I am trying to achieve an approximation of Jerry's Europe 72 tone at home, without deafening the rest of my family. My purpose is to play along with recordings and backing tracks - for my own amusement and practice. So everyone knows where I'm coming from, I am aware that even if I could be magically transported to a Paris stage in 1972 and had Jerry's equipment in my hands, I would not sound just like him. I know something about his stage rigs at the time and I am not out to copy that. I have heard Jerry's guitar isolated and was surprised by the difference between the records and the isolated sound - very thin by comparison. I have read that Jerry did not use a compressor on stage, but surely compression was used somewhere in the process of turning the raw recordings into the album. The amp I am using lately is a stock 1964 BF Super Reverb. It has an excellent clean tone at home volume levels.
I am falling short of getting a nice creamy breakup, for lack of a better term, without harshness and brittle attack. I think a compressor might help smooth the attack. My old CS-3 has died so I am looking for a replacement. As for the breakup, I have a Tube Screamer, Wampler Pinnacle and Joyo AC Tone. None of them on their own gets quite the right breakup to my ears. I have tried feeding the TS9 into the Wampler with gain turned down on both but still didn't get the right sound.
Would I be better served by another dirt pedal, or should I try an attenuator and crank up the amp? I don't expect to sound exactly like Jerry, just looking to approximate his 1972 tone at a lower volume level.
I am falling short of getting a nice creamy breakup, for lack of a better term, without harshness and brittle attack. I think a compressor might help smooth the attack. My old CS-3 has died so I am looking for a replacement. As for the breakup, I have a Tube Screamer, Wampler Pinnacle and Joyo AC Tone. None of them on their own gets quite the right breakup to my ears. I have tried feeding the TS9 into the Wampler with gain turned down on both but still didn't get the right sound.
Would I be better served by another dirt pedal, or should I try an attenuator and crank up the amp? I don't expect to sound exactly like Jerry, just looking to approximate his 1972 tone at a lower volume level.