Music Gear: Where to Spend Your Money?

what's up everyone can you hear me Marcus says how long is this before how long before this is to start right now it tell me if you guys can hear me it is the 26th of January 2020 I look very serious in the thumbnail great meeting you at NAMM briefly to Erin nan was was really interesting it was I didn't get to see all the stuff that I wanted to see unfortunately I honestly did not even make it into the pro audio section or I did one time for on the first day for a few minutes and that was it but I want to talk about this after seeing all this gear and I've did the video this week with with the two days ago with Rhett and Dave and Ken about the string gauge and and that and I wanted to talk about spending money on gear and where you should actually spend your money because I think is kind of an important topic especially after going to NAMM I what's up Marcus I see you on there thank you James by the way discount code for anything in my store is RB 350 it's 35 percent off everything um so the let me just quickly talk about the string video here before we get started so I have no string endorsement as a matter of fact I'm not endorsed by any company that doesn't mean that I haven't that I don't have any company affiliations or know people at companies gonna happen to know people at a bunch of different companies just from doing this for so many years but I don't have a string endorsement with Ernie Ball or daddario or anything i buy all my strings myself and i don't like to be beholden to anybody for making a you know making a video or anything I went out and bought this pedal yesterday this is a pedal by JHS and it has all the two screamer's in it right here Josh who I know made this pedal Josh that who has a great YouTube channel Jessica and it has all the different variations of tube screamers in here I saw this pedal in my friend Keith Williams's five-watt world video and I thought wow that's a great idea I've got a tube screamer here that I've had forever and and I only have one you guys see I have a lot of pedals back there but these are pedals and I've had thank you Steve and appreciate that most of the stuff that I have in my studio I have had for years literally years some things my flanger pedal my mxr flanger I've had since 1978 and I've been collecting all these things guitars for you know probably many of them I have a classical guitar that I got in 1977 I have you know a lot of these things were things that I got when I was playing in my band my acoustic guitar Mike one Gibson acoustic that I have I got from the record label we had a record deal and we had a budget for an acoustic guitar that's what I got but it it I have I did some interesting interviews thank you brett with with some amp builders on the first day I was there before NAMM start and I interviewed Michael Soldano Dave Friedman who gave me the idea for the string video Joe Morgan my interviewed Brian wampler who was wampler pedals i and it was interesting because I was talking to them I'm sitting in front of their amps Dave Friedman had a Jay Keely head that he was talking about I said what speakers are in the speaker cabinet synergy amps I interviewed Peter as well who's an awesome guy really enjoyed hanging with them but I asked each person about their speaker cabinets thank you Mark for that for the super - at John nations and they said Dave Friedman said you know you're one of the only people that asked about the speaker cabinet well because the speaker cabinet is actually and David said this on the video which I haven't put out yet but the speaker cabinet is the most important thing in a way okay whether you're whether it's an ir response and you're using the ox or you're using the neural DSP plug-in whatever it is all these things that the speaker cabinets are accused okay that's how you have to think of a speaker cabinet when I did the video if you haven't seen the video I did with the four different speaker cabinets okay I used a Marshall had 71 JMP and a and a nineteen eighty park amp and we used them through four different speaker cabinets a Marshall cabinet with a hundred watt cabinet with 25 watt selections Thank You Brooks a 65 Marshall cabinet was 65 watt cilenti selections vintage cabinet a high watt cabinet was 75 watt vanes and a mesa cabinet with vintage 30 so four different kinds of speakers and four different cabinet constructions and the amps sounded radically different through them same mic placement on the different speakers but no comparison between them the cabs are e cues okay so if you have an amp and you want to vary the sound beyond mic placement the mic pre is an EQ you're gonna start introducing phase shift and things like that if you start EQ it okay mic placement is very crucial because the mic is also an EQ you have to think of it or the two microphones are two e cues and depending on how you blend them or three microphones it will give you completely different sounds but the actual cabinet construction is extremely important if you if you were talking about drums the the shell construction the heads make a big difference no question about it and I'll have a video about drum heads coming out that's going to be similar to the video that we did on strings Thank You Martin but the cabinet makes a bigger difference than the actual amplifier changing out the cabinet will make a radically big difference okay same thing with the microphone the microphone is an EQ if you're gonna spend money on things you spent it on your instruments first because there's nothing more important than the instrument you can have a modeler like an X FX 3 you can have the knurl DSP plugins you can have the the ox and you're using your actual amplifier with pedals and things like that there's nothing that there is nothing that makes a bigger difference than your instrument okay you spend the money on the guitars you spend money on you're on a piano on a drumset things like that the actual instrument the the reason I did the string video is because the string gauge does make a difference now sure if I put on a set of 11s it's gonna have more bass the point of that video is actually how does the amplifier react to the string okay it wasn't that lighter strings sound better lighter strings are more comfortable to play but Dave Freedman said to me that the the strings the the amplifier every acts better to lighter gauge strings because the point of this was that I would use a tube screamer in front of the amp with the gain turned all the way down okay but it would earn most the way down it would EQ or high-pass meaning take the low end off the guitar especially with low tuned guitars it would take it off before it goes in the amp and the amp would be tighter sounding and have better mid-range and not be as Woofie that doesn't mean that that you don't play 11s or 13s I play 13 on my Gibson acoustic okay and I play eighths on my Gibson's electrics now go figure that string gauge does affect acoustic tone Dean Dean just asked that I thank you James I I made the video though to to show that there is a difference with amplifiers okay not there I mean there's a reason that these guys used thin strings of people I talked about like Billy Gibbons well he saw BB King do it and BB King used eights and he said why you worked why do you work in this art when Billy was using 11s or something like that why do you want to work this hard to me the fact that the the low the lighter gauge strings have less bottom and the strings interact differently with each other and it is and it has a much more focused mid-range for complex chords if you're playing cleanly you guys Camilo you guys that you were asking me about my damn lecture what gauge strings I have on there Thank You Anders appreciate that I have nines on it and that danelectro has the lipstick pickups on it and it has very those don't have a lot of output on the low-end okay and the that guitar has is really clear when using very dissonant chords if I'm using you know more high information harmonic material more complex chords I'm going to want something where the the bass the low frequencies are not going to mask the mid-range and the top-end and it's typically the mid-range that the low frequencies are masking when I say masking that means it's your producing so much low end from these things and it may be a subtle thing but it masks the important information on the inside of the chords okay just like if you have if you want to take the treble offers that make something less trebly you can add bass to it and the bass will do the same thing as turn the treble turning the treble down right but what you really want to do is you want to get the things to sound as good acoustically as possible before you do anything that's why when I'm recording drums I spend so much time tuning them getting the right heads on them getting them to the right pitches that correspond with what pitches sound good on the particular drums thank you Phil every drum has a resonant frequency meaning when you tap the shell it will have a pitch to it it just does some drum companies will print the pitch on the inside of the drum okay those drums will resonate at those pitches better there is also a difference if you tune the bottom heads higher on a drum that is actually where you get a lot of your pitch information from is the bottom head drummers from the 60s like John Bonham and 70s would tune more like a jazz drummer meaning higher they would tune the drums much higher in pitch okay like jazz drummers would then as we progress through the 70s and 80s and 90s people started tuning their drums lower they just did okay and and it has a completely different kind of tone single ply heads which be if it's a remotes and ambassador if it's a if it's an Evans head it's called a would be a g1 g2 is a two ply head and an emperor is that is the two ply head that that that Remo makes okay so these have very different sounds to them I'll do a video about that to show you and so but don't just assume that because you put on heavy strings on your instrument that you get a better tone and that was Dave Friedman's point about this and Dave said to me he watched the video and he emailed me said that the lighter strings actually seemed to have vibrate vibrate more so but I wanted to prove a point because that is a one of these myths this heavier strings sound better when I played frank gambali 's guitar when I interviewed him last summer I picked it up and it was unbelievable how light he and I said what are these are these eights he said no they're nines and he had incredibly low action okay really low action it was one of the easiest guitars I've ever played and I saw Frank play at NAMM and he blew me away it's one of the best live guitar performances I've seen in the last 25 years he was phenomenal absolutely phenomenal just ripped it up incredible and uh and Frank had a new guitar out and you could tell that you can tell his guitars easy to play does that mean the Frank has a thin tone no he is a fat tone Allan Holdsworth played aids he had a massively big guitar tone okay all that you know so you can't generalize about these things some people Josh Smith I heard play and I love josh is playing and he uses 12 gauge strings and Center 12 or 13 and he sounds amazing that's comfortable for him he's a big guy he's got strong hands you know Stevie Ray Vaughn I found out was five foot five you know and he wasn't a huge guy but he was able to play 13s until the end okay and and when dave was telling me that he talked to his guitar tech and he said he went back to lighter gauge strings now somebody says do string brands make a difference okay I have some d'addario's right here I used Ernie balls and the thing because I had him sitting around here I have uh you know I've I don't change my strings that often on my Danelectro I changed my strings about a year ago maybe no two years ago probably okay so I chain so this gets back to the instruments where where should you spend your money well obviously the strings make a big difference they do if you watch the video they actually do make a big difference right and that's probably the least amount of money you're gonna spend on something compared to compared to buying a new instrument okay and somebody said oh you should have done this with a clean sound it doesn't matter whether it's a clean or distorted tone the instruments react similarly you're going through the same preamp stage as the instruments reacts similarly did Allan Holdsworth have a thin sound when he was playing his clean really complex chords no he had a fat sound and once again those complex chords with all those seconds in them sound great with the thinner strings because you don't have all this masking of with the low frequency masking the mid-range Dean said two years how do you Dario you hey that's pretty good so anyways you want to spend your money on instruments first and foremost okay you can buy plugins you can buy Mike pries things like that there yeah none of that is going to make as big a difference as your amplifier or your instrument but first on your instrument next on your on your amplifier things like microphones are important if you're recording if you're not going direct the microphones extremely important it's another EQ and I would spend money on the speakers and the speaker cabinet before I would even spend it on the microphone okay so so this is these are really important things because yeah everybody's on a budget not everybody but many of us are on budgets I like I said I bought my stuff you guys say I have a lot of guitars not twenty-something guitars that's it neal schon somebody asked him on his Instagram today he has 350 guitars and what he's got single guitars that cost more than ever in the studio combined anyway so so I tell people spend your money on instruments spend your money on microphones the mic pries are not going to make that big of a difference they're just not you know I have an acoustic drum kit here but I have a lot of different snare drums why because the snare is the most important instrument beyond the kick drum if you're recording whether you're doing hip-hop and you're using electronic sounds whether you're doing whether you're doing rock and you're using real drums these things are incredibly important do cables make as much of a difference well when I interview Eric Johnson I'll talk to him about that but to me cables do not make nearly the amount of difference that a microphone makes on a guitar amp so so so anyways NAMM is really was eye-opening you know my buddy Dave Rolfe a really great friend of my friends for 30 years great musician Dave hadn't been to Nam and I don't know how many years 20 years or so and he came and he couldn't believe all the stuff that's out all the new all the gear and he says who's buying all this stuff and I said well you know there's a lot of different genres of music that people play and a lot of different kinds of instruments you know and there's a lot of people in the world to play music so that's why there's a lot of different things that you know that people sell but that's that is why it's you know that that's why NAMM can add 180 thousand people I think it was the number that came to the to the show last week and you know these things these pedals here like this I'm not endorsed by JHS by the way I bought this pedal I'm not endorsed by Ernie Ball I just happened to I thought it looked better to have four of the same types of sets of strings together because the package colors look different and I thought it would look better in the video to do that Thank You Deb really appreciate that so that's why I used the Ernie balls I just happen to have I went to the store to get the tens and the 11s I think it was I have a music store about one mile from the studio where I go and I when I need strings I go buy strings so and somebody said it's this pedal worth it I'm sure it is but I haven't tried it yet I've just bought it yesterday do I like Ernie Ball strings versus d'addario strings you know I've never tested them against each other as a matter of fact I never changed the strings in a descending manner like that I just noticed that when I high passed a guitar before going into a into an amplifier that it tightened up the sound that's kind of a known thing that people have been doing this especially people that tuned down to to a really low tuning it's uh it would always tighten up the it would always tighten up the sound there's another misconception that you can't tune thin strings down I would tune I would use 9s or 10s on my guitar in tune it down to see with bands that would play and drop see all the time I did it constantly never had any problems I tuned it Gibson Les Paul down so you know we'll oh we will put that that thing to a test in at a later date here Dmitri says are you the only one from Russia here I'm sure there's other people from Russia here what's the most important thing to sound to sound his practice mark says well that's actually true that's what you should really spend your time on spend your money on your instrument and spend your your time practicing and creating new music what are my thoughts on the line six helix and other products similar to it I have a line six helix that I bought I didn't get one for free from them and it's good I've got presets that I made for it with with my assistant Ken grand Lanyon you know that's all for some people that's all they can afford they can't afford to amplifier things about that I'm seeing the news about Kobe Bryant here I don't like to comment on things that I haven't seen that's that's terrible if that's true yeah and five watt world by the way my friend Keith did a great video on tube screamers that you guys should watch anyways discount code RB three fifty thirty five percent off everything in my store that's how I support my channel is through selling books mugs and my and my t-shirts I've got some new t-shirt designs coming out by the way so you know up a foot pedal you know sometimes people can only afford one distortion pedal many times you know if they have an amplifier they have one amp and you know they're they can they want to make that one amp do as many things as possible so they buy pedals and that's how they get their their sounds to change when I was playing in a band I would I would want to do immediate channel switching or go from distorted to clean and you couldn't do that with channel switching so I would use distortion pedals to get to get distortion and the distortion pedal would turn on and off and you could and that's what I would you know how I did it because I wanted to do his immediate changes like that and play with dynamics but now they have things where you know we didn't have all the switchers and things like that that are out now or you can go and use multiple amps or you know or have XF X's or things like that none of that was available 20 20 years ago when I was playing anyway so that's uh you know when people ask me this stuff about where to spend money because I get asked that a lot what you should spend money on always instruments and then whatever changes the sound of those instruments like strings and pickups on electric guitars drum heads on drums right you know these these things are are huge they really can change the tone dramatically they change the attack they change the resonance they changed the tone you can change the pitch by learning how to tune a drum differently same thing with bases you know you have your di sound you have your amp sound your amp might be a dark glass pedal the Alpha Omega which I love or you might use the dark glass plug-in or or I might use my SVT that I have I have a 1968 SVT but I'm gonna also record a DI in case I want to change the sound after and I might change a sound through a plug-in I might use a sans amp on it I might use an amp simulator on it anything I might combine the amp sound with the DI making sure they're in phase to get the sound that I'm looking for so you know that is extremely important people spend so much money on things that don't make as big a difference as you would think but you know the speaker cabinet makes a bigger difference than the amplifier does right the microphone makes a bigger difference than the mic pre okay so you have those two combinations of things you have your instrument into the amplifier the pickups right have it big make a big difference in the sound of the guitar and the strings make the pickup sound differently and react differently okay so you have to think of what things function as eq's the pickup is an EQ the speaker cabinet is an EQ you have an EQ on your amp okay if you have an amp you have a a microphone that's an EQ and you have an EQ on the mic pre on some mic priests so you know obviously a Rick just talked about please consider discussion about odd and even harmonics between tube and solid-state amps yeah I mean the you know tube amps have a different type of distortion where I'm not gonna I don't want to necessarily get into that today I will make a video on that but you you want to be able to get the theoretically the most variants and tone with the least amount of gear this is kind of one of Keith's thing is minimalist approach I have an approach that's where I always would buy one of everything I had one guitar with p90s which is that Les Paul special or jr. right there one guitar with PAF's my Les Paul Custom I have the the will have two then I have guitar actually have two guitars with p90s or actually the the Les Paul specialized p100 but the my gold top has p90s the blacklist Paul has mission PAF's which are more like original 59p AF spec and then I have a custom that has a different sounding humbucker in a slightly different sounding I have a strat I have a Tele I have a a guitar with a vibrato bar my um my custom 24 that's a loaner guitar from from PRS I have the 590 for this also a loner guitar and and the the 594 the the PRS 594 has the pol pot's that actually makes some of the split the coils and the pickups and you can get really really different sounds from those so you know that's a very versatile guitar right there it is so that's something else too that's something else to consider when you're spending your hard-earned money on these things what gate spaghetti do you eat I have one Gretsch guitar it's a Chinese made Gretsch guitar this back there it's it sounds good it's not it's not a phenomenal guitar but I think it plays really well I haven't played it in a while anyway so that's kind of my discussion on this that that when you're considering these things you know if you have an instrument and you want to change your sound think about changing your gauge strings that's the easiest cheapest way to do it you don't have to change your pickups you don't have to change anything strings make a difference okay granted you can take the low end of your amp or take your EQ and just high-pass it and take the low end off it and get the similar sound or tighten up the tighten up the mids or add some more mid-range to it you know the pick does make a difference the thickness of the pick and the end the way that you angle a pick Pat Metheny plays with his pick this way okay so there's more surface area when he's picking a lot of players that our fast shredders will play with a very pointy thin jazz pick so there's less drag okay but that has a very different sound with it so anyhow so that's I you know people like the edge play with the rough part of the pic or Brian may plays with a coin because they want the the edge of it we'll give it a chime will create a harmonic give it more harmonic content and make the guitar chime okay especially through amps like like boxes and that makes a huge huge difference absolutely huge difference so renzo there is a difference between 8's 9s 10s and 11s and we proved that it doesn't mean that you have to go and change your gauge strings I was just pointing out that there is a difference and when people say that you know that's just a thing that people that are repeaters repeat just like the people that don't believe that John Bonham they used an echo and when the levee breaks you know when I and I show Andy John's who recorded and mixed the record and they don't believe him they believe Jimmy Page they know this guy mixed the record he recorded the drums he knows how he he knows how he mixed it I haven't been the video saying how he did it you can hear it clearly okay so that's it if you want to support the channel you can become a member of the Beato club or buy something in the store got the be out of luck only in PDF I only have the version too I'm gonna print out my 3.01 I need to do that I have the updated 3.0 version 35 percent off our be 350 you want to support the channel that's how you do it by a t-shirt buy a mug something like that that's how I make a living and keep making videos for free I have a new video on modes I'm continuing on to remake all my videos on modes that's coming out I've got more I have more what makes us some great videos in the pipeline you guys are amazing really appreciate it if you haven't checked out the new video on string gauges check that out thank you all for watching guys were the best I had a great time today bye

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 221,458

Keywords: Guitars, Rick Beato, Guitar Strings, Guitar amps, Bass Guitar, Drum Kit, Buying the right guitar, Do guitar stings, do guitar strings make a difference, do guitar strings matter, Guiar amps, Speaker cabinet, Celestion, Buying the right Mic, drum heads, do drum heads make a difference in sound, eqing drums, EQing Guitar, Tube Screamers, Music Gear, Budget, Buying a guitar, Buying a guitar amp, Axe FX, axe fx 3, Helix, helix line 6

Id: vBbBvLLnSfc

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020