Cody Perrin

The Quest for TONE:

Every guitar player should have a unending journey to figure out the perfect tone. If you don’t, then you probably should. Tone can make all the difference in your sound, meaning that bad tone can make however cool a part you are playing, sound aweful. Now, I am not a tone master or anything but I have learned many things about tone from both guitarists and sound guys. Here are a couple of tips regarding pedals and amps. 

1. A buffer is always a good place to start. If someone has a particularly long pedal chain, then their signal, no matter how expensive the cables or how many true by passed boxes they have, will be negatively effected. A buffer is a good way of returning one’s original sound to the amp. Two main buffers are neat, nice, and pretty inexpensive. The little black box from JHS and the mini buffer from This1smyne effects. My experience with buffers are to always plug your guitar into them rather than putting them somewhere in your chain or at the end of the chain.

2. Pickups and tone knobs do wonders. I know that many pedals and amp settings get good tone but seriously, if you can pick up the oldschool tricks of using your tone knobs and the buckers on your guitar, you will be able to get some good tone.

3. True bypass strip. Buffers and true bypass strips are sort of the new thing for pedalboards. Not in the sense that they are new, they have been around for a while, but in the sense that everyone is starting to use them. A True bypass strip combined with a buffer can make one’s signal sound uneffected by a long chain of pedals.

4. Compressor: Get a good compressor. Like a studio quality compressor. Put it in the beginning of the your chain unless you want it for some other unique purpose. Compressors can be that pedal that no one really thinks about but that can totally create the tone you want.

5. Don’t buy pedals that have the same circuit set up. I see this all the time. People buying tons of overdrives or distortions because they don’t like the sound of the one they have. However, they don’t realize that the one they replaced it with is run off of the same type of circuit. Conclusion: if you didn’t like the first one, you will not like the second one and it probably is time to check out a pedal with a new circuit. I see this mostly because people see people they want to sound like and try to get either the most popular pedals or the ones that they see the pros use. However, rarely will you see a pro use overdrives or distortions that all have the same circuit board in them

7. Listen to people that have great tone. Since I am in the worship scene, I love guitar players like Taylor Johnson, Daniel Carson, Matt Adkins, Jeffrey Kunde, and of course the “Droff.” All have good tone that is different than anyone else. 

8. Get some things MODDED. Best people are This1smyne effects, JHS pedals, or JHV3. All do amazing mods that will make great pedals even better. 

Anyway hope that helped.