Pups or FX?

TheOtherDennis

So the Les Dennis has two Iron Gear Rolling Mill pups in it. Overall they're all right, but the other guitarist in the band has two Gibsons - an SG and an Explorer. He uses the SG for rehearsals and the Explorer for gigs.

Now obviously, there's no point comparing the two directly cos I'm on a hiding to nothing, and I've never really been into the whole effects world for the simple reason it's yet more expense for stuff I don't understand properly.

However after an episode where the heat from some stage lights sent my strings out of tune while we were waiting to go on, causing some deeply unpleasant noises to emanate from me that I couldn't solve until it was too late, I bought an ME25 to get a floorboard tuner that I can use on stage quickly and discreetly. It does that job well enough.

I also hoped I'd get some decent sounds out of it. All I wanted was one or two that I could stick to or switch between (the style of the band is fairly straight, no huge variation in tones required) that sounded ok.

However, it doesn't matter what I try - one of the crunch channels, one of the drive channels, one of the heavy channels, or even a clean channel with the gain on the amp switched on - everything is like listening to an old AM radio in a DAB world. It's all scratchy and high-pitched, with no beef or bottom end.

Do I change my pups for something beefier or is there an effect out there that might make my sound a bit easier on the ear? Do I change my amp settings (ancient solid-state Fender Princetone that's actually pretty good) to add more bass and less treble? Is it all actually in the fact that I'm not a guitar god and never will be and no combination of pups/fx/amp will ever sound the way I want it to?

Or is this just the guitarist's perpetual dilemma, that I'll never be satisfied, not really, no matter what I do?

TTony

TheOtherDennis said:

Or is this just the guitarist's perpetual dilemma, that I'll never be satisfied, not really, no matter what I do?

Welcome to the Pleasuredome

The Rolling Mills are generally well regarded (given the price) and shouldn't be the cause of a scratchy/high-pitched sound.

Work through the chain piece by piece.

Try your other guitarists amp (briefly if necessary) to see how the guitar/p'ups sound through that.

Beexter

Are you inadvertently running one of the amp sims on the ME25 that's messing with your EQ?

TheOtherDennis

@TTony - that's what I thought, too, that the Rolling Mills are an excellent budget option. I've had a play in the last half hour or so, and I changed guitar from the Less Dennis to the Epi 335 (which I put two supposedly Gibson 52 reissues in), and there's not as big a difference as I thought there'd be. There is still a difference - the Gibson pups in the Epi are definitely deeper and growlier, but it's still not quite there.

@Beexter - because I didn't like any of the sounds coming from the ME25, I chose one of the clean channels. It may still be a sim of a tweed amp or somesuch, but it's supposed to be cleanish, anyway.

I'll give a few more options a go tomorrow and see what happens.