How to Get a Great Hard Rock or Heavy Metal Tone with Your Guitar

When you play guitar there are a number of variable that will go into how you sound. For the purpose of this article I will be discussing playing hard rock and heavy metal guitar. The majority of any player's sound will come from how well they play the instrument not the equipment that you use. Often people think that a bunch of expensive equipment will make them sound like Eddie Van Halen or Kirk Hammett. This is just not the case. One you have some playing skills good equipment will help you sound better though. During this review I will tell you the gear that I use and how I use it. Some of the things I do with my gear you will be able to do with you gear. This can help you bring out the sound of your playing.

Here is a just a bit about my guitar playing. I originally started playing in my teens and quit after a year because I just could not dedicate the amount of time playing guitar that I wanted to when I started playing football. Then I ended up going to college, graduating and getting a job. Several years later after my father passed away I was looking at some things from my parent's old house and saw my guitar. I pulled it out and just started playing and really could almost feel the presence of my father. This could be because he bought me that guitar and I remember him and mom taking me to practices every Saturday and then us having lunch together after I was done. I have been back to it a couple years now and have gotten pretty good. I even do some live playing and have made a few bucks.

The first part of your sound is really going to be your amplifier. Everyone has their preferences but what I like to do is use two different amplifiers and switch between them depending on the song that I am playing. Right now I use three guitar amp heads. The first is a Marshall Plexi 50 watt head. It is a reissue as the original was much too expensive. I only use the clean settings on my Plexi. Next I have My Carvin SX series head. I actually wrote a review on this if you want to check it out. I use this for some overdrive sounds and a very few clean settings. I use this for lots of my classic rock like KISS and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I use a distortion or overdrive pedal in front on this when in distorted mode to bring it out more. My Mesa-Boogie Dual Rectifier is my main amplifier is my high gain amp. I use this overdriven and very rarely on a clean mode sometimes I will use a Boss DS-1 in front of it for solos, but other than that I just go with the straight sound. I set all of my amplifiers up pretty much the same way in that a basic eq setting for me is my lows at 7-8, mids at 3-5, and my highs at 6-7. I have found this really gives the best sound for the type of music I like to play. I switch between amplifiers when I play. For cabinets I am using three Marshall Cabinets from 1980's equipped with Celestion speakers and I mike one cabinet.

I don't use a large amount of effects like some players on the scene like to use. I really don't like rack gear at all and dumped all of mine a year ago in favor of guitar pedals. My pedal board consists of a George Lynch Tripler pedal. This allows me to switch between the Carvin, Marshall Plexi, and Dual Rectifier head. I also keep footswitches from each amp in the pedal board. I use a boss noise gate and set it with high decay to keep my signal quit. I use two main overdrive boosts in my pedal board. The first is an Yngwie J. Malmsteen DOD pedal. I set the gain and level both at max. This is used with my Carvin amp or occasionally I will use it with the Marshall Plexi. I also use an Ibanez Tube Screamer. I set this up with the level at the max, tone at 50% and my gain at 0. This is just to get a boost out of my Dual Rectifier. I don't want to change the tone, which is why I keep the gain down. I use reverb on almost every song I play. My reverb unit is an Elextro-Harmonix Holy Grail. I usually use at 60 decay and my reverb level at 35. I also use a Boss DD6 delay on several songs. I set my up with about 90-110 ms of delay time with 1-5 repeats. I also use an older DOD delay pedal that I set with longer delay times for some songs. My Chorus pedal is a Boss Chorus Ensemble on the few songs I use chorus on. I keep my speed at 10 and rate at about 60. The only other effects I really use are a MXR Phaser that I set for a slow sweep and a DOD flanger that I set up the same way. I use a One spot patch system to hook all of my pedals together on a custom board a friend designed for me. I have a Korg turner in the board to keep my in tune. I rarely use a Wah pedal, but I do have a Dunlop in my board that I have been using for years.

I have four main guitars that I use in my arsenal currently among my collection. The first is the one that my father bought for me that still means so much to me. I also usually record most of my stuff with this guitar. This is my 1998 Peavey Tracer. It is white with a maple fret board and has 22 frets. It has one humbucker pickup. I would not call the pick up hot, but it does a great job. I had an Ibanez Edge Tremolo put in it a year after I got its blocked so it does not float. I have it set up for 10 gauge strings. I typically use this guitar on any classic rock song as well as some neo-classical stuff that I play.

My next guitar is an early LTD model I believe it is from 1999. I have been told it's an M-II, but even the guys at the ESP Guitar Company have not been able to give me much information. It is a black reverse head stock body with 22 fret rosewood fret board. The body is ash and the neck is a bolt on maple neck. It has a stock slant single coil pick up in the next and a Seymour Duncan George Lynch Screamin' Demon humbucker in the bridge. It has a blocked Schaller Floyd Rose tremolo and black hardware. I use this guitar on various styles of songs. I use this on songs that need tremolo typically and anything that requires a very high speed run at the top of the neck.

My third guitar is a 2002 ESP/LTD George Lynch signature GL-500T Tiger. It is orange, purple and black tiger. It features a reverse headstock, a 22 fret maple neck with a rosewood fret board and alder body. The ESP Custom Shop version has a maple body, which I really don't like. It has a licensed Floyd Rose tremolo that I left floating. The neck pick up is a stock single coil and the bridge pickup is an upgraded Seymour Duncan George Lynch Screamin' Demon pickup. This guitar has a push/pull volume knob. This guitar is my main guitar that I use for anything from George Lynch or any song that requires tapping.

I don't have anything fancy I use in cables. I don't like wireless systems so I use cables, but I don't play big states so it's no big deal. I typically use medium gauge picks often by Dunlop. I prefer the Seymour Duncan pickups. Some of my other guitars have Duncan Invaders or distortion in them. I use 10 gauge GHS Boomers for my strings

Sources and for further reading.

www.espguitars.com

www.carvin.com

http://www.mesaboogie.com/

www.marshallamps.com

www.bossus.com

www.ibanez.com

www.dod.com

www.digitech.com

www.musiciansfriend.com

www.guitarcenter.com