It happens to all of us (I hope its not just me). You get home thinking, "Ooh, gonna jam now and its going to be all awesome and the angels will sing to me.", swith on the amp, plug in old faithful and then, nastiness. What the hell?
I built an amplifier 4 years ago, its currently my profile picture, but here it is again:
It's an 18watt Marshall clone. I LOVE this thing. It sounds like a little big Marshall and I can crank it at reasonable volumes and the cab looks cool and sounds awesome and everything is just great. But it is an unforgiving mofo and you need to play well to sound good. So every so often I play on it and sound like complete rubbish, thinking I must give up this guitar business. Nasty distortion, fizzy brittleness etc. Good way to dampen one's spirits. I even measure the wall voltage to see if there isn't something really wrong somewhere.
Here comes the fix. This has happened to me on multiple occasions now. This nasty sound happens one day (or I notice it and want to sell all my stuff), and one every one of these occasions, the thing that fixed my 'bad sound' was the strings on my guitar. STRINGS! This time it was those Elixirs I put on a month ago. They were still shiny but they were knackered. Changed the strings and there's it, my lovely 18 watt is back, it never went away, it was me all along.
I think I'll put a notice on this amp that reads "If I sound bad, change your strings (and get better plz)"
So next time you are having a Bad Tone Day, think about how old your strings are. It really makes a massive difference in how you will sound or at least, percieve how you sound ?
What's your Bad Tone Day story and fix?
