What to buy? Needing advice.

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sandra-

Member
Jul 10, 2009
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Ger.
Hello

I once again need your help.
I'm thinking about what could improve my sound and overall playing experience (GAS?).
Here is what i have:

- Ibanez RG350 with stock pickups
- small black dunlop Jazz III pickups ;)
- Line6 Toneport
- Revalver MKIII
- several free vsts
- ESI nEar 05 Experience monitor boxes

The budget is.... let's say... very limited.... ;)

What would you get?

Regards sandra
 
For a limited budget :
Fresh strings
Pickup change of course (though I might not be the best one to help in that case)

Definitely the best advice : a lot of researching and practice mixing songs.
 
gold plated 1/4 inch balanced guitar cables.

a decent planet waves one will cost around 30 Euro. (decent length)

it will reduce your guitars natural hum / dirt level and give you a much better signal quality
 
Balanced cables won't make any difference coming from a guitar, because the guitar only sends an unbalanced signal through a mono jack (maybe EMG's are different since they require a stereo jack, but I don't think so). That said, Planet Waves are my favorite cables, so I'll second going for one of those.

If you're able to get Revalver III to work with the Toneport (I guess you record the DI's only and monitor with Gearbox, then apply Revalver to the recorded track?), my first vote goes to an EMG ZW set, but with the 85 in the bridge and 81 in the neck (I assume that guitar is basswood). After that, definitely a new interface, which brings us to:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/513601-getting-audiointerface-faq.html
 
Metaltastic said:
Balanced cables won't make any difference coming from a guitar, because the guitar only sends an unbalanced signal through a mono jack (maybe EMG's are different since they require a stereo jack, but I don't think so). That said, Planet Waves are my favorite cables, so I'll second going for one of those.

If you're able to get Revalver III to work with the Toneport (I guess you record the DI's only and monitor with Gearbox, then apply Revalver to the recorded track?), my first vote goes to an EMG ZW set, but with the 85 in the bridge and 81 in the neck (I assume that guitar is basswood). After that, definitely a new interface, which brings us to:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/513601-getting-audiointerface-faq.html
Click to expand...

im sorry to say it but balanced cables in your signal chain do make a difference. they do for me and my gibson, jackson and cort going to my peavey head and my line 6 combo.

i they cut the usual hum (excluding gold plated here) and my cable inductance problem i had because they send a loop back through the secondary line and cancels out at the opposite end. i'll take a recording tomorrow and prove it if you want

well it worked on all my gear anyway!

EDIT: jackson with EMG's, Gibson with passives, cort with passives
 
mick thompson said:
im sorry to say it but balanced cables in your signal chain do make a difference. they do for me and my gibson, jackson and cort going to my peavey head and my line 6 combo.

i they cut the usual hum (excluding gold plated here) and my cable inductance problem i had because they send a loop back through the secondary line and cancels out at the opposite end. i'll take a recording tomorrow and prove it if you want

well it worked on all my gear anyway!

EDIT: jackson with EMG's, Gibson with passives, cort with passives
Click to expand...

There's no reason you should be sorry :loco: But as far as I know, in a balanced chain the input doesn't "loop back" the signal, but rather when connecting gizmo A to gizmo B, A sends out the signal through one wire, and then the signal phase flipped through another wire (and the ground is the third), which is how any extra noises are canceled out (and thus if the output is only mono a balanced cable is pointless). If it works for you, then awesome, but was the mono (unbalanced) cable you used decent quality? (cuz then the difference in noise might be just because of cable quality). And the balanced cable has a stereo jack, right?
 
Guitar gear is all unbalanced. A balanced cable won't do anything, since the jacks are all unbalanced and all the gear is unbalanced. Balanced cables only work with gear that is designed to use the phase flipping noise cancellation.

As a matter of fact, I don't think that a balanced cable will make any sound at all with a guitar with the EMG stereo jack... That is my experience, with my EMGed guitar from way back when.
 
yup - my unbalanced was a planet waves gold plated, and all my new balanced ones are planet waves gold plated.

it goes from my axe to my input (peavey 6505+ which is mono) also swapped out my fx loop cables to planet waves balanced gold plated and my patch cables are all balanced. the second i remove any balanced cable from the chain i get noise back and i've tried different electrical outlets in different buildings on different phases. so its nothing to do with my electrical juice and a ground loop. it was purely cable inductance from the peavey's transformer and the cables near it at the fx loop and i had inductance from my guitars to my peavey head (somewhere through my cables)

i spent a few weeks checking it out actually, talked to a few techs around ireland until finally someone gave me the idea of using a balanced cable which worked perfect. i dont know why and i know...i studied the diagrams of balanced cables and it shouldn't work but it does - im serious i'll post a video or something when i get a chance and show ya.

it was an expensive swap for all my cables and patch cables but it beated using a ground loop isolator (which didn't really work anyway when i thought it was that which is weird again because i had a cycle hum but i didn't have a ground loop problem) and a 31 band eq (which sucked my tone)

PS: sorry for saying sorry! :p

EDIT: yea removed his name... for logical reasons
 
I personally find Jazz III's, although they seem everyone's favorite, affecting the guitar sound in a negative way. They can't really give you much of a picking sound resulting in some mud. It's a matter of personal opinion of course, but even though they're good otherwise I don't find them very good sounding as far as picks go.
 
imo, on a budget, changing pickups will probably help the most..
kinda in a similar situation.. marcus has me made my mind up for an interface.. if so, now need to look for a cheap DI (or maybe build one)
 
Thanks for your awnsers!

For a limited budget :
Fresh strings
Pickup change of course (though I might not be the best one to help in that case)

Definitely the best advice : a lot of researching and practice mixing songs.
Click to expand...

I might have said that i only play alone (not in a band or jamming with someone).
I hardly ever record so i use my setup only to jam "live".

Of course i change strings every now and then.

If you're able to get Revalver III to work with the Toneport (I guess you record the DI's only and monitor with Gearbox, then apply Revalver to the recorded track?), my first vote goes to an EMG ZW set, but with the 85 in the bridge and 81 in the neck (I assume that guitar is basswood). After that, definitely a new interface, which brings us to:
Click to expand...
Well i either use revalver as standalone or in a daw when i want to use other plugins aswell or yes i apply it to a DI track. I don't use gearbox at all.

I personally find Jazz III's, although they seem everyone's favorite, affecting the guitar sound in a negative way. They can't really give you much of a picking sound resulting in some mud. It's a matter of personal opinion of course, but even though they're good otherwise I don't find them very good sounding as far as picks go.
Click to expand...
What picks do you use?

For a real amp:
Will i be able to play with it at low volumes? Or should i better get a cube/vypyr? The good thing about my setup is that i can get decent high gain tones with revalver at a low volume.

Switching pickups.... could i just change one pickup? Let's say only the bridge pickup and leave the other (mid and neck) as they are?

Regards sandra
 
Personally, unless I could afford at least a 2x12, I'd rather use a tube preamp into an interface with a rockin' 4x12 impulse applied. A Cube/Vypyr will sound decent, but definitely not as good as Revalver (or SoloC/7170/8505), simply because of the wimpier DSP power, and with EMG's, unfortunately it's a huge hassle to have one active/one passive in a guitar, so I'd go for the ZW set I mentioned above and just disconnect the middle pickup (surely you don't actually use it? :loco: ) So to summarize, my recommended order of purchase would be:

Pickups
Interface
Amp/Cab (Krank Rev Jr. and Harley Benton 2x12 get my vote for ultimate value! And as I mentioned, you can run the Krank's preamp into an interface via the FX send and use impulses)
 
Pickups
Interface
Amp/Cab .....
Click to expand...
I thought about either pickups or interface myself. Wanted to hear the oppinions of the guys here before i do anything tho. :)

I had exactly the same experience as described in your thread.
I used the green dunlop tortex pickups all the time before i tried the small jazz III ones out and once i got used to them i couldn't go back. Using the tortex now feels like trying to pick with a big CD case or something.

From a beginners point of view using Jazz III pickups improved my playing very much.

Regards sandra
 
Yeah, people usually like Jazz III's a lot, including all the guitarists I know, but I don't. It's really a matter of preference, and I don't find them very good sounding, perhaps because they're so small. If you've already tried different kinds of picks and ended up using Jazz III then it's fine.

I'll have a Jazz Pro over III usually, but recently I picked up a Dunlop 1.14mm, and find that the 1.14 makes the picking sound so much better it actually sounds to me like I'd have better pickups. Could also just be the resulting delusion from my hate against Jazz III's that I don't even really know exists. :lol:
 
if your talking about "the overall playing experience" then i´d agree with mr JMurphy...get a real amp, because IT IS NOT the same thing to play through one and through plugins.
u might not notice it at first but in time u will see that playing through the real deal is best for your technique and feel.
And like lasse pointed out there are now windsor on thomman going for 220 euros.
If u choose to stay partly in the box , then u could get a preamp like the e530 and give the impulse route a shot.
 
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