G-system, JCM2000 DSL and tubescreamer. Tone issues
Hi everybody… sorry but it’s gonna be quite a long post, I really hope somebody can give me some suggestions.
This was my setup: Ibanez TS7 (at full level and drive at 6) —>Marshall JCM2000 DSL green channel (crunch in and gain at 8), Gmajor2 in the loop, a midi pedalboard. I was quite happy with my sound, and having the ts7 at full level was a big part of it (I’m quite a lot into that 80s cranked jcm800 sound). I love the g-major2 modulation, delay, pitch, and learned to program and get all my sounds out of it quite well. Honestly, I felt no need of changing anything, at least sound-wise, strange thing for a guitarist. But I had two problems: first, the g-major2 freezes quite often, is out of warranty, and I’m forced to leave it uncovered, tampering with the flat cables everytime trying to start it again. It happened many times and was quite embarassing. Second, switching to clean sounds meant toggling the tube screamer and the midi preset all the time, at the same time.
I finally thought of getting a g-system, which in my mind would have solved both problems and also would have given me some more effects like properly positioned wah and comp. I got a second hand limited edition red one, I updated it and cleared system and banks. I’m using the 4-cable method, with balanced, good quality cables. I read laird’s white paper, and after some time playing with input gain, loop level and headroom, I found out that 1db input gain, 10db loop level and 2db headroom basically gave me a very similar sound to the guitar straight in the amp. Just a little bit of tone suckage happens, but it’s bearable, just like that little bit of added noise compared to the old setup. Then, I put the tubescreamer in the gsystem loop, and that’s when trouble started to happen. I know that you should not keep the pedals level maxed out, but that’s part of my sound. I’m not having clipping or noise issues… but the sound loses a bit of its dynamics, it’s thinner, less punchier, and seems to have like a “zzzz” in the higher frequencies, like a resonance but not quite… not so much, but I really do notice it, even if I could live with it. The thing happens even when lowering the level, but having the pedal in the loop but OFF does not result in any loss of tone (so the loop is transparent). But the bigger problem is, modulation effects act strangely, and quite frankly, they sound noisy and bad. This does not happen with the delay and verb, maybe not even with the pitch effects. The same chorus settings I used on the g-major2 on my lead sound are very harsh on the g system (and are quite standard ones), and most of all introduce noise and feedback in my sound. I just loved the g-major chorus and used it so often, I can’t do without it. It doesn’t happen with clean sounds.
Does anybody have any ideas, or a setup similar to mine, and in that case, could you share your loop level-headroom settings? I’m sure the problem lies in those settings. I forgot to say I also tried loop level 0, input gain 5 to compensate (I had a lot less gain that way) and 6db headroom. The results are more of less the same.
Thank you very much for your help
Source: http://forum.tcelectronic.com
