THE PATH TO SONIC
ENLIGHTENMENT
REVEALED
If you’ve made it this far, you’re
probably thinking I pulled the
old bait-and-switch, talking
about the “beauty” of blending
your clean signal in with your
dirty signal. And guess what:
you’re right. By leaving that
pretty clean tone partially
intact, you’ve never fully
clipped your waveform. What
this means is that you can stack
two (or even three or four)
clean-blend overdrives into one
another without turning your
guitar signal into a gummy,
ill-defined glob of sonic goo.
And when you do so, you get
the harmonic complexities of
all of those overdrive tones
blended with a rich, full, and
most importantly, articulate
clean tone. The end result is
not unlike the sound a killer
riff double (or triple) tracked
through multiple amps. Boom!
This is the recipe for massive
tone.
NOW BLOW IT UP!
But wait, there’s more. Thanks
to our good friends at ElectroHarmonix, there’s a classic fuzz
pedal that we can add to our
stew of sonic mayhem. The
Bass Big Muff is based on the
venerable “Green Russian”
Big Muff but includes a Dry
14
TONE TALK //
switch for adding clean lowend back into the signal. When
you hit the Bass Big Muff with
one or more of the overdrives
listed above you now have
the biggest clean-overdrivefuzz tone the world has ever
known—the best of all options.
From the precise attack of
the clean tone, the warmth
of a good overdrive, and the
searing edge of the Muff,
you really can have it all.
But of course, with great power
comes great responsibility. A
tone like this can level entire
apartment buildings and easily
anger bandmates. Your new
and improved guitar tone will
take up a large swath of sonic
real estate, so please use it
sparingly. But most importantly,
pick up a few of these wonder
pedals and experiment—my
personal favorite recently has
been Merman, into Bass Big
Muff, into Pork Loin.
“THE END RESULT
IS NOT UNLIKE THE
SOUND A KILLER RIFF
DOUBLE (OR TRIPLE)
TRACKED THROUGH
MULTIPLE AMPS.
BOOM!”
Clean Blend Overdrives: The Unlikely Path to Tonal Nirvana