Concerning strings-do you understand when I say my sound is too "steely"?

[jetsnation]

I have a strat, boutique vox ac15 clone EL-84s , and pickups similar to the one on the Eric Johnson strat.

I think I have ball slinky 10's on at the moment.

The sound I'm getting can only be described as too steel guitar like. More "electric" than musical- ok I know that probably makes zero sense too you. I'm getting more of a fender type country twang than what you would expect from a Vox set-up.

The things I can change are strings, pup height(?), and perhaps tubes.

The strings are the easiest, any ideas?

Can tubes make much of a diffrence in this area. There's a lot of stuff I like about my set-up, I just need a little more of a sweet top.

[wundergussy]

Use pure nickel strings. Makes a big difference: more warmth, less tinny.

[solitaire]

What about the speaker in the Vox clone?

Too warm a string and the tone will go blurred instead - and the winding of your choice does not affect the plain strings, which potentially could sound steelier than the wound ones.

Ernie Ball isn't the most outstanding manufacturer of strings so you could have your issue right there. Also adjusting the height of your pickups could make wonders.

[Jimmy P]

+ 1,000,000 on pure nickel strings. I suggest Pyramid Max Performance, I have no affiliation with Pyramid but I've been so happy with the tone quality I take every chance to suggest them. also try lowering your pick up height.

[Polynitro]

try chrome flatwounds

[gatordoc]

I switched to pure nickel strings years ago with my single coils and they made a major improvement. My G&L S-500 has separate bass and treble controls. Steel strings only allowed me to use about 1/2 of my treble knob before they'd get all trebly and ice-picky. The pure nickel strings let me use the whole treble range. Really warms up single coils. I'm a fan of GHS pure nickel strings - Burnished or Nickel Rockers.

[frankie5fingers]

I had some questions with a simliar situaton in another thread. I couldn't seem to get the point of "steely" across either. What I found as that in the upper register, my unwound, but to a degree even my wound, strings sounded too steely, too "brittle". This was using an amp that had previously not given me that type of thing. The guitar is a custom build and even though the builder did a fine job and set it up properly, I eliminated the problem by isolating that the problem was indeed the guitar since the tone could come from a number of amp-related areas. That was easy, unplugged, and using other amps, still steely. I re-levelled, recrowned and repolished the frets, nothing radical, they were pretty level to begin with. I also spent an unreasonable amount of time adjusting pup height. Probelm solved, at the cost of a couple of hours work. Better quality strings don't hurt either, but there's not much that beats a meticulously performed fret dress and set up. My .02

[chervokas]

Yup, lower pickup heights, especially with a Strat, work wonders. I also adore pure nickel strings...won't help the "steely" sound of the unwound strings so much, but I highly recommend them nonetheless for a steely sounding situation. I like Pyramid Nickel classics because they're round core, last a long time and hold tune and intonation well, but they're expensive.

[jetsnation]

Thanks to all of you for your help.

I have a celestion blue that I'd call recently broke-in.

My frets were re-done by someone reputable, but I'll have someone else look
at it.

Will try out some nickel strings this weekend.

[WailinGuy]

Maybe you just need a longer cord going betweeen your guitar and your amp or the first pedal (if there's a pedal board). Longer cord = more capacitance = more highs rolled off.

[chervokas]

Originally Posted by WailinGuy

Maybe you just need a longer cord going betweeen your guitar and your amp or the first pedal (if there's a pedal board). Longer cord = more capacitance = more highs rolled off.

That's not entirely accurate.

Yes, longer cable will give you more capacitance and the capacitance of the cable does function as a low pass filter rolling off highs, and the frequency at which highs roll will be lower with more capacitance.

But the electric guitar has little if any output above 5khz and in order for the cable to be rolling frequencies down that low (at least when the volume knob is turned up to full) you need more capacitance than you're likely to have unless you're using extremely long runs of high capacitance cable.

A more important effect of cable capacitance has to do with resonant frequency tuning. Together with the inductance of the pickups and the resistance of the pots, the capcitance of the cable form an oscilating circuit with a resonant peak at a certain frequency. Adding capacitance will lower the resonant frequency, causing the system to sound darker (even though you're not actually rolling off high frequencies). This is probably a more important factor in why cables of different capacitances sound different in a guitar circuit than the low pass filter characteristics.

In any event, I think the OP is better off trying to find strings and pickups that work with low capacitance cables than trying to tune the guitar with cable. That way it will be easier to switch between the guitars without unexpected capacitance loading effects and it will also be easier to consistently replicate the tone (because the resonant frequency tuning will change with the guitar's output impedance and the guitar's output impedance will change with the frequencies you play, switching between pickups, and especially when rolling back the volume knob).

Also, I would say, don't be afraid to roll back your tone knob if you're getting icy picky tones.