Advice on settings and combinations

At the end of the technical analysis of every effect, we will give some advice on the settings and combinations between various effects. It is very important that you carefully read the instruction manuals that come with the effect units, both pedal and rack.
Lets start with an important idea: a guitar sound is the sum of multiple situations. First of all the fingers: obviously every guitarist has their own personal touch, combined with their own musical taste. This is the starting point for the construction of your own personal sound. If you gather ten guitarists with differing experience, style and technical abilities, using the same guitar, the same effects and the same amplifier all set the same way, you will more than likely get ten similar sounds that are substantially different. If during the programming of a sound you would like to copy the sound of "that" guitarist who made "that album" published "that year", I really think that you will only waste a lot of time getting a sound that is not very satisfying. As mentioned above, your fingers are different from "that" guitarist. But apart from this, we can compare the instrumentation used by "that" guitarist with ours.
Lets assume that the sound to be imitated was obtained using a Fender Stratocaster, a Mesa-Boogie amplifier, a Boss OD1 pedal and a Rocktron Intellifex processor. If we use a Gibson LesPaul, a Fender Twin amplifier and a Lexicon processor, we have another type of instrumentation, highly professional, but still a different instrumentation from what was described before. It's therefore clear that these two types of instrumentation sound good, but each of them has their own sound.
Returning to "that" guitarist, the performance was done in a recording room and therefore the sound had further manipulations. At this point, you need to be able to make the most of your own instrumentation and to recognize the technical merits and defects that are involved. Therefore purchasing the right equipment is very important, and must be based on a careful analysis of your own tastes, musical genre and the amount of money you are willing to spend. One last suggestion: get some advice from friends/experts to help in the choice.
We will now analyze the regulations of the two effects that we spoke of before. Regarding the overdrive, the settings are simple: most importantly you should adjust the amount of saturation (drive). The sound of the effect is ideal for a rock-blues tone, therefore not very distorted (in slang crunch), excellent both for solos or in a group. The tone control can give greater or lesser sound presence, while the volume determines its level. Remember that the overdrive is prefer over the distorted channel of the amplifier for giving more push.
The distorter is much more complicated, plus the fact that it generally has more controls. If these are also EQ controls, we can have various combinations. A lot of toying must be done with the middle frequencies, which give the characteristics of the affiliation range for the guitar. When playing in a group, it is best "to cut" these frequencies (lower the control), by slightly raising the treble. This way the resulting sound will be more "light" and won't disturb the other insturments. Remember that these are only suggestions: in fact some sounds favor a richer middle sound also when playing in a group. The ear is very important. When playing a solo, its always better to increase the middle frequencies; a solo needs more presence than rhythmics because it is important that it stands out with respect to the other instruments to hear each note.
These rules also apply to the construction of sound on the distorted channel of the amplifier. If we add a pedal distorter it is best to insert it on the clean channel. A system of this type offers more resonance (clean-pedal channel distorter, on the same distorted channel). If desired, the overdrive can also be inserted to increase the sound.

Feedback

The feedback is not a pedal or a processor but a physical-acoustic effect. It occurs when a microphone or a transducer (in our case the pick-up of the guitar) picks up its own already amplified sound and sends it back to the amplification system. This is technically a drawback. This happens often with audio equipment, usually with microphones. On a sound level we hear it as an annoying high frequency whistle. When it happens on the guitar, generally the fault is due to an elevated volume with respect to the proximity of the guitar to the amplifier: it is always best to keep the front of the guitar opposite the cones of the speakers of the amplifier to which it is connected.
If, as stated above, the feedback is technically a problem, musically it can be very interesting to the point that many guitarists have creatively used it. Most importantly however is the control of the feedback, as to avoid problems with the other musicians. To help the guitar to "whistle", you can position yourself directly in front of the cones of your amplifier. The sound must be saturated, and all the controls of the guitar have to be open. To stop the feedback you must place your hand on the strings in order to stop the magnetic vibration caused by the pick-up intensified by the same feedback. In general it is a system that works. A lot depends on the constructive quality of the instrumentation used, but also from personal technique. For example, a good system to produce feedback is one that provokes the artificial harmonics (those that are played together with pick and thumb). If the guitar has a hard time getting going, try to move to one of the sides of the amplifier. Every combination between guitar and amplifier usually has its starting point, which is often found diagonally with respect to the front of the speakers.

    Probable start angle for feedback

To conclude the discusion of distorsion, it is useful to remember how the correct choice of an instrument component can influence the sound you are looking for. Only personal experience can give you the certainty in the quality and in the reliability of an instrument, whether its a guitar, amplifier or effect. It is always best to ask advice from someone who knows more: this can save you time and money.
The analysis of the effects for guitar continues with the compressor.