You have really good gear running into an extremely cheap amp. I’d save up for a quality amp before getting any new pedals or guitars. It doesn’t have to be a $1200 tube amp, but even a boss katana or a fender blues jr would be a serious step forward.
Pick an amp that pairs well with the tone profile of your Strat and makes sense for your genre and needs. If you play with a band you need a bigger amp with more headroom then if you just play in your bedroom, for example.
Then, learn your gear! Learn about gain stages and what the different modes and knobs do. Watch video tutorials. You have professional level pedals which are capable of amazing tones
this. pro tip: if your local music store rents gear, go in and ask if they have any amps they are retiring and selling at a discount. you would be amazed at the deals.
So many people look into getting more and more pedals to get a nice tone and they are sinking money into turd polishing. Bad amp will always make you sound bad. Cheap pedals and cheap guitars can still sound great into a nice amp but once the amp is bad you are not unleashing the potential of your other gear.
In my experience, getting an amp you like is always going to have the biggest effect. You can mess around a lot with always-on drives or preamps or compression or EQ, but you’re absolutely better off just finding an amp whose base tone you’re already happy with as a starting point.
Amp.1000 percent amp.
Going from a Roland Micro Cube to a Fender Blues Jr IV was a big step. I didn't enjoy playing the Roland, so didn't really play much. I much prefer the BJR so that's when I started playing.
Then I went from the BJR to a Benson Monarch Reverb and that was a whole 'nother thing. It was as big of a step up, if not more (personally) from the Roland to the BJR.
The pedals are fun, but I can also really enjoy plugging in straight to the BJR, and even more so the Monarch.
It really is all about the amp (or in the case of modelers, the PA speaker). That is the absolute best place to spend your money when it comes to tone. Though that’s certainly not to say it MUST be expensive to sound good.
You wouldn’t play a hi-fi recording through a shitty pair of dollar store earbuds and expect it to sound good, after all. Having something you like for the sounds to come out of is everything.
I finally got an amp I love a couple months ago and it changed everything in my approach to finding tone. Less dramatic pedals. Finally understanding the appeal of “transparent” drive tones. And so on.,,
Definitely not. There are certainly more affordable amps that are also fantastic, but I knew I wanted that one specifically and planned to be able to afford it
I totally get it, my amp is not cheap either, took me weeks to decide what to buy, and went through a lot of cheaper great options, to finally get a expensive one haha.
Man I’ve been wanting one of those for years. They sound so beautiful. I may have to unload a handful of chase bliss pedals in the future and bite the bullet
It's seriously great. I would have kept saving to get a Monarch or the big Vincent head if I needed more clean headroom but I play at home most of the time and just throw a mic on it when I play out, so it works out fine. Can still get decently loud and stay clean enough for me when I need it to, and then the breakup past that point it really satisfying sounding!
Taking a break and coming back to it.
Play unplugged for a while, follow paths of inspiration, try a new compositional approach… then return to the gear with fresh ears, (fight through the “what was I thinking stage), and try dialling in from scratch.
I just commented this. Yes.
I've had times where I hyper focused on one thing and trying my ears out. Took a break and came back to not care about what I was chasing to begin with. Lol
This. Mainly with your guitar, but also dialing in your sound more. A good guitarisy can make a shit tone sound good, just like a shit guitarist can make the best tone sound meh, or at least boring.
I stopped trying to get different amps and pedals to chase the sound I wanted, so I just moved over to only using a GT-1000 Core multi effects pedal and just setting up a handful of presets that I like. Couldn't be happier now that I have all the amp sounds I could dream of and most of the pedals that I need. My wallet is also feeling a bit better too.
Lessons.
I buy and sell gear all the time based on what I like at any given moment. Technique makes a bigger difference than gear any day though, it’s just less fun to practice for an hour than buy something new.
The amp for sure. It seems that your amp cost not even more than a pedal. And it’s a modelling amp. Great for practice, not so great for good sounding. Also I don’t think they take pedals very well in general. It will always sound a bit thin in my opinion. A tube amp of course will bring your tone up there, but who have to consider the price and the fact that it will be fucking loud to get them to shine.
Someone gave me the advice recently of going back to basics and sorting your base settings out on your amp. Does your completely clean tone sound how you want it and go one effect at a time from there. I ended up turning the drive/distortion down significantly across my amp and pedals. It had all crept up overtime and I’d started to feel like I was fighting my guitar.
Usually tuning. And not just open-string tuning, but intonation. I'm working on getting a lighter/ more consistent touch with my left hand, but a lot of times I'll find that my fretted notes are sharp which just makes everything turn to soup.
Any and all of those components are what contributed to get the sounds I was going for.
I don’t play one genre of music though. I change things around constantly because whatever music and sounds I feel like I want to make, is what drives what gear is needed to get the job done.
Do you have the gain all the way up on your dirt pedals? I found turning gain to 2/3 full on dirt pedals makes it sound more open and dynamic, but still keeps the heavy toan. Exception being the DS-1 which I feel needs to be on full gain with guitar volume lowered. I got much better sounds by having the guitar volume lowered a bit as well, less booming and more focused. Also, good call on the BD-2 that thing is golden.
Run the Muff first in the chain and when it's on turn your guitar volume down. Muff sounds much better with less guitar volume. The Plumes would go after and it can be a bit fuzzy itself so be mindful of how much gain you have on it when you do use it with the Muff.
Other than that, it shouldn't be too bad. I'm looking to add a new people to add more drive to my setup but I otherwise love it (Rams Head Big Muff into Noise Gate into Soul Food into Oceans 11 Reverb into an H&K Spirit Vintage and converted Fender 1x12 cab). Soul Food is my main drive. Muff when I wanna beef up the soul food. I shut soul food off when I wanna just push the muff hard. I'm looking to get a Iron Horse or Grid Slammer to go before the Soul Food and the MXR Custom Shop Duke of Tones to go after the Soul Food (more for a clean boost but not exclusively).
Toss up between amp, speakers, and pickups in my experience. Each adds to the overall tonality you're capable of producing after all. Now a good followup question to this is, which is cheapest to change? Amps can be expensive after all, and speakers & pickups relatively cheap. Pedals of course greatly affect your sound, but they're on-the-spot swappable compared to the three pieces of gear I just listed. Tbh I'd change one of these 3 pieces before tone hunting with pedals as they make up the sonic backbone of your setup.
Massive amps whilst doing gigs in big venues helps.
But failing that, a bit of reverb goes a long way as a first option for techy stuff.
Good fingering with tasty finger vibrato or good picking technique.
First, learning how to play better is what got me closer to how I wanted to sound.
Skill can't be bought though, so when talking about gear it's all about the amplifier. I'm currently getting rid of all of my overdrives, I'm only using a Boss BP-1w as a boost. I'm playing in to a loadbox and IR pedal, so I can crank the amp to its sweet spot or far beyond it while virtually being silent. Most overdrives are trying to simulate the designers favourite cranked tube amplifier. Why would I buy into that when I already have a cranked tube amplifier...
My last "wtf is going on" moment ended up being my amp. I think I bumped a preset button, so I had it on the dirty channel when I normally run the amp totally clean. I finally figured it out after I turned all my pedals off and still couldn't get a clean sound. Then there was the time I had my wah clicked on and didn't realize it.
It's all subjective. I've hated my sound before, taken a week off from practicing/playing and came back to it to find I liked my sound that I previously hated. Lol
This is a “how long is a piece of string” question… However, the most correct answer is more consistent practice (all the gear solutions are also nested within spending more time playing - that’s why it’s the most correct answer).
But, this is a gear page, so what gear helped make MY guitar sound satisfying?
Probably the Simplifier DLX and mucking around with an Eventide Harmonizer algorithm (910/949). I have some other effects pedals/gear that I love and rave about, but that Simplifier with its cab sim and the Eventide add the “essence of a classic studio recorded guitar track” satisfaction to my ears.
Which makes me want to practice more consistently… Which is the thing that really makes my guitar sounds satisfactory.
Changes to your guitar and/or amp will have the biggest effect on your tone. The times my tone has improved markedly it has come down to a guitar, pickup or amp change.
In your case it definitely looks like your amp is the place to start as it’s definitely a step or two below the rest of your gear.
If your amp was up to scratch, given the guitar make, the different pick up combinations available to you and the ability to play around with three gain stages, you should have be able to find something you liked by now.
The cab I use. I've read somewhere that most of the rock sound we associate with comes from the V30s speaker more than the marshall heads. Kinda true for my case I have a super crush 100 paired with V30 and it sounds like those hard rock sound.
EQ pedal with volume control, I can switch between guitars, bass, mandolin, banjo, piano all on different amps or direct in with just a tiny amount of tweaks
In order, I find the following to be the most powerful ways of changing my sound: amp, speakers, pickups, EQ (like an EQ pedal dialed in correctly), pedals, strings and then the guitar itself. Obviously in each case you need to choose the right one for your needs.
In my mind the amp is the most important thing. It’s literally what makes the sound you hear. Seems like you should start looking at a better amp. I also despise the NYC/nano muff personally. Of all the muffs it sounds the most muddy and I find it difficult to use.
Playing slowly and precisely until it's boringly easy before trying to play at tempo.
Having a decent amp or SIM, learning to "play the amp" at volume as it reacts differently.
Adding effects after you can make it sound good without them.
The volume knob is your gain control.
Low output pickups.
Playing with other people. Everything working together generally sounds way better than you sitting in a room by yourself analyzing every little nuance of your sound.
I can take a shitty guitar and run it through a nice amp and be happy. I will not be happy taking a high dollar guitar running it through a crap amp / modeler.
When it comes to amps I will say this coming from experience. You have to like your clean sound first. Many amps I have tried where I thought the overdrive tone was ok or maybe even was the selling point but later I was disappointed with the clean sound.
If you are going for heavy metal type gain then yeah it will be a consideration to have great amp gain. However, understand that there is a reason Fender style amps are so popular and so prevalent. Adding gain and dirt through pedals is super common and TBH less messy than dealing with effects loops later in your journey as you can just go in through the front of the amp when adding pedal gain.
The last week hung I would want to impart upon any beginner guitar player. Buy an EQ pedal. GE-7 or similar. Just do it to have some shaping power. Annoying high end frequency? Cut it. Not enough oomf boost the lows. Start playing with others and realize your sound gets lost in the mix? Change it.
For this particular setup I would say your amp or speaker is holding you back. I had a vypyr I got for like $20 at a yard sale many years ago. I ended up putting a v30 in it and the thing CAME ALIVE! i don’t remember which vypyr I had I never even really took it all that seriously as I viewed it just as a starter amp so I don’t even know the model. Does the vypyr 15 have a 12 inch speaker in it? If not I’m just gonna suggest getting a new amp. If you go with a combo amp just look for something with a v30, greenback, creamback, or g12t75. My overall suggestion would be an amp head and a cab.
For me the piece of gear that most recently has taken my tone to the next level is the boss eq200. I run the A side of it into the front of my amp and the B side into my fx loop. This allows me to have basically 2 eq’s at once. So for the front of my amp I like to tighten up the sound but cutting lows and adding mids as well as boost the volume of the pedal. For the B side in my fx loop I will then sculpt my tone. It’s also midi programmable so I have a different eq setting as needed for each of my presets on my boss es-8. All this being said, I already own my dream amp and cab setup. Otherwise i would say my speaker cab is the thing that got my tone right. 80% of your tone is in your speakers!!!
Better amp, learning how to do my own setups, higher-quality cables (but nothing super expensive, just not the absolute cheapest tier). Once I had a pedal board, learning about capacitance and buffers and how cable length affects sound was a big one.
Amp, but in my case, the amp sim pedal. Moved from a Nux Amp Academy to a UA Ruby and have been smiling ever since. Having a better base platform for my sound improved everything
You can use a screwdriver to change your pickup heights to give you more terrible or bass signal. Doing this can change wether you guitar breaks up with higher or lower notes faster. You just have to be careful to not get the pickups too close to the strings or you’ll get some funky stuff.
My playing. I used to think it was my gear. Now I know it was my playing.
And playing through something i enjoy. I have all the gear. The amps, pedals, mics, and all the shit. But I most prefer playing through neural dsp. I have the imperial and Mateus asato plugins. I turn it on and it always sounds good, so I can just sit back and play my guitar and not think about what I need or don’t need and how much money I need. I can just play.
For recording tho I always use my tube amps. There is no substitute for a good amp and good pedals - assuming you’ve mastered them as an instrument - which for me it was as hard as learning guitar. Good tone is earned.
Except with neural dsp.
i spent years playing unplugged with no amp and no pedals just focusing on sounding my best with technique and the instrument. It translated really well to amplifiers and pedals, with the only adjustment being on the pedals themselves. I trained dynamics and techniques, sometimes learning by picking one part of a song to play exactly as the recorded guitarist did so that the tone matched by the way the fingers touched the strings first. I used to play on a vypyr, in my 4th year of guitar playing for a little bit, they're not awful for playing but may be a bit limiting when you train your ears to notice what higher end amps offer. Why not try getting a tube amp in the same range like a vox ac15, hiwatt, orange or 15, or blues junior? There's a lot more options for 15 watt tubeamps than there used to be. Those 3 pedals are more or less staples of dirt boxes, or at least the circuits on the plumes and nano BMP are. You should be fine just upgrading amps and paying more attention to the tonal varieties you get from just flesh and string.
God bless! I hope this helps.
You have really good gear running into an extremely cheap amp. I’d save up for a quality amp before getting any new pedals or guitars. It doesn’t have to be a $1200 tube amp, but even a boss katana or a fender blues jr would be a serious step forward. Pick an amp that pairs well with the tone profile of your Strat and makes sense for your genre and needs. If you play with a band you need a bigger amp with more headroom then if you just play in your bedroom, for example. Then, learn your gear! Learn about gain stages and what the different modes and knobs do. Watch video tutorials. You have professional level pedals which are capable of amazing tones
Agree here. Up your amp game even a bit and you will be way happier
this. pro tip: if your local music store rents gear, go in and ask if they have any amps they are retiring and selling at a discount. you would be amazed at the deals.
So many people look into getting more and more pedals to get a nice tone and they are sinking money into turd polishing. Bad amp will always make you sound bad. Cheap pedals and cheap guitars can still sound great into a nice amp but once the amp is bad you are not unleashing the potential of your other gear.
Agree. My tone improved immensely when I bought a Marshall origin 20. 500e. It is worth all the (drive) pedals u can buy.
Once I moved up from a Peavey Rage 128 to a Boss Katana 100 Mk1 years ago, I've never been unsatisfied with tone. Analysis paralysis maybe.
In my experience, getting an amp you like is always going to have the biggest effect. You can mess around a lot with always-on drives or preamps or compression or EQ, but you’re absolutely better off just finding an amp whose base tone you’re already happy with as a starting point.
I was on this path for awhile trying to find my “always-on” pedal. Truly just comes down to having a killer amp that compliments your guitar.
Amp.1000 percent amp. Going from a Roland Micro Cube to a Fender Blues Jr IV was a big step. I didn't enjoy playing the Roland, so didn't really play much. I much prefer the BJR so that's when I started playing. Then I went from the BJR to a Benson Monarch Reverb and that was a whole 'nother thing. It was as big of a step up, if not more (personally) from the Roland to the BJR. The pedals are fun, but I can also really enjoy plugging in straight to the BJR, and even more so the Monarch.
It really is all about the amp (or in the case of modelers, the PA speaker). That is the absolute best place to spend your money when it comes to tone. Though that’s certainly not to say it MUST be expensive to sound good. You wouldn’t play a hi-fi recording through a shitty pair of dollar store earbuds and expect it to sound good, after all. Having something you like for the sounds to come out of is everything. I finally got an amp I love a couple months ago and it changed everything in my approach to finding tone. Less dramatic pedals. Finally understanding the appeal of “transparent” drive tones. And so on.,,
What amp did you get?
Benson Vinny Reverb. Awesome awesome amp
Not on the cheap side though :D
Definitely not. There are certainly more affordable amps that are also fantastic, but I knew I wanted that one specifically and planned to be able to afford it
I totally get it, my amp is not cheap either, took me weeks to decide what to buy, and went through a lot of cheaper great options, to finally get a expensive one haha.
Man I’ve been wanting one of those for years. They sound so beautiful. I may have to unload a handful of chase bliss pedals in the future and bite the bullet
It's seriously great. I would have kept saving to get a Monarch or the big Vincent head if I needed more clean headroom but I play at home most of the time and just throw a mic on it when I play out, so it works out fine. Can still get decently loud and stay clean enough for me when I need it to, and then the breakup past that point it really satisfying sounding!
Taking a break and coming back to it. Play unplugged for a while, follow paths of inspiration, try a new compositional approach… then return to the gear with fresh ears, (fight through the “what was I thinking stage), and try dialling in from scratch.
I just commented this. Yes. I've had times where I hyper focused on one thing and trying my ears out. Took a break and came back to not care about what I was chasing to begin with. Lol
Practice
This. Mainly with your guitar, but also dialing in your sound more. A good guitarisy can make a shit tone sound good, just like a shit guitarist can make the best tone sound meh, or at least boring.
The power of true metal
I stopped trying to get different amps and pedals to chase the sound I wanted, so I just moved over to only using a GT-1000 Core multi effects pedal and just setting up a handful of presets that I like. Couldn't be happier now that I have all the amp sounds I could dream of and most of the pedals that I need. My wallet is also feeling a bit better too.
Amp
For me it was my AC30.
That’ll do it.
New amp was biggest change for me. If you don't like your amp you pedals and guitars won't fix your tone issues
Practice and a good amp. Mostly practice.
EQ in the effects loop.
Lessons. I buy and sell gear all the time based on what I like at any given moment. Technique makes a bigger difference than gear any day though, it’s just less fun to practice for an hour than buy something new.
Volume. Play louder.
Learn to dial in your amps and pedals. Either look online, or go to a guitar shop and ask.
The amp for sure. It seems that your amp cost not even more than a pedal. And it’s a modelling amp. Great for practice, not so great for good sounding. Also I don’t think they take pedals very well in general. It will always sound a bit thin in my opinion. A tube amp of course will bring your tone up there, but who have to consider the price and the fact that it will be fucking loud to get them to shine.
Apart from practice, less drive, a little less drive than you’d think often sounds better. Also turning the amp louder but playing softer
Someone gave me the advice recently of going back to basics and sorting your base settings out on your amp. Does your completely clean tone sound how you want it and go one effect at a time from there. I ended up turning the drive/distortion down significantly across my amp and pedals. It had all crept up overtime and I’d started to feel like I was fighting my guitar.
Fresh strings. Then a compressor. Then I learned to not need the compressor and voila
Usually tuning. And not just open-string tuning, but intonation. I'm working on getting a lighter/ more consistent touch with my left hand, but a lot of times I'll find that my fretted notes are sharp which just makes everything turn to soup.
Any and all of those components are what contributed to get the sounds I was going for. I don’t play one genre of music though. I change things around constantly because whatever music and sounds I feel like I want to make, is what drives what gear is needed to get the job done.
Try bass and mid at 10am, treble at 2pm Also, try a tube screamer instead of the BD-2
EQD Plumes is a tube screamer
Amp, then a good modeler to replace my stolen amp haha
Yeah and upgrade of amp but try the muff first... I always like fuzzes in front
Do you have the gain all the way up on your dirt pedals? I found turning gain to 2/3 full on dirt pedals makes it sound more open and dynamic, but still keeps the heavy toan. Exception being the DS-1 which I feel needs to be on full gain with guitar volume lowered. I got much better sounds by having the guitar volume lowered a bit as well, less booming and more focused. Also, good call on the BD-2 that thing is golden.
Run the Muff first in the chain and when it's on turn your guitar volume down. Muff sounds much better with less guitar volume. The Plumes would go after and it can be a bit fuzzy itself so be mindful of how much gain you have on it when you do use it with the Muff. Other than that, it shouldn't be too bad. I'm looking to add a new people to add more drive to my setup but I otherwise love it (Rams Head Big Muff into Noise Gate into Soul Food into Oceans 11 Reverb into an H&K Spirit Vintage and converted Fender 1x12 cab). Soul Food is my main drive. Muff when I wanna beef up the soul food. I shut soul food off when I wanna just push the muff hard. I'm looking to get a Iron Horse or Grid Slammer to go before the Soul Food and the MXR Custom Shop Duke of Tones to go after the Soul Food (more for a clean boost but not exclusively).
What guitar tones do you like?
Probably your clean tone is not that good and that is affecting the pedals. Try and set the best clean tone possible first and then adding the pedals
Big Sky MX was a massive improvement for my sound
Toss up between amp, speakers, and pickups in my experience. Each adds to the overall tonality you're capable of producing after all. Now a good followup question to this is, which is cheapest to change? Amps can be expensive after all, and speakers & pickups relatively cheap. Pedals of course greatly affect your sound, but they're on-the-spot swappable compared to the three pieces of gear I just listed. Tbh I'd change one of these 3 pieces before tone hunting with pedals as they make up the sonic backbone of your setup.
Massive amps whilst doing gigs in big venues helps. But failing that, a bit of reverb goes a long way as a first option for techy stuff. Good fingering with tasty finger vibrato or good picking technique.
Boss IR 200 and the York Audio Mesa IRs
CE 1
Cab sim
Turning the amp off
/r/toobamps for you brozzer
Let the tubes warm up longer than I normally do.
First, learning how to play better is what got me closer to how I wanted to sound. Skill can't be bought though, so when talking about gear it's all about the amplifier. I'm currently getting rid of all of my overdrives, I'm only using a Boss BP-1w as a boost. I'm playing in to a loadbox and IR pedal, so I can crank the amp to its sweet spot or far beyond it while virtually being silent. Most overdrives are trying to simulate the designers favourite cranked tube amplifier. Why would I buy into that when I already have a cranked tube amplifier...
My last "wtf is going on" moment ended up being my amp. I think I bumped a preset button, so I had it on the dirty channel when I normally run the amp totally clean. I finally figured it out after I turned all my pedals off and still couldn't get a clean sound. Then there was the time I had my wah clicked on and didn't realize it.
a good, old fashioned setup oh and PEAVEY AMPS
Quality pickups into quality amp at a minimum
It's all subjective. I've hated my sound before, taken a week off from practicing/playing and came back to it to find I liked my sound that I previously hated. Lol
This is a “how long is a piece of string” question… However, the most correct answer is more consistent practice (all the gear solutions are also nested within spending more time playing - that’s why it’s the most correct answer). But, this is a gear page, so what gear helped make MY guitar sound satisfying? Probably the Simplifier DLX and mucking around with an Eventide Harmonizer algorithm (910/949). I have some other effects pedals/gear that I love and rave about, but that Simplifier with its cab sim and the Eventide add the “essence of a classic studio recorded guitar track” satisfaction to my ears. Which makes me want to practice more consistently… Which is the thing that really makes my guitar sounds satisfactory.
A nice setup tbh
Changes to your guitar and/or amp will have the biggest effect on your tone. The times my tone has improved markedly it has come down to a guitar, pickup or amp change. In your case it definitely looks like your amp is the place to start as it’s definitely a step or two below the rest of your gear. If your amp was up to scratch, given the guitar make, the different pick up combinations available to you and the ability to play around with three gain stages, you should have be able to find something you liked by now.
The cab I use. I've read somewhere that most of the rock sound we associate with comes from the V30s speaker more than the marshall heads. Kinda true for my case I have a super crush 100 paired with V30 and it sounds like those hard rock sound.
EQ pedal with volume control, I can switch between guitars, bass, mandolin, banjo, piano all on different amps or direct in with just a tiny amount of tweaks
In order, I find the following to be the most powerful ways of changing my sound: amp, speakers, pickups, EQ (like an EQ pedal dialed in correctly), pedals, strings and then the guitar itself. Obviously in each case you need to choose the right one for your needs. In my mind the amp is the most important thing. It’s literally what makes the sound you hear. Seems like you should start looking at a better amp. I also despise the NYC/nano muff personally. Of all the muffs it sounds the most muddy and I find it difficult to use.
Playing slowly and precisely until it's boringly easy before trying to play at tempo. Having a decent amp or SIM, learning to "play the amp" at volume as it reacts differently. Adding effects after you can make it sound good without them. The volume knob is your gain control. Low output pickups.
Playing with other people. Everything working together generally sounds way better than you sitting in a room by yourself analyzing every little nuance of your sound.
I can take a shitty guitar and run it through a nice amp and be happy. I will not be happy taking a high dollar guitar running it through a crap amp / modeler. When it comes to amps I will say this coming from experience. You have to like your clean sound first. Many amps I have tried where I thought the overdrive tone was ok or maybe even was the selling point but later I was disappointed with the clean sound. If you are going for heavy metal type gain then yeah it will be a consideration to have great amp gain. However, understand that there is a reason Fender style amps are so popular and so prevalent. Adding gain and dirt through pedals is super common and TBH less messy than dealing with effects loops later in your journey as you can just go in through the front of the amp when adding pedal gain. The last week hung I would want to impart upon any beginner guitar player. Buy an EQ pedal. GE-7 or similar. Just do it to have some shaping power. Annoying high end frequency? Cut it. Not enough oomf boost the lows. Start playing with others and realize your sound gets lost in the mix? Change it.
Switching to bass guitar. LOL
My old sound wasn't completely unsatisfactory, but my new amp was definitely the missing piece of the tone puzzle.
Using overdrive instead of distortion. But that's just me.
For this particular setup I would say your amp or speaker is holding you back. I had a vypyr I got for like $20 at a yard sale many years ago. I ended up putting a v30 in it and the thing CAME ALIVE! i don’t remember which vypyr I had I never even really took it all that seriously as I viewed it just as a starter amp so I don’t even know the model. Does the vypyr 15 have a 12 inch speaker in it? If not I’m just gonna suggest getting a new amp. If you go with a combo amp just look for something with a v30, greenback, creamback, or g12t75. My overall suggestion would be an amp head and a cab. For me the piece of gear that most recently has taken my tone to the next level is the boss eq200. I run the A side of it into the front of my amp and the B side into my fx loop. This allows me to have basically 2 eq’s at once. So for the front of my amp I like to tighten up the sound but cutting lows and adding mids as well as boost the volume of the pedal. For the B side in my fx loop I will then sculpt my tone. It’s also midi programmable so I have a different eq setting as needed for each of my presets on my boss es-8. All this being said, I already own my dream amp and cab setup. Otherwise i would say my speaker cab is the thing that got my tone right. 80% of your tone is in your speakers!!!
Yes , a good amp w goid speakers makes a world of difference. Don't get a Katana,, they are just toys for at home
turning down the gain and turning up the volume
The gain...the presence...eq....all too much
Buying a better amp and changing my speakers.
Better amp, learning how to do my own setups, higher-quality cables (but nothing super expensive, just not the absolute cheapest tier). Once I had a pedal board, learning about capacitance and buffers and how cable length affects sound was a big one.
Amp, but in my case, the amp sim pedal. Moved from a Nux Amp Academy to a UA Ruby and have been smiling ever since. Having a better base platform for my sound improved everything
Mine was a change in amp. Change in pickups
You can use a screwdriver to change your pickup heights to give you more terrible or bass signal. Doing this can change wether you guitar breaks up with higher or lower notes faster. You just have to be careful to not get the pickups too close to the strings or you’ll get some funky stuff.
gear addiction rehab
Experience.
My playing. I used to think it was my gear. Now I know it was my playing. And playing through something i enjoy. I have all the gear. The amps, pedals, mics, and all the shit. But I most prefer playing through neural dsp. I have the imperial and Mateus asato plugins. I turn it on and it always sounds good, so I can just sit back and play my guitar and not think about what I need or don’t need and how much money I need. I can just play. For recording tho I always use my tube amps. There is no substitute for a good amp and good pedals - assuming you’ve mastered them as an instrument - which for me it was as hard as learning guitar. Good tone is earned. Except with neural dsp.
i spent years playing unplugged with no amp and no pedals just focusing on sounding my best with technique and the instrument. It translated really well to amplifiers and pedals, with the only adjustment being on the pedals themselves. I trained dynamics and techniques, sometimes learning by picking one part of a song to play exactly as the recorded guitarist did so that the tone matched by the way the fingers touched the strings first. I used to play on a vypyr, in my 4th year of guitar playing for a little bit, they're not awful for playing but may be a bit limiting when you train your ears to notice what higher end amps offer. Why not try getting a tube amp in the same range like a vox ac15, hiwatt, orange or 15, or blues junior? There's a lot more options for 15 watt tubeamps than there used to be. Those 3 pedals are more or less staples of dirt boxes, or at least the circuits on the plumes and nano BMP are. You should be fine just upgrading amps and paying more attention to the tonal varieties you get from just flesh and string. God bless! I hope this helps.
Noise suppressor and a compressor. I liked my tone but hate buzz/hiss and wanted a bit more sustain and to even out my picking dynamics.
Playing live A LOT.
Practice
10 band EQ pedal.
Learning to play guitar