my guitars, the combination of a Les Paul with an EMG 81 is very powerful, but also the regular Gibson stock pickups sound absolutely great and deliver an even more singing tone. Actually I am using different guitars depending on what sounds I want, the ones armed with EMG's are awesome for fast highgain songs, while the Gibson pickups are great for more midtempo stuff like our song "Bright Eyes" for example.

About amplifiers, there are many great amps out there, and in the end it is all a matter of taste I guess, but I found "my" tone with Mesa Boogies Tripple Rectifier, the most powerful amp I know. It is amazing how fast and precise this amp is, how much air you can move with it A Rectifier and a Les Paul can be a very devastating couple that can tear down walls, and this is exactly what I like

A Rectifier offers gain without end, but actually I am not really using that much gain. If you use too much distortion your sound will only get muddy, less precise and you will lose all you attack, this is the opposite of what I want and actually it is a mistake that I saw with many of your recordings, many of you just use too much gain. What I do is I turn down the gain a bit, but by dubbling my guitars in a recording the sounds gets huge, without losing the attack.

This is something that you can try yourself easily, record something with not too much gain and listen to that single track. You might think that the gain is not enough, but then just double it by recording it again, listen to both tracks at the same time, and you'll be surprised...

By the way, doubling is something essential if you want to have a big fat sound, everything we reocrd with BG is doubled AT LEAST, there are parts that are doubled 4 times, if not more often, like that the sound gets real big. For my lessons here I normally record either 3 or 4 tracks of rhythm guitars. If I go for 3, like in the Tom Morello lesson, I pan 2 tracks completely to left and right, while the 3rd track stays in the middle. If I do 4 tracks, then there will be 2 tracks left and 2 track right.

A nice trick when it comes to doubling is to use different sounds or even different amps, like this you can really shape your tone. You can take the low end form one amp, the mids from another and the high frequencies from a third one if you want, but I guess for home recording this is a bit too much For the Tom Morello lesson I used a Rectifier for tracks one and 2, and another Rectifier, that was set a bit different, for the third track.

When it comes to effects, I am not really using a lot, my normal rhythm tone has no effects at all, while my clean sound has a bit of chorus, reverb and delay, this is about it. Only sometimes I am using more, like for the Solo in the Morello lesson, here I am also using a Wah, actually the auto Wah of my Axe-FX Ultra. In my opinion too many effects only kill your sound, so I am very selective about them.

And well, last but not least, there is this saying "the tone comes from your fingers"... and guess what, it is absolutely true! Of course all my equipment helps me big time to get my sound and tone, but even if I am using your gear, it will still sound like me, cause after all we form our tone with our fingers, our vibrato, our bends, the way we pick strings... so equipment is not everything.

(almost) Back From The Dead

Hi everybody, finally I am about to return to GMC We did some awesome festivals all over Europe over the last months and now there is just one more show to go (next Saturday in Poland). After that we will return home and continue working on the new album, and I will finally return to GMC with new lessons

Backing Tracks

Since people keep asking me for the backing tracks of my lessons I thought it might be easier to post them here, so whenever somebody wants to try one of my lessons, here you can find the backings. For now I will upload two backings that I was just asked for, the rest will follow.

Not Very Active In The Moment...

I just wanted to let you guys know, why I am not really active here on GMC in the moment: we are on the road again for all the summer festivals in the moment. I hope to see some of you guys at one of the shows and be sure I will be back and much more active here again

The Emg 18 Volt Mod

Since I read about this mod for EMG pickups here in the forum I have been very curious, after all I have been using EMG pickups since almost 20 years now, and today I finally had the chance to test this mod with my main guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Custom, equiped with two EMG 81 pickups. If you have never heard about this mod, here is the story: EMG pickups are active pickups, normally they are powered with a 9 volt battery, this is how I used my pickups ever since I installed the first one. Those pickups are sold with one battery clip, and the manual also only talks about this one battery, but the specifications say that the pickups can be used with 9-27 volts. So obviously one fine day somebody had the idea to run his EMG's with 18 volts and he was blown away by the result, the net is full of reviews that say the sound opens up, is not as compressed anymore, you get more high end, more low end, more overall sound... So much for the theory.
Today I put together a little adapter that can connect two 9 volt batteries to my guitar and like this I ran the EMG's with 18 volts (all reviews say that adding a third battery, blowing the voltage up to 27 volt, doesn't really do much to the sound anymore, so I only focused on the 18 volt version). I recorded two little takes with the normal 9 volt setting, and then recorded the same stuff again with 18 volts, so you can see (or hear) about the difference yourself. About my impression... well, it changes the sound, yes. The clean sound really opens up a bit and is not as compressed, for the heavy sound I can't really see this effect happening. It also adds more high end, I didn't really hear more low end though, the overall volume doesn't really change either. I have to say that I didn't really like the 18 volt version, I definitely prefer the "original" with 9 volt, in my opinion it sounds warmer, the 18 volt make the sound more sterile for my taste. But as I said, there are the 4 recorded files so you can get an idea yourself, of course the only thing that changed for the recordings is the voltage, the sound settings in my guitar rig were the same. Let me know what you think about the 18 volt version, I will go back to 9 volt now