Discovering the Blues "sweet tone"

LQBlues

iK Multimedia Amplitube and PositiveGrid Bias are two Apps that can compliment one another rather than compete. IK made a name modeling famous Amps by known Rocker. IK gives you good choices go stock tube and IC driven Amp/pre-Amps/ speaker Cabinets and microphones but their IOS Apps fail in post Processing. positive Grid Bias goes miles ahead of IK by breaking down the Amps into heads, pre-amps, speaker cabinets and in post processing features. IK is also miles ahead in mixing and creating custom pedal board features. AudioBus lets you add effects, superior Looping Apps and a number of Studio Analog mixing boards and post processing features like a 96 track sound board, more familiar post processors like Cubasis, ReBirth and IK's built-in drum Box, and Keyboard sampler and various ways to add synthisizers and famous Moog processors and keyboards from Grand Pianos to orchestrated wood winds, brass, strings, and historic electronic keyboards. I remember that a Rhodes Compact or Hammond organ was portable so long as you had a small U-Haul and a road crew to get you from gig to gig. In '68 we traveled in a two cars. I rode shotgun in an old Mercury With a U-haul that we packed our guitars, amps, the Hammond B3, Congas and a full drum set. The floorboard was rotted through as I avoided car sickness was the blacktop kept drawing my attention while we road from Carbondale Illinois over the Ozarks to play various proms for some pocket cash.

Today we could have traveled with our guitars and everything else in the guitar case or a small backpack. Mustang Sally would still have sounded as good with the exception possibly of the infamous Hammond B3 (we were an R&B group and students at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale). Our typical band stand was in one of the famous Geodesic Domes off campus.

Now we are carrying our creativity in our pockets. I like a smooth distortion and I don't care much for 'Fuzz'. When I play blues, I normally use a 40 Watt Fender Blues Deluxe. It takes a good 10-minutes for the 12AX7 power tubes to get hot enough and I match my tubes so I don't get and unwanted harmonics. I don't have the luxury of owning a Leslie speaker but I like the sound when I have a pure or smooth distortion without the 'fuzz' in there. The strings distort by feeding the tone back into itself. I really like like this sound using a Guild 'Les Paul' copy which was made in the US in Rhode Island about the time Fender purchased Guild. It was called a Guild Bluesbird and personally it's the best Les Paul I've played without the Les Paul name on it (yeah, I know Gibson and Epiphone own the Les Paul logo so for SN 0000420 the other 419 owners know how sweet this axe is.

To get the sound I want I use the IK Multimedia AmpliTube with the Hendrix and Fender add-ins but I turn the Amps off. Then I add Bias to the Input section of Audiobus choosing a 50 Watt Tweed stack. I replace the pre-amp input and cathode tubes of the pre-amp head to be four 12AX7 tubes if I use a 6L6GB or EL 34 in the power amp I need to lower the gain or volume to smooth out the distortion. Instead, I can pull the 6L6GB and put in a lower powered 6V6GT to achieve a smoother distortion without giving up volume. Another way to accomplish this is to simply reduce the wattage of the amp and achieve the distortion at a lower volume and use a michrophone in front of and slightly off to the side of the speaker cone and plugging the michrophone into the rooms sound system that produces the same distorted tones at louder volume but without the "fuzzy" tone.

You have the opportunity to create your own unique sound by experimentation without electrocuting yourself or smelling your amp on fire. Next time I'll look at effects pedals and creating drum effects without sounding repetitious.

richardyot

OK, so if you are using Amplitube without the amps, presumably you are using the effects pedals - which pedals, and why?

The best Leslie speaker sim I've heard on iOS is in Gallileo organ BTW, it can run the in the Audiobus effects slot.

Sonicflux

Nice. I'm a Saluki, myself, but was there in the early 90's rather than the 60's.

I've been frustrated trying to get a decent blues tone out of IOS amp sims. I'll have to try out your method soon.

SleepGodWen

This is how BIAS/JamUp of Positive Grid sounds like for Blues,

Sounds great for me

ActualProof

+1 on Galileo, being "the closest tight we have native on iOS". As the husband of a B3/122 combo since 1997 (present to myself for 21st birthday), I've got to concede that I've tried EVERY emulator, digital incarnation, plug-in, or other attempt out there - and nothing will ever be indistinguishable from the real thing to me. There's just too much going on. The closest I've come in my live rig is using NI B4 triggered by a Nord Electro 4 and played through a MotionSound KBR-3D rotary amp (best all-purpose gigging keyboard amp out there). I also got a very close tone out of a set-up that I used for a live recording of my fusion trio at a club venue as part of a jazz festival concert series. I needed portability and wasn't expecting it to sound as legit as it did: simply using the on-board organ emulator on a Nord Electro 2, played through a '65 Fender Princeton Reverb silverface guitar amp! Surprising results! I'll post a track from the set shortly.