Display MoreSo has anyone else ever thought you had it all figured out and everything was good with your tone? And then you start rehearsals for your co-headline Christmas tour with Phil Vassar and you’re sharing the stage with another guitar player who uses a Kemper? Using some of your profiles? And he sounds “better”? No? Just me?
The moral of this story is that there isn’t just one way to do things and there’s always room to learn, even when you think you know a lot.
So my buddy Jeff plays guitar in Phil’s band and we all share the stage for about half the show. He’s using a couple of real dirt pedals in front of his Kemper and just using 1-2 rigs, mostly a clean rig and he uses his dirt pedals for gain. Sounds great. I’ve spent years finding the right rig for each song, trying out new ones, settling on my faves. I think I spent so much time fine tuning the details that I may have missed the forest for the trees. Ha. That is not to say the tones I had when I walked in that day weren’t good. They were good and if that’s all you/I heard then they would’ve been great. It’s just when you’re playing with someone else the tones haven’t to kinda match up. His tone sounded a little bigger and rounder.
So I asked what he was using and he said one of the /13 LDW rigs from my very first pack. Probably one of the first 5-6 amps I profiled in my living room when I was first starting to make profiles. I don’t know what’s different (firmware, signal chain) but those LDW profiles are louder than almost every other one I’ve made. So I thought, I’ll try that on a song. So I made a rig using it for one of the Christmas songs in the show. Then another. And pretty soon I was using it on almost every song and just using the screamer or rat module for a little dirt. Now I have to rethink whether I want to re-program our whole regular show using it. I’m still using a couple of other profiles (maz jr, soldano, 72 mars, Helios) but my main tones are that one rig. Who knew?
It’s all what works for you and that can change. Sometimes overnight.
I know my ears change a bit over time and I’ve seen the comments about the new packs being a little more open on top. That is both by design as well as just my ears changing. A lot of it is just volume. I’m prob running less volume now at home and onstage to prolong my ears’ life so they’re more balanced at that level. I’ve also gotten the DynaMount mic positioner so it lets me adjust mics in real-time. Some of it is just a response to what I am trying to mentally fine tune and fix.
So, who else is primarily using 1-2 rigs all night and not trying to use a whole collection for live gigs? And what is your go-to main rig? It’s so funny to me that there are so many different good tones that people find rigs that I never think to use, like this LDW. But it is so muscular and big sounding. I’ll see where this train takes me.
Sorry for the long winded post but I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around it for the last couple of weeks and it’s been working so well at shows I just wanted to share.
your /13 LDW is very awasome rig for Fender sound !!! it's one of my favorite profiles