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Playing my SG earlier, I couldn't help but notice the sound on the bridge pickup seemed a little unbalanced. The tone was great on the bass-side strings, but the B and High E seemed very shrill. I tried adjusting the controls, but once I'd got the sound mellowed out on the top strings, the bottom two then sounded a bit dull and lifeless. What does this need?, I began to wonder, do I need to re-think my EQ, put a compressor in the chain, something else entirely...? I envisioned myself opening a thread to ask you lot what to suggest. I envisioned that there a pedal that might fix the problem, or if that I might just have to get used to this imbalance, and adjust the tone control as I went along. Then I turned the guitar around and looked at the pickups. The treble side on the bridge pickup seemed way up compared to the neck pickup. One turn of a screwdriver just saved me a lot of time and money!

Very familiar with this temporal device myself...I've been telling myself I'll put some proper work into DADGAD tuning "soon" for the last couple of years!

Standard set should do it, yes. Or, in my case and in the absence of any nut files at all, use a standard (undersized) file to get close and an old string to finish to the right size… And I plan on reusing two strings from the current set and then four from a new set for the experiment….

The guitar industry certainly had worked hard over the decades to convince us all that some new add-on or other is the newer rather than looking to the set-up! I can't criticise anyone else who might fall for that. I'm quite minimal with my pedals now (a decent overdrive, tremolo, and a reverb or echo pedal, don't much mind which, if there's no reverb in the amp itself), but the problem is I keep wanting to buy *more* of those limited range of effects, ffs.... Honestly, this is where being left handed is a bonus. If Fender, Squier, and a few others weren't so utterly crap at providing left handed models, I'd be bankrupt by now!

Oh, rest assured, it might have solved my immediate problem, but it certainly didn't cure my GAS!

None of which should necessarily stop you from getting a new pedal/EQ/amp/guitar (delete as appropriate)….. I didn’t really appreciate the significance of pickup height until I replaced the pickups in a Strat. It was playing around with the height across the strings that led me to hit - totally by chance - a sweet spot that transformed the whole instrument.

I’ve had a ton of guitar amps over the years including Line6, Marshall, Fender, Vox and Boss Katana. I’ve ended up moving them all on as they were too big, too loud, too heavy or just a bit…., meh. Most recently I’ve been using an old Fender G-Dec 15 for practice and that’s an amp that has outlasted all the newer, shinier models that have come and gone while I’ve had it. It’s been a great practice amp but It just sounds a bit….ordinary and it’s no good for recording. Enter the Blackstar ID:X 50 and, so far, i am loving this! It seems to be positioned as a direct competitor to the Katana but i think they both have a very different approach. The Katana is all about the Boss FX built in. It sounds fantastic but i think you need to spend a lot of time with the app to customise it to your own needs. The Blackstar has FX onboard and has an app but it really is an amp first and foremost and you don’t really need to touch the app to get great sounds from it. I like the USB connection to the computer and the ability to use it as an audio interface to record direct (with IR cab simulation). I also like that i can play backing tracks from Youtube (or wherever) through the USB connection into the amp or direct from my phone. But the main thing is the sound. It sounds superb even on the 1W setting.

I quite agree: I appreciate what Line6 were trying to do with their (earlier) amps, but if the core tone is horrible, no amount of clever effects is going to compensate for that!

Which should be the starting point for all amps. Well played, Blackstar.

My YouTube algorithm offered me this; Once I got past the usual irritations i was fascinated by the sound of it. I’m going to give it a try but I think it might be worth getting a cheap nut that I can file for the thicker strings. Anyone tried Gambale tuning?

Best of luck with your experimentation - I'll be very interested to hear how you get on with it!

As I have 'spare' guitars galore, I'm going to have to try this, soon. ... (When I say 'soon', this is a temporal device meaning 'someday, but I don't know when'. It's been almost a year since I played guitar at all, so ...)

Isn't that just baritone guitar tuning?* Or are some strings going up and some down? (* I say this realising bari players have strong opinions about whether one should tune A-A or B-B!) EDIT: sorry, I did some digging and realised what it actually entails! Now it sounds more like an inversion of Nashville tuning...I'm certainly intrigued.

Oh, I've had exactly the same problem! I think I've finally got to the point where I'm happy to just reach for the Tube Screamer clone if I'm playing my Tele, and the Dumble clone if I'm on the SG - no longer um-ing and ah-ing about whether they'd sound better if I got just one more pedal... Funnily, I thought youtube gear videos would make my pedal GAS worse, but I think they've actually helped calm it down: I was almost going to flog my Caline PureSky (Timmy clone, I seem to recall?) before I found a video that showed me I'd been using it all wrong.

No, no it isn't. Generally it is, but there are exceptions. I have 2 custom basses that came with ultra low actions and little or no relief, not my tastes. So I did my usual set up only to find that all the strings were choked out - reverse action truss rod .

Hi yes thats what i thought but it actually straightened the neck,i did it in small increments and slowly but surely it worked fine, so in this instance the truss rod worked in reverse, i thought righty tighty lefty loosey was the industry standard but maybe its not with 100% of guitars

So I think that means that clockwise would add relief, loosening the strings which is in line with what you’re seeing. It’s the looser strings which always seems counterintuitive to me…..

Hi its the soundhole area

Which end is it adjusted from? The sound hole? Or the headstock end? I can never get my head round which way truss rods adjust as they seem counterintuitive but I’ve always worked on the assumption that if I do (as you have) small adjustments, count them (so I can go back to square one as needed) and don’t do more than a half turn in total in any direction, it should be okay… I’ve always believed most truss rods are two way so loosening it should be fine - what I have found is that the neck takes a little time to settle when loosened so it’s easy to go too far and have to retighten a bit. All that said, despite being generally cack-handed and not really having a clue, I’ve managed not to break anything yet by sticking to the small-bit-at-a-time rule. Good luck!

Just looked at the nux, very appealing specs, with price tag to match. For experimenting and my entry level setup I think the budget friendly sonicake might be a better choice for me, unless of course the general consensus here was it's overrated and doesn't cut it.

I’ve had a couple of PRS SE models before and they’ve been great but left me a bit….underwhelmed really. Beautifully made and great to play but somehow, a bit….passionless Stupid, I know, but I’ve always ended up moving them on (to better players who can make proper use of their obvious quality). Part of the downsizing exercise is to move on my Yamaha Revstar and Cort CR250 (both great guitars and incredible value for money) and replace the two with a single instrument. A trip to Wildwire in Selby (fantastic shop with an amazing selection - well worth a visit) and I tried pretty much every guitar in the place before settling on a choice between the SE Paul’s Guitar or the SE DGT. In the end I decided that I didn’t need all the switching options on the Paul’s so I saved myself a couple of hundred and got the DGT…. ….which is unlike any of the other PRS models I’ve played. It might be the slightly chunkier neck or the slightly lighter weight or maybe the pickup position on the 22 fret or the colour or…. Who knows? All I can tell you is that it sounds superb and even unplugged it absolutely sings - that Em pentatonic box at the twelfth fret just….rings out with some gorgeous harmonics. Anyway, just thought I’d share…. And a massive shout out to Wildwire for letting me play so many instruments, even fetching boxed models from the storeroom and setting them up for me to try…

I'll answer your first two questions with another question! What are you hoping to get out of it? To elaborate: are you chasing any specific guitar tones, or just looking to experiment and see what you can get out of your setup? Are you trying to make the Champ sound like a completely different amp, or just enhance the basic clean tone? I'm afraid it's a long time since I played with a multi-fx unit, but given how good the budget pedals are these days, I imagine it's worth a punt: even if you don't love it, it could be a good way to help decide what kind of tones and effects you like, and you could always buy some dedicated pedals for those. (And the resale value for the multi-fx will probably be pretty good if you decide it's not for you!) And to answer your third question: I'd have thought the Fender might be a better pairing for Knopfler-esque bluesy tones. Single-coil guitars into a Marshall is typically a bit more Hendrix, or even Ritchie Blackmore!

Useful to know! I love my Harley Benton JA25th sufficiently that I'm a little tempted to look into a Fender, or more likely a Squier Classic Vibe (if they still do the lefty version) of a JM for the distinct tonal variants (the JA is a slightly different beast that way - two p90s and a three way switch, more conventional than the JM wiring). This might be a good upgrade to that. Never seen a Gold Trem other than the Les Trem type, which I really like as a viable alternative to the Bigsby, particular as a lefthander (Bigsby don't licence a lefty version, so only the $$$$ US made version available, and that's before the expense, and irreversible marking, of installment...).

They don't really unless they're just playing one bands songs e.g ACDC. Nothing wrong with SS amps though, the Peavey Bandit 112 has been a long held secret find and they're still available for peanuts. The Yamaha G series designed by Paul Rivera was one attempt at including a parametric eq on a guitar amp to help emulate different responses. But perhaps something ahead of it's time as well. The UK's own Session amps were well regarded even if the owner did occasionally go on anti-valve rants. Plus...with modellers or profilers becoming more popular, pedal board amps are experiencing some popularity now with any players who want to stay with traditional cabs.