Less agressive guitar sound

Hi Mike,

First off, thanks for the great song lessons. Appreciating all the modern rock tracks.


I wanted to ask: what are some guidelines for achieving a less aggressive guitar sound?


I'm using a Korg AX3000G signal processor with my Ibanez RGA32 and every time I add distortion I just end up with a very aggressive sound (which is not always bad, I just like my diversity). If understand correctly, most of the sound comes down to your guitar and amp choice -- but I'm still messing about too much due to a lack of knowledge/experience on the amp selection scene.

As an example, I'm trying to achieve sounds similar to your All The Small Things lesson, or (maybe a better example) Christopher Schlegel's Pinky Exercises lessons.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks,

André

Hey Andre! Glad you are digging the lessons!

Let me also offer a few general guidelines that might be useful to you: First off, when going for a less aggressive tone, the amp choice is the most important consideration. When I shoot the lessons here on GuitarTricks, I always strive to set up the tones I need on my Pod-XT using only the amp models, with no added Overdrive/Distortion.

Your Korg unit has plenty of options just for amps, and you should be able to get in the ballpark of some less aggressive tones just by selecting models such as the AC30TB, UK68, or UK80 (this one will get you closer to the Blink182 sound).

Once you've selected the amp model, play around with the DRIVE control. All the way down, and you'll really clean up things, but these particular amp models come to life the more DRIVE you add in. The amps these programs are modelled after are more "vintage" sounding, and are not nearly as distorted as many modern rock/metal amps. Yet they do offer a good amount of distortion without being too aggressive.

Experimentation is the key here. Really take some time to play around with all the controls and make mental notes on how those controls affect the overall tone. You'll notice that easing off the MID and HIGH eq controls for the amp will also tend to lessen the aggressive nature of the sound.

Again, experiment with these things WITHOUT adding in an overdrive or distortion effect. Get used to the things you can do with just the amp models by themselves. Once you get more comfortable with that, you can experiment even more by adding in some effects.

I really hope these tips give you some direction, or at the very least, a good starting point to help get you closer to what you're looking for. Please keep me posted on your progress!!

Thanks!
Mike