Guitar Amps

So, you’ve finally assembled the pedalboard of your dreams. Your tone and settings are dialed in, and you’re ready to take it onstage. However, before you do, you need to find the best way to power everything up. Fortunately, in this day and age, there are suitable pedal powering options for nearly every budget and pedalboard configuration. This article will explore the main choices and help you find which solution is best for your setup.

If you only have a few pedals and aren’t gigging too heavily, a simple...

The quest for tone can take you to many places, and when it comes to overdrive, the ideal tone may reside in a specific pedal, amp, or a combination of both. Experimentation is key, as is knowing the limitations of your equipment.

Many guitarists set their amp for a clean tone and use a pedal of choice to send the clean channel into overdrive. This simple, practical setup lets you kick on the grit of your choice when the song calls for it. This method lets you use your amp as a clean palette to sculpt your overdrive tone. While straightforward, this setup is not without its setbacks. Your clean channel and overdrive will share the same EQ settings, which may not be a big deal if your pedal has its own EQ controls. However, many popular overdrive pedals do not feature the same EQ versatility as amps (for instance, they may have only gain, volume, and tone controls) so the overall tweak ability between clean and dirty is somewhat limited. If you like the baked-in tone of the pedal a lot, then this setup may work well for you.  In many multiple channel amplifiers the clean channel and the lead or dirty channel have very different gain stages, internal tone shaping and even EQ control circuits to produce the intended clean or dirty tone.  Instead of driving your clean channel with your pedals, try using your dirty channel with the gain set a little lower.  This will give you the better tone shaping and EQ controls for dirty sounds and a little more headroom to handle your pedal for more dynamics.  Often pedals are tried with the same settings you would use to get the same level of dirty tone without the pedal and adding the unit creates mud, so you switch to the clean channel.  Turn down your gain a little and try it again.  Then you still have a clean channel to use and EQ for clean playing. The added bonus is a third slightly lower distortion with your dirty channel only.

Another popular way to achieve a rich, gritty overdrive is to crank the overdrive channel of a tube amp. This really gets your tubes working, which results in what many consider to be a more organic, dynamic distortion than what pedals can provide. However, many tube amps, especially high wattage amps, require more volume to reach the desired level of saturation than is practical. For this reason, many amps, like the Carvin Audio V3, have switchable wattage, so you can get a crunchy tone at a much lower volume.

Most modern dense distortion sounds are pre master preamp gain distortions.  With pedals, these overdrives are not as smooth as an amp that is designed to be a hi-gain amp. This smoothness is usually from the high voltages and signal swing of the amplifiers as opposed to the pedal creating more dynamic and tone in the signal.  Here you just have to try different combinations. Again lowering the input gain on the amp a little and using the pedal for the solo sustain edge can create more dynamics.  The Carvin Audio V3, V3m and Legacy have two lead channels that are identical, so you can create a rhythm tone and a high gain and sustaining lead tone to switch between.

Legacy 3 100W 3 Channel All Tube Head 

Side note:  Remember when playing in the band you are just one of the instruments putting out sound. If you tweak your tone at home alone, you maybe unknowingly also filling for the rest of the band.  A good solid tone needs to cut through the band, but it also needs to let the other sounds of the band be heard. With loads of distortion you will be a small non-distinctive buzz in the overall sound of the band, and with really fat low and high tone you will sonically fight with the rest of the band.

In many cases, it may be the exclusive use of a particular tube amp or pedal that will get you the perfect overdriven guitar sound that’s in your head. Killer tone can be the result of combining an amplifier’s natural tube breakup with a hot signal from an overdrive or distortion pedal, which can also act as a preamp or clean boost to further push and shape the overall tone. There are many shades in between clean and dirt to be explored. Feel free to take your time and experiment with all the different options available. If it sounds good to you, it is good!

No matter how good you are at your instrument, your playing will still sound bad if you're out of tune. It goes without saying that investing in a quality guitar tuner is essential to sounding your best.

Knowing how to intonate your instrument is an essential part of setting it up to play optimally. Intonation is basically how well your guitar stays in tune with itself across the length of the fretboard. If all your strings are tuned correctly, but notes or chords played higher up on the fretboard sound off pitch, then you definitely need to adjust your intonation. Fret not- it’s a fairly simple process that this guide will walk you through step by step!

There are thousands of effects pedals on the market today to choose from to sculpt your tone, and within that myriad of choices lies another one: buffered vs. true bypass. Ask a group of guitarists what their preference is, and you’ll likely get a bunch of responses favoring either one. This article will introduce the basic science behind buffered and true bypass pedals.

An important decision you may have to make when considering a new guitar amp is whether you want a rackmount setup or a traditional guitar amplifier head or combo. You probably know the drill with guitar heads and combos (if not, catch up on your reading by clicking here).

Keeping your band’s onstage setup organized will not only make you look professional, but it can also help every band member focus on playing their best. Just like how a messy desk can reduce productivity and efficiency for an office worker, a messy stage can seriously throw a wrench into your band’s machine!

Today’s gigging musician will play in a wide variety of venues: small bars, clubs, outdoor stages, and so much more! As such, it is important to have a rig that is suitable for a range of venues and performing situations. Conventional wisdom says it’s better to get way more amp than you need to make sure you have enough juice for any situation. You can always turn down, right? That usually is not true, because the tone and dynamics change on guitar amps when turned up or down. It is also financially wiser to purchase a rig for the long haul, with the power and tone that you won’t grow out of anytime soon. That’s in a perfect world at least- in the real world, if your band is playing the local bar circuit or going on your first tour, you are going to be responsible for moving your rig around and setting it up onstage, so having a huge, powerful rig isn’t always the best way to go. Having a modular rig is highly beneficial for players seeking the easiest setup and best sound at every gig, no matter where it may be!

Even the most experienced musicians forget essential parts of their rig from time to time. A drummer I know forgot his drum sticks at an out of town gig, and I myself have showed up to play at a local show having forgotten to bring my bass amp head (I had to use a DI that night)! It’s something that happens to the best of us. Fortunately, if there are other bands on the lineup or a helpful soundman, they may be obliged to help you out lending you the item you forgot, especially if it is something like a cable.

Many tube guitar amplifiers on the market today come with a feature that can either switch or vary the maximum power output of the amplifier section. Simply put, this allows you to adjust the maximum output of the amplifier, making it higher or lower at the flick of the switch. If you have a tube amp with a lot of clean headroom and plenty of power for any gig, you may be wondering why you can’t just use the volume knob to get it to the level you want.

Watch The Tone King's outdoor demo and review of Carvin Audio's VX Series Birch Guitar Cabinets. He demos both the VX212S Slant 2 x 12 cabinet and the VX112 cabinet with a Carvin Audio V3M 50W Tube Amp, and explains the features and benefits of the VX Series and the different tuning options. Watch both videos below. Project the passion of your music with a USA Built VX Series Birch Guitar Cab.

A good solid footswitch is the unsung hero of a guitar or bass rig. While it may not be part of the glamorous backdrop of glowing power tubes and pilot lights upstage, adding a footswitch to your rig will help you take full advantage of the versatility of your Carvin Audio amplifier.