How do you gig your Lazy J20?

ruoma

So after a couple years of bedroom noodling with my J20, I'm finally going to start gigging again. My part in the band is gonna be delicate cleans with washy delay over it on the verses, then the next crunchy overdrive lead tones. All pretty supplementary to the lead vocal, no crazy solo's etc. Seeing as there's a lot of delay going on with different feedback levels, I'm going to be tap dancing quite a lot so I want to keep my drives fairly simple.

At the moment I've been rehearsing the songs with the amp in bright on 6, my les paul's low output neck pickup with treble bleed on 2-3 for the cleans, and then just flicking over to the bridge on 10 for gain, actually with pretty much no drive pedal at the moment, save for perhaps a cruiser, to be able to concentrate on the delay tapping and expression pedal washing.

I've been debating using my tele or strat for more sparkly cleans, but the convenience of being able to flick the switch from neck to bridge for clean to drive is pretty sweet and is one less tap to dance. If I were to do that with the tele I'd have to set the amp a bit cleaner and then stomp on a drive pedal and the bridge pickup, aswell as the delay or volume pedal, and that's just a lot of work and timing!

Granted the J20 is great, but now that I have to do so much with it, I do find it quite tricky to navigate through my guitar and pedals in a split second. Perhaps the ideal guitar would be a tele with p90 neck and humbucker bridge with two volume and tone pots?

So my question to you is: 

"How do you gig your J20?" 

Give us all the gory details! Pickup hotness, guitar, wood type, volume pot adjustments, pedals etc. Any little tricks you may have discovered to get the most out of the amp!

Cheers!

simonk

Keeping it simple I find works best. No drives (unless it's a Cruiser), just a boost and let your volume knobs and the amp do the work.
I prefer single coils with it too.

peteri

Maybe get a loop switcher? Less tap dancing then 

IvisonGuitars

Basically I arrive at the gig, put it on the stage, plug the guitar in, turn it up and play! ;-) 

hotpickups

miserneil said:

Basically I arrive at the gig, put it on the stage, plug the guitar in, turn it up and play! ;-) 

This is me too. I don't get fancy about it except my tone is on around 7

hotpickups

peteri said:

Maybe get a loop switcher? Less tap dancing then 

This one in particular. Expensive but bomb proof  

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/90021/interesting-from-disaster-area-coming-soon#latest

menamestom

Nothing to do with the amp, but with your Tele get a tapable bridge pickup and swap the tone for a push pull so that you can just push it down for a lead tone and volume boost.

Oil City do them.....

http://www.oilcitypickups.co.uk/teletap.html

IvisonGuitars

My 'tips' would be don't over attenuate it, let it breath and try jumping the channels, lots of additional tones to be found.

ruoma

Thanks for the comments guys. Seems like everybody's volume knobbing for cleans

ruoma

So after playing and playing, I really think I need a tele for the easiest clean to crunch transition with this amp! Les Paul is wicked, but too much work!

IvisonGuitars

ruoma said:

So after playing and playing, I really think I need a tele for the easiest clean to crunch transition with this amp! Les Paul is wicked, but too much work!

I gigged mine Friday night 'wide open' I.e. No VAC with a LP and it was a stunning sound BUT I couldn't get an edge of break up tone, using the bright 1 input and jumping the channels, I was already into heavy crunch by 2 on both volumes.

I think you are spot on in that a Tele will give more 'control', I gigged my '65 with the J20 the previous week and it was again glorious but I was also able to get a lovely, rich clean tone too.

simonk

A Telecaster is so often the correct answer.

hotpickups

miserneil said:

My 'tips' would be don't over attenuate it, let it breath and try jumping the channels, lots of additional tones to be found.

I don't find the LP difficult with it. However, it's the only guitar I have

IvisonGuitars

hotpickups said:

miserneil said:

My 'tips' would be don't over attenuate it, let it breath and try jumping the channels, lots of additional tones to be found.

I don't find the LP difficult with it. However, it's the only guitar I have

Neither do I, I thought the Les Paul was glorious with it last week....(I'd still take the J40 for overall tone if I had to choose though...)

ruoma

hotpickups said:

miserneil said:

My 'tips' would be don't over attenuate it, let it breath and try jumping the channels, lots of additional tones to be found.

I don't find the LP difficult with it. However, it's the only guitar I have

The sound is superb with a les Paul, but a lot of work to get open cleans in a hurry imo. 

ruoma

So as an update to this thread, I'm using the tele as main axe for the J20 now. I have noticed though that I get a sweeter clean sound by rolling the volume on my neck pickup down to around 7. A lot sparklier, not as mid heavy or aggressive. The problem I'm having now is getting the VOLUME balance right between rolled down cleans, light crunch and then lead gain/volume. Amp is set Bright on 3, Normal on 2, Tone on 7

I'm experimenting with two scenario's. 
Let me explain:

Option 1:
Clean tone:     tele on 7 with cruiser ON (dialed in to stay clean here)
Crunch tone:   tele on 10 with cruiser ON (cruiser gets crunchy now. PROBLEM: too big a volume jump!!!)
Lead tone:       tele on 10 with cruiser ON + Cornish CC-1 (PROBLEM: gets gainer for awesome lead tone but not enough volume jump)

Option 2:
Clean tone:     tele on 7
Crunch tone:   tele on 7 with cruiser ON (PROBLEM: cruiser dialed in pretty extreme to get crunchy)
Lead tone:       tele on 10 with cruiser ON (ADVANTAGE: huge volume boost and I could even stack the CC-1 for thicker tone)

--------------
So option 2 gives me the least volume jump from clean to crunch, but sort of makes me dial in the cruiser in an extreme way, which in my opinion it isn't really made for, unless you want fuzz. I consider the cruiser more of a booster. People always say, you can get all sounds with the volume knob, but how do they work around the volume difference? I played a komet 19 amp with train wreck heritage the other day which preserved the cleaned up volume/ gain volume a bit better. 

Or can I perhaps remedy this with a different volume pot?

timmysoft

Q -"How do you gig your J20?" 

 A -Most people use a camera to take a picture, then they list it for sale on here. The other option is to go on about "Jesse" and then sell the amp.

professorben

timmysoft said:

Q -"How do you gig your J20?" 

 A -Most people use a camera to take a picture, then they list it for sale on here. The other option is to go on about "Jesse" and then sell the amp.

Seems like a faff, there should be an option to just load your J20 in your car and drive aimlessly around the country whilst telling people it's all about the 'sag'

simonk

professorben said:

timmysoft said:

Q -"How do you gig your J20?" 

 A -Most people use a camera to take a picture, then they list it for sale on here. The other option is to go on about "Jesse" and then sell the amp.

Seems like a faff, there should be an option to just load your J20 in your car and drive aimlessly around the country whilst telling people it's all about the 'sag'

What??

ruoma

Zzzzzzzz

Lebarque

@ruoma  I feel your pain here. I really want to get everything from my guitar's vol control, but often go back to the flexibility of a clean sound (with headroom to spare) and build on it with pedals. That way is the only way i know that i can use a clean boost to get a louder clean tone when needed. That being said, I'm currently trialling strat on 8 for clean, strat on 10 for light drive, then boost or fuzzface for lead.