Guitar Tone Buzzwords Explained

on today's episode I'm gonna do my best to define some guitar tone buzzwords I'm not a dictionary I'm just a normal guy but somebody has to try to do this and today's the day let's go for it [Music] the first buzzword we need to tackle is transparent overdrive this is one that's everywhere people talk about it people argue about it people say things are transparent people say things aren't transparent so what is transparent Webster's defines this as having the property of transmitting light without appreciable scattering so that bodies lying beyond are clearly seen I don't know about you but that's a little bit of a morbid definition I don't want to talk about bodies laying around I just want to talk about guitar tone and what you need to know is transparent overdrive is really simple it's an overdrive that keeps the sound of your guitar and the sound of your amp in place and just adds a little bit of dirt it doesn't give a big mid boost like a lot of tube screamer style pedals it doesn't add a ton of bass it just keeps things like they are but gives you a little bit more so let's demonstrate that with the Morning Glory it's transparent you leave it on you turn it off the only difference is a little more grit a lot of pedals do this but I'm going to show this guy [Music] [Music] true-bypass what is it a lot of you are losing sleep but I'm here to help here's how it all happened here's the story I'm gonna get you through this in the 1960s pedals hit the scene they're awesome but when you turn them off they never really turn off they kind of ruined your original signal and that's not good so by the 1970s people are trying to figure out how to fix this how to do it better and then companies come along like boss and they perfect a system called electronic FET switching buffered bypass switching now I really like it I think it's genius because when you push the foot pedal you basically touch a momentary button that's located underneath this foot pad it's just the same thing that's in a computer keyboard when you're typing but all it's doing is telling a circuit you get this that activates the little button and the button talks to the circuit and says hey they want to change the routing so instead of your guitar going in through the overdrive and out you click it it goes in through a FET transistor away from the circuit and out and it works really really well but by the 1990s we have a boutique boom and a lot of builders start building things in their homes and there's this whole new scene the best example I can think of is fulltone the full drive mike fuller genius company amazing designer he starts using the Hanako switches when you click them they pop they make a noise and that's mechanical so it's basically this small little mechanical foot switch you have your signal it's going through your overdrive but when you click it it reroutes it completely around no circuitry nothing it's a light switch for your guitar turn it on to get your overdrive turn it off to just have your clean signal and it's good but is it best no they're both really good if you want to know more about this go up to my myths episode and for now let's go to another buzzword because now you know what true bypasses Boutique we got to know what this means we see it all over the place is this pedal boutique is this amp boutique so what does it even mean Webster's defines it as a small company or business that builds highly specialized products or has highly specialized services and I think that's perfect I think that lays it out that's exactly what it is and an example of this to help you through understanding is that when I started in 2007 I was definitely boutique so I built everything myself I hand populated every board I labeled the cases I shipped them everything I did every mill it was very small very specialized but we've grown I have around 25 employees and I'm not even gonna claim to be boutique you know I'm concerned with making high quality products great service and all that we do a good job of that but I don't think Jay justice boutique anymore and I really don't think there are a lot of BG builders left I know that's a sticky statement but I stand by that I think that some of the people who are still in the boutique land our analog man a lot of his builds are still very boutique Scotty a pro analog and then I also think of Paul C and his Timmy peddle out of Tennessee so this is boutique I think that's what it means one person maybe a couple helpers specialising in something very particular and it still small and that's booty let's leave it at that let's play this I'm gonna add some delay the DD 200 let's go for it let's hear some booty covering the weight he just didn't version of the timmy with mxr they're a big company he's not boutique but but he but he's still making the one that's made by hand I guess he is yeah yeah he's still boutique because he's he's doing the other one as well yeah it's fun wait my cables are just they're just normal patch cables and I'm using a boss delay that's not boutique that's not boutique yeah I I can't stand for that I can't say my tone is boutique because it's not all handmade but do I care it sounds so good listen [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's boutique this this this riff was boutique I believe it was let's move on sustained also known as sistene what is it what do people mean when they say this I see conversations and there's no way that the people are referring to the same thing it's it's like a semantical nightmare that's a good band name by the way but what is this thing I know I can hear it listen you know as guitarists when we hear this term we think of a guitar a note searing with huge distortion do time and space bringing kings and gods to their knees and we want it all in a pedal and it's really confusing in 69 electro Harmonix released the big muff and even on this reissue you're gonna notice it says sustain for the fuzz control and I think this is where it all started sustained buzz and it gets really confusing and then in the 70s a little bit later we see Roland and vos start to create Distortion free sustainers in contrast to the big muff basically what I'm going to do I'm gonna plug up this boss compression sustainer we're gonna listen to the clean tone we're gonna sustain it compress it expand it and then for fun just for kicks we're gonna put on a PG 14 we're gonna add some distortion more sustain and I don't know what's gonna happen I'm actually not looking forward to this [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you [Music] scooped mids I'm not sure where it first showed up I'm gonna guess the 80s you know we've all scooped ice cream a lot of us have scooped poop but have you ever scooped your meds only you can answer that let's take an angry Charlie let's get it searing raging like a jcm800 and then I'm gonna turn this amid control all the way off essentially scooping the mids and you're gonna hear a familiar sound whether you like it is up to you [Music] [Applause] [Music] dumbu Liske is that overdrive dumbo Liske is it ad humble style sound what what does this mean Gumble esque so a lot of you have no clue you may be seen this word you just don't even want to try here's the basics there's a guy Howard humble Alexander Howard humble he starts modifying fender amps around 1963 then he gets a job for mozz right and he designs some amps for the ventures he sees success and then he goes out and starts a solo career as an ant builder now this is the time when mesa/boogie starting companies like that and he starts building these high gain hot rodded fender style circuits but really unique he groups the circus he puts black epoxy all over stuff you can't see what he's doing it's super mysterious it's eccentric it's wild it's fascinating and you can't look away he only builds them for people he wants to build him for they end up in a lot of famous players hands like Stevie Ray Vaughan Eric Johnson and nowadays you really only see them with John Mayer our Bonnie Raitt our Robin Trower you gotta have some serious money you got to be able to invest in these and they're crazy and if you look on reverb calm the prices are bananas they're like the price of a house that said what is Dumbo less I don't know exactly because I think it's impossible to define because all of his amps sound different I've played ten they all sounded different some of them were the same model but yet you see people saying the pedal sounds like a dumb bull or this same sounds like a Dumbo is there a double sound I don't know so I'm phoning in a friend Eli from to rock I own several of his Dumble inspired amps he knows more than anybody here's what he says I just said to him what is SS what does it mean I tell people this is our interpretation of what we think that is it's our incarnation of all the best doubles that we plays if you look at the steel string singer thing it's okay I like the front end of this one I like the power supply this one I like the feel of this one we finally just pulled the best pieces of them to try to make our you know dumb bold inspired amplifiers but we don't make a direct clone because like you said they're all so different we're all inspired by that Dumbo less kind of thing if we're build and high-end boutique gear that holds together really well all the doubles I play do have the characteristic that the low-end holds together really nice it's like a snare drum we've had a full on top of each other themselves has you throw petals on them on opposed to you know a lot of vintage amps and stuff kind of fall apart once you get passed up you know three or four on the master volume or the volume they just start to deteriorate the dumbbells do hold together very nicely and they're a good platform but over to our channels they're also different there are tons of pedals out there that are dumbbell themed like the overrated special I love how it looks it's just very like I'm a Dumbo has the font and everything one of the first was probably the Zen Drive then you have mojo hands extra special this is definitely Dumbo inspired and then vertex has several the still string slinger well still stream clean overdrive and then you have the ultra phonics now do these sound like a Dumbo I don't know because what is a double selling they're all different but I get the theme here and they're very cool pedals all of these I absolutely love and will put on my board I think they're all great this is one of my favorites that falls into the Dumbo inspired sound or Dumbo esque term now this is an overdrive and I think it's really unique it's trying to mimic the distortion channel of a Dumbo lamp does this sound like a double you be the judge I'm just gonna play it and I think I'm gonna play some math jazz rock like jazzy math math jazz let's do it right now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] one of my personal favorite buzzwords is when I hear someone say hey I'm looking for that earthy mid-range I'm not completely sure where this started are what it even means Webster defines earthy as resembling dirt or soil my guitar tone has never looked like dirt or soil I really don't know how to look at my guitar tone but I'll tell you this I think we can figure this out I think I know what it is it's that straddie slightly dirty slightly gritty sound that comes in those those in-between positions on a Stratocaster or any guitar where you're combining the pickups so that kind of Phase II multi pickup sound so I'm gonna add the moonshine in this is a real mid-range heavy dare I say dumbbell esque did I just say dumbbell esque [Music] the moonshine in this is a real mid-range heavy dare I say dumb bus overdrive it's gonna give us some earthy tones and we're gonna add some of the clean blend in as well I'll tell you what I'm gonna add some angelic picking attack we're gonna add that dumb blast grit and attitude drum burst and we're gonna get dirtier and earthier than a farmer coming home at quittin time [Music] haunting mids can mids be haunted they apparently can be earthy so let's talk about this one now I noticed a buzzword floating around in comments on Instagram particularly our account people would say the mids are so haunting and it was always with like an lol or a laughing cry face and I thought that's funny that's enough silly for me it's like Ken mids be haunting I just thought it was awesome so around 2017 I released a limited pedal for Halloween and I called it haunting mids now this is an active mid pre amplifier it's a mid boost a parametric EQ you might say and it did really well we put it out and then I realized there was a pedal called haunting mids and a whole back story now I drug myself into this a lot of people thought I knew about that but I just want to read the situation cuz actually it's confusing so here's what happened apparently around 2006 an awesome wahhhh designer Jeffrey T's he's amazing the tease was go buy one they're fantastic he coined this term on the gear page this is to my understanding what happened he said haunting mids I could see this because he makes Waze and Waze are full of mids maybe I'm missing something but that's where I'm at so far and there was a group of people who left the gear Page kind of like a strange split or something I don't know a schism and they started a forum and called the forum haunting mids as an insult to the people at the gear page over their disagreement again I don't know a lot of detail here then the haunting mids forum it was haunting mids calm they made some buzzes someone made fuzzes I don't know who made them but they say haunting mid stock and there's like a hundred of these or 50 I don't know and they go for crazy money on reverb about a year later I put this out full bore it's a great product unaware of all that that went on and just honestly not caring at this point so let's see what haunted mid sound like I'm gonna crank my amp it's gonna naturally distort and then we're gonna slam on this mid boost we're gonna hunt the mids I'm gonna go between high and low range and we're just gonna see what [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] wait a second did I just scoop the mints yeah I scooped the mids apparently you can scoop haunted mints [Music] [Music] next up is the buzzword or buzz phrase smooth highs does this pedal have smooth highs not sure where it came from but I remember back in the early days when I modified pedals I saw people saying that their mud smoothed out the high end and I'm gonna be honest and confess to you that I even put this in a lot of my coffee because I didn't know what else to say so basically we're taking a pedal that has a little too much high-end treble and we're smoothing it out by smooth we're just saying we're removing some of it so let's take a proko rat it can be really bright we're gonna set it up bright we're gonna put a boss EQ after it and the 6.4 k slider I'm just gonna barely bump it down and we're going to smooth those highs that's what you're gonna see happen here you're not ready for it it's super gripping it's riveting it is inspiring what I'm about to do smooth eyes [Music] the final buzzword of today's episode is probably my favorite it's fun to just look at it and it's fun to say so say it with me complex harmonics it's great it's it's awesome I see this I see people asking if this distortion has complex harmonics or this amp is very complex in the harmonics I'm not completely sure what it means I'm not good at this high level thinking but I do I do want to try to approach this here so I'm a member of a Facebook gear group that I really enjoy it's called pedalboards of doom go over there you can be a member I think and it's generally a really positive forum it doesn't have you know there's not a lot of Bobo's over there start in trouble and I love the conversation a lot of intelligent people and it's fun so I asked them hey what are complex harmonics and I got a hundred and twenty three responses I'm not gonna read them all but I am gonna read a few because we're trying we're detectives you and I we're trying to get to the bottom of this here's some here's some stuff for our case Harmonix infused with a blend of 21 Xand spices it's possible a conversation with your wife expensive it's expensive I like the opposite of simple harmonics you're not wrong tomes that overanalyze everything and are no fun at parties I've experienced those tones harmonics that are complex I think we're getting close here micro tones that's an intelligent answer I like where this is going over tones okay harmonics that are created by distortion they sound pleasing because the ratio of frequencies is mathematically closer to a whole number even harmonics create complex ratios and they don't sound as pleasant and then we have harmonics with many repeats usually in the octaves and fifths so I think we're on to something here there's something about octaves odd and even harmonics there's a lot of math involved here I'm not good at that but what I think what I think an answer can be is let's take an octave fuzz old-school primitive circuit this is the dead electro Eisenhower this is basically the Fox tone machine and we're gonna listen really close for complex harmonics we're gonna hear our note but then we should hear above that note like a screeching high end octave that's tracking loosely and that's complex harmonics and I'm probably going to turn on our way my machine [Music] [Applause] [Music] that got really complex in the harmonics um I'm not sure does anyone here have any earthy mid-range is there any earthy mid-range to balance this out oh I'm sorry I'm oh I'm alone in my basement the quarantines getting to me today's record time is brought to you about 2014 everything will be all right in the end it's by Weezer it's my third favorite Weezer album behind blue and green I think it's underappreciated I think it's really great it's catchy it's fun the title alone is very fitting for this time of quarantine and everything's gonna be alright I love this album because it's a mix of classic Weezer and it explores that newer type of Weezer that a lot of us aren't sure about yet but it's a great album I recommend it I like it I really love it and I want some more of it I'm gonna play it here in just a second and maybe you can play it as well and we'll be together in like a strange way go check it out it's really good thanks so much for watching this episode I hope you enjoyed it I hope you learn something and really I'm just looking forward to going and wearing my complex Harmonix t-shirt to the grocery store later that's gonna be really fun I might wear scooped mids as well I just want to see what the reaction is so if you feel like you would want to wear one of these shirts head on over to the GHS show.com you can buy any of these shirts and other merch that we have I had to put them up because really I just want to build an army of weird nerdy people who wear shirts that make no sense and we kind of take over the world that's a dream of mine you can be a part of that if you want yeah go check that out also there is a patreon account which is huge for us and helps us with travel expenses as I go around and document on-camera the stories of creators and preserve history if you're a member of that account you get monthly long-form talks or I dig into some nice really cool educational stuff that I'm studying and writing about also it just it's a big huge help and we're really appreciative of all of our patrons other than that just hit like if you like the episode subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications of future episodes just just go live your life be safe have a wonderful day bye

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 195,964

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, Guitar, Guitar Pedals, Electric Guitar, Guitar Effects, Guitar Player, Guitar Playing, Pedal Demo, Guitar Demo, New Pedals, New Guitar Pedals, Josh Scott, Guitar Gear, Music Gear, Guitar Tones, Pedal Tones, Good Guitar Tone, Best Guitar Tone, Best Electric Guitar Tone, Analog Guitar Tone, Guitar Sounds, JHS Guitar Pedals, JHS VLOG, JHS Videos, The JHS Show, Music History, Music, Education, Effects

Id: dtdCLYft_Z8

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020