**** 1.17.15 - Topic Of the Day... Sustain and Compression Sustain and compression are essential parts of electric guitar tones. My feelings about these sonic components have changed over the years. Heres where Im at now... Much less of both! This is my opinion for tones that I like and my taste at this moment. Tube amps naturally compress. This is a sonic quality of all tube guitar amps. Solid state transistors barely compress but Ive heard some pretty close tones with processors in logic and others. Usually, when the sound wave compresses, you gain sustain. Runs are smoother and notes and chords ring out much longer. Compression evens out the highs and lows volume-wise. It can tighten bass frequency. It is an essential and desired effect recorded vocals. Compression and sustain are many of the qualities that metal shredders go for. Country shredders like clean amps with lots of compression. Compressors are loved by electric guitarist the world over. But it comes at a price. Dynamics. Think of early AC/DC guitar tones. TNT, If You Want Blood and Highway To Hell, are some fine examples. These tones arent very compressed nor do they sustain well. To solo with them you have to work at it. Nothing comes easy. Angus to me is extremely underrated. Back In Black and For Those About To Rock have brutal guitar tones and playing on both and are dynamic mixes. They jump out of the speakers. The louder you play them, the better they sound. These tones are a great starting point for any rock guitar player. Anyway, my ideal compression lets my notes fade out naturally. The volume drop, as the note comes to an end, is big for me. Many players struggle with these sort of tones but what you lose in smoothness you gain in presence. Keith Richards comes to mind as well for these sort of tones. My electric sound is always trying to mimic the natural sustain of an acoustic. No more, no less. This works for me. I was thinking about this because of that little vibrochamp and what they do so well as an amp. Food for thought... Happy Saturday.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 03:06:15 +0000
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