Amp/guitar tones setting

Good Afternoon All,

I am a newbie in my guitar journey, so Please excuse my lack of knowledge in the subject. I’ve been using Justin’s lessons for several weeks now and absolutely loving it. In addition to my lessons, I am working on learning several different songs: (Back in Black) (Sweet Home Alabama) (Werewolves of London) etc. I have an electric guitar and a Yamaha THR 30 amp. My question is this: is there a website, app etc where I can get/find the proper (amp/guitar) settings, for each different song, to make my guitar’s tones/affects sound like those of each song (ie. southern rock, classic, blues etc)?

Many Thanks

Welcome to the community @Sdnewbie

There are a few places around like GuitarPatches and Toneshare.

But I would encourage you, rather than blindly downloading and using patches which claim to make you sound like Muddy Waters or Duane Allman, learn how to dial in the tone you want into your amp yourself. The first part of this is understanding what sort of tone you are looking for.

And before you say “I told you: southern rock, classic blues, etc.” that’s not really the right answer. Each of these genres has a wide range of tones used by different artists and may artists will have more than one tone they use. Plus a given tone is often applicable to other genres, so labelling them can be unhelpful.

The right answer IMO is critical listening to music with tones you want to replicate, and then trying to understand what characteristics those tones have, which then leads to how to dial them into the amp.

Note that, whilst amps like the THR series have a fair amount of bells and whistles in terms of effects and effect options, you can generally ignore these and focus on the core amp tone which is basically: amp model, gain, and EQ.

A few important things to be aware of:

  1. If you go the patch download route, the patches on most websites are often not that great, which is why you will often find dozens of different takes on the same tone.
  2. Whilst the amp is an important part of the tone, you have to take into consideration the guitar being used: a tone setting which works well for a Les Paul may is not going to make you sound like Slash if you are using a Tele. Also, the pickup switch controls and tone controls on the guitar matter.
  3. What you hear on any record is NOT the amp tone. It is the amp tone after being coloured by room acoustics, a microphone, a pre-amp, and any console EQ, plus any mixing and mastering compression, EQ and other manipulation. It’s also in the context of a full mix which sounds totally different from the isolated tone.
  4. The tone you hear on the record is, to a large degree, influenced by how the guitarist plays. It is often said “tone is in the fingers”. You are never going to sound like Duane Allman until you learn to play like Duane Allman did. A lot of people get frustrated with patches or with amps because they can’t get the sound they think they should, and a lot of that is down to playing style/technique.

The bottom line is: don’t try to replicate the sound from specific records too hard. It’s a rabbit hole that you can waste a lot of time and effort on, and develop a lot of frustration.

Learn to use your amp and you should be able to dial a bunch of great tones in yourself.

For classic blues, I would start with the crunch setting. Set all the EQ to 12 O’clock and all of the FX off. Then play around with the gain, as well as the pickup selection on your guitar. If you need something a bit grittier, do the same on the Lead setting.

When you are close, then mess with the EQ a bit. Remember to listen to some reference tracks to get a view of where you are aiming, but also remember you aren’t going to replicate these tones exactly for the reasons I listed above.

If you are going to add FX, then start with some reverb. And then some delay.

Good luck

Cheers,

Keith

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Thank you so much Keith. I do understand what you are saying. Prior to me posting this, i did play around with my guitar/amp settings and found, what I thought, was a fairly nice “Alabama” sound.
Much Appreciated.

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You might find the patches helpful at first to get an understanding of different effects and tones.

But really I’d say dial in a sound and play because you’re never going to sound exactly like what’s on the record. There’s all kinds of things going on in the studio and what you might think is one guitar part could be doubled multiple times.

I think worrying about having the right sound held me back a bit when I was starting out as it just got overwhelming. I think one thing I’ve realised now , is that you don’t need tons of gain and distortion. If you listen to a good live band you’ll hear the guitars are not necessarily that distorted - the heaviness comes from the band as a whole. Remember the electric guitar is usually part of a band.

I know Justin has a few really good videos on amp settings and I think he talks a bit about getting the sound on his song lessons.

I think with ACDC and sweet home Alabama the guitar sound isn’t dissimilar. There’s just a bit more crunch and distortion with ACDC. So I’d use a Marshall type / crunch setting sound for both and just crank up the gain slightly for ACDC.

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Excellent. Will do.
Thank you Lewis

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