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- Hey everybody. I'm Kenny Greenberg.
I'm a guitarist
and a producer here in Nashville, Tennessee.
And we are in my home studio just outside of Nashville.
And today we're gonna talk about guitars.
Micing up guitars, recording guitars,
and dialing in a sound
and show you guys a few things about getting a sound.
So let's get to it.
The thing that I do,
especially with the Fender amp,
is I plug it in.
I put the volume on three or four,
so I get just a touch of breakup.
'Cause I wanna hear what the amp sounds like pretty clean,
but not too clean.
And then I never put the bass up very high,
especially on Fender amps.
They just seem to sound really good
with the base around three, four, somewhere around there.
And then I adjust the treble to taste.
And right now I've got between six and seven around six.
That's a pretty good place to start.
So anyways here I am,
plugging in for the first time and see what we got.
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The really interesting thing is,
how important the room is that your guitar is in.
And the surfaces that the sound is bouncing off of.
So in this my main room,
I have a lot of speaker cabinets and amplifiers in here.
I have a hard surface for the floor
and it makes the amp feel more alive.
If the only room you have to put your guitar amp in,
is a carpeted room,
what I would recommend doing is,
get a milk crate or a shipping box or something
and get the amp up off the floor.
So the carpet doesn't soak up the sound.
So we've heard the amp clean, semi clean.
Let's hear what it sounds like cranked up a little bit.
And what's really cool about this amp,
is that this is the Tone Master Deluxe Reverb.
And it's got an attenuator in the back,
where you can get the same sound
but you can turn down the level
of what everybody's hearing in the room.
And that's really huge.
Like if you're playing a small club
or you're at a rehearsal
or you're at your church gig
or whatever you do, it's like,
if you can get your sound
and get the breakup and the feeling underneath your fingers
but you're not blowing everybody out.
Which guitar players always do.
This is a great way to not do that and still sound good.
So for instance, I crank the amp up.
Here's what it sounds like all the way.
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Pretty freaking loud.
So now I'm gonna turn it down on the attenuator.
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There's a character and a feeling that you get
from an amplifier when you crank it up.
You just, I mean it's a glorious feeling
and this amp retains that,
when you turn the attenuator down
it still has that sound and that feeling,
but in a reasonable level,
for your friends and neighbors,
probably gonna make a big difference.
If you're living in an apartment and you're recording,
it's just a great way
to get a ballsy, good, Fender Deluxe sound
at a much more reasonable level, which is huge.
So let's talk about Reverb and tremolo.
And I always play with a little bit of Reverb on
and I run my Reverb.
Oh, it's like two and a half.
Just to touch a Reverb.
It just widens the sound.
And gives it just a touch of 3D
and everybody loves the Fender Reverb
and emulates the Fender Reverb.
And there's a reason for it
because it sounds good.
So here's the Reverb on the amp.
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So now it also has tremolo
and tremolo is a really important thing to me.
I love tremolo
because it especially for ballads
and arpeggios it just kinda lets you sort of,
wind your way through the chords.
And it's a really good feeling.
It just sounds good.
I like sort of a medium speed to my tremolo,
if it's too fast.
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Sounds too hectic.
It's too slow.
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It sorta doesn't do that much.
Every once in a while, it's good there
but I like to kind of in the middle.
So I can play like.
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Just sounds great.
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Now let's see what the amp does
with some pedals in front of it
because I have a pedalboard,
like all of us have pedalboards
and we like our various food groups and sounds
that we get from our pedals.
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Naturally, that's no gain.
That is just with a little bit of slap back.
I dig slap back.
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And I had a little bit of my Reverb from the board.
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That's just the amp Reverb.
A little more delay.
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This is the humbucking style guitar.
So it's gonna break up a little bit more on its own,
but I like distortion.
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Some amps take pedals better than other amps.
When an amp doesn't take pedals well,
it gets square wave
and not musical sounding.
When it takes pedals well,
it kinda compresses the sound
and it makes it feel like honey underneath your fingers.
And that's what we all want.
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Little bit more.
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I think this amp takes pedals really, really well.
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The thing that I'm always looking for,
is I'm not thinking about my gear
or what I'm playing through.
As soon as I do that I'm screwed.
I mean, if I can stop thinking and just play
and that's usually when all my pedals are working,
and the amps and the pedals are working together well.
I can just do what I need to do
and not think about it.
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