Grateful Dead Music Forum

Yes, the tone does sound awesome and so does your playing! Bravo!

The tone is just slightly different than the (at this point) tried and true method that many of us are getting, so excellently explained above by Brad.

Either way, rock on!

Hey Mik. You guys sounded the best I've ever heard you @ Jerry Jam. In this clip (pun intended) because we were outdoors and I was using the MC250 I did not use the compressor . The not quite there tone probably came from me not realizing ( meat head ) I was in humbucker mode for quite a bit of it. I hope to record using the tube power section shortly ( and single coil DUH!). It's the journey that is most fun for me. Not sure what I would if I got there or was there in the past and didn't realize it?

I agree, no rules here. That is a nice tone. I played a Jerry Day gig recently and didn't go for an authentic approach, didn't even use my SMS preamp. I used a 37 watt 1968 Bandmaster Reverb with all my JG mods in it into a pair of old JBL D's. It was tubey and gushy and sparkly sweet, not stiff and McIntoshy. It was my personal comfort zone and a good stage volume at full power. I'm really not a good enough picker to play an authentic Jerry rig. Doing it the "right" way is truly ruthless and unforgiving. Even Kimock said that after he tried playing thru Garcia's rig, he just couldn't do it, way, way too hard to control and virtually impossible to make sound good.

A local dead band player that has been at it for 40 years once got to watch Jerry sound check at Deer Creek. He said that Jerry had the house and stage to himself for an hour to warm up while Healy worked him into the PA. At first Jerry sounded terrible, sloppy, harsh, clumsy, even took him nearly 45 minutes to handle that loud and relentless amp setup. But once Jerry was warmed up, my buddy said it was just glorious.

To do Jerry correctly, it requires being Jerry Garcia. To get close, it requires outrageously advanced right hand picking control, something very few humans can actually do. Pick just a tiny bit too hard and bad sounds happen. Pick a bit too softly and you can't hear it. So I appreciate the variety of ways we all find to make it easier to play this music with a tone that's in the ballpark and in a way that feels good in our hands. I don't even try to do the Jerry clone rig thing, simply because it takes such extreme skill, skill that I'll never have, and it also requires obscenely loud stage volume to light up those speakers to where they sing, like Jerry did, on the verge of blowing with virtually every stroke of the pick.

B


Brad

SarnoMusicSolutions wrote:It's a pretty fuzzy distinction between a compressor and a limiter. In the studio, they're almost always the same device. It just depends on how you run it and where you set the threshold that makes the difference between compression and limiting. There's a big grey area where compression begins to become more like limiting. Limiting could be described as a high ratio and high threshold that only grabs and clamps down on the highest peaks while compression could be described as generally a lower ratio and a threshold set to where it is acting on more of the sound more of the time than just the highest peaks. What I'm hearing in the demo video sounds like compression, taking control over quite a bit of the attack and decay envelope, re-shaping most of the signal, not just the peak transients.

In this case, the compressor is a pretty advanced circuit that is built into the preamp itself, deeply integrated into the preamp stages, at least that's what I read about it. Definitely not a pedal type, more of a studio, line-level type of approach. Regardless, compression is compression, guitar pedal or line-level, same principle.

In either case, limiting vs compression, you are altering dynamics, reducing peaks, preventing the vital clipping and all the sweet harmonics that result from that clipping.


B

Nice way of expanding on what I tossed out. That's exactly what I meant. For many years ( as a Bobby player ) I had a Presonus Eureka in my rack for compression only. And set its limit threshold to only compress the highest of highs. To which I thought of as when my excitement jumps all over the mix. LOL! That to me is what it sounds like the functionality in these amps is trying to accomplish. You couldn't tell I even had it on 99% of the time. I had the threshold set high and the ratio at like 3:1 so only when my volume was cranked and I hit the strings hard did it kick in. All other times it was under the gate...

Yea, the "no rules here" is a great way to say it. We all have to agree there are a couple or so excellent ways to get real close. Especially when lower volume is required.

For me, at this point in life/etc......we ONLY play if we can be at outrageous volume where pick attack and right hand control is paramount. Not easy by any stretch and after many years of studying and practicing Jerry's dynamics in that respect, it's still a learning process every time I play alone or with others. That's when the magic happens.

When ya can get your chops cookin' and that magic with the right twin and Mc (at outrageous volume), well you know the rest.

We have lots of open doors, many options and the most awesome people in the world sharing and giving their all so we can play our ever lovin' hearts out!

Ya sure can't ask for more