What process do you guys use to find the perfect tone?

My Helix Floor has the best user interface
but my Kemper Stage has a better tone.
The Tonex Pedal is on its way.

It's all in an effort to find the best tone.

I don’t. I figure that a) tone is the last thing I take note of when listening to someone else’s performance, b) if I do take note of it I have no idea how the person achieves that tone and c) I figure if I ever get good enough that my tone becomes important I will have achieved something quite significant in my journey.

The most I do is try to keep proper balance between melody/bass, eliminate any clipping, get a little sustain and just a pinch of reverb & chorus to keep it interesting. I haven’t fooled with my signal chain in months. Don’t really know what I’m doing, so I play it safe!!

BTW – I got a good chuckle from that video!!

I hate my tone. That's at 11:54 AM DST New Jersey Tuesday March 28. Later we'll see. But I need new strings. (6:22). And my modeler sucks. (12:40)

My two Ironwoods love my 70s Fender Bassman tube head, with matching 2x12 cab... it has a real nice warm sound - but my RB 8 and SB 8 love my GK RB 800 rig which features an older [late 80s] digitech bass harmony machine, and some kind of Lexicon processer - the MX 2020 maybe ?? I forget the number but it's neat because it has two seperate parts to it which can be run in series or parallel, anyhow that gets run through an 80s Guild/Hartke 4x10 and a newer [90s] Hartke 4x10 stack that sounds really really good.

I have yet to have any luck getting proper tone using just processers/effects, and am curious how people get a real good warm accurate sound on tape [oops, whatever is being used today, as I'm still stuck in the last century...]

That being said, I've been listening to a CD by a real inspirational Stick player from Japan, I forget his name - but the CD is called Human Feelings, and man what a great tone he has - I would love to know how he achieved it.

A search found Toshiaki Kanamaru? Is this him?

https://youtu.be/Qx3ZZl9WCag

New to me, so he'll be a fresh entry for my Stickists list. Thank you BGW.

https://tosiakikanamaru.bandcamp.com/

For basic practice I don't use any effects at all.

Finding the perfect Tone makes a huge difference.

A deaf person would understand this the most.
Imagine watching people play a musical instrument
and not understanding what is giving them pleasure.

When a musician plays an out-of-tune instrument
they are not inspired to play it for very long.

I received my Tonex Pedal yesterday and my first impressions were not very good. Then, I remembered having the same experience with the Helix Floor and Kemper Stage. All three devices need custom tuning to get the best acoustical feedback out of them. After all, who knows what instrument was connected to them when the recorded model was saved? After spending some time setting up each of the models, I'm absolutely in love with the Tonex Pedal. It is everything that I had hoped for. It has many of the same control knobs as a real amp and does actually sound like a real amp.

The front panel knobs are as follows.

- Gain
- Bass
- Mid
- Treble
- Volume
- Reverb
- Compressor
- Noise Gate
- Presence
- Depth

There are many more settings that are deeper in the menu system but having these 10 basic control knobs at your finger tips can make most of the models come alive and sound very close to the real amp. Of course, the second part of the puzzle is to invest in high quality models to start with. Like I said before, I am very impressed with this little box.

It's definitely a keeper.

Yes, sorry for the delay....

https://stick-enterprises-store.myshopi ... i-kanamaru


I remember when I ordered this a while back, along with pretty much every other CD Stick Enterprises had to offer, Cambria was like "are you serious, this is the biggest order ever !!" to which my reply was "yes, I like to get things before I can't"

I can see doing that. But I figure having the electronic aspect adjusted properly is an integral part of the learning process, so I had no hesitation to shape it a bit. It was a bit frustrating at times, but adding a limiter to the signal chain solved a lot of problems. After EQ'ing each signal to sound ok to me, I'd end up clipping/distorting when the signals were combined. The limiter on the output bus solved that beautifully.

I'm sure others may think that my tone could be vastly improved, but on the other hand, I don't think anyone would cringe at what I'm getting now, which is all I was after. (I was cringing at some points, even with my "tin ear," so I knew it needed some work! )