Getting the Right Sound

It's crucial to get a good appropriate sound out of your guitar.

With an impressive sound even simple riffs and solos will come out cool.
On the other hand, a poor sound will spoil things every time, no matter
what and how you play.

In this series of lessons we'll foremost use a distorted guitar sound.
If you don't know what it means check out two audio examples of:

Feel the difference?

Note that distortion effect sometimes also referred as overdrive, dist, fuzz or "dirty" sound.

Of course there are many other guitar effects that can be used separately and with distortion, but for now let's concentrate only on the main ones.

In order to get a distorted guitar you need a Guitar Combo with a built in distortion effect, and/or distortion pedal, or guitar multi-effects processor.

Guitar Combo is the combination of an amplifier (shortly amp) and a speaker in one single unit.

Guitar Combo produces slightly different sound versus regular stereo system, because it's designed specifically for a guitar and better fits with its frequency range and impedance.

A Distortion pedal or multi-effects processor is also a way to get a distorted sound, by putting it in the chain between the guitar and the amp

In this case it's not necessarily to have a distortion on the amp.
Although having two successive distortions will give more possibilities for tweaking that sound.

To get a decent guitar sound at home you'll usually need at least 10-Watt, better 15-Watt of guitar amp power, and more.

Although there are exceptions.
I personally own Roland Micro Cube guitar amp of 2-Watts of power - and guess what - it's more than enough for my home practicing. Though I connect it together with an external multi-effect processor for boosting the distortion effect, as in the pic above.

Does it seem little?

As I sad, a guitar amp is designed specifically for a guitar. So if you'll connect an electric guitar to 10-Watts desktop speakers, you would hear very big difference.

10-Watts of guitar combo can produce enough noise to start bothering your neighbours,
30-Watts amp already can make them very angry with you. So be careful with the volume. Another difference between these two amps is the depth of the sound they will produce.

Talking about Watts I want to clarify that I always mean true RMS watts, and not misleading PMPO watts that often used in advertising for better looking numbers.
So if you'll see 180-Watt label on common computer desktop speakers, know it's bullshit ;)

By the way, I used 2-Watts Roland Micro Cube in the videos in subsequent lessons.

For recording audio examples in this and mostly other articles on the website I use GT Player virtual multi-effect processor. The guitar is connected directly to the computer by means of recording interface (high quality sound card).

EQ

Playing around EQ knobs will give you very different shapes from the same sound. Here's a few examples:

Rock

Metal

Extreme Metal

Reverb

Reverb simulates the effect like you play in a big room, so you hear fading away tail of sound right after any played note.
It's something similar what a sound hole in an acoustic guitar produces, but with an electronic device you can widely change the amount of the reverb and its decay.

This effect is very useful for eliminating dryness of a sound and adding more depth.

Surely there's no any real rules to get the right sound that is right for you. Feel free with experimenting and tweaking around your setup to get the sound you personally like.

If you're planning to use several different guitar effect pedals or software effects simultaneously, say the Distortion, Delay and Chorus, check out:
Guitar Effects Order article to get the signal chain right.

More Guitar Presets and Effects Combinations

Move from Tweaking the Sound to How to Read Guitar Tabs Explanation

Return to How to Play Electric Guitar Home