Understand your amp and the best Settings for the perfect guitar tone!

New to guitar and amplifiers? You might be wondering about the best guitar amp for beginners or even how to adjust your amp to get the best sound possible. So many Settings are available!

I'm glad you're here - this lesson will answer the most common questions about basic amp settings and (great!) guitar tone.

💡 Understanding your guitar amplifier is your second step into getting the perfect guitar tone! The first one is to understand how to make the most out of the sounds available in your instrument. :) Great guitar tone starts here.

Ok - so, if you know how to control the knobs and pickups on your guitar and send a good sound to your amplifier, it's time to explore it. But again: first things first. The amplifier you have in front of you makes a huge difference!

Different Amps, Different Sounds.

Different amplifiers can sound very, very different! So, a Marshall amplifier sounds very different from a Fender amplifier, which sounds very different from a Vox.

When you're a beginner guitarist, you're unlikely to know what those differences are. Still, later, you might be able to recognize a sound on a record and know the best amp type to get that sound!

My suggestion for beginners is to get a device with lots of different guitar amp sounds within it. Boss Katana is a really good budget if you're just starting out!

Some new companies now make amp simulators for phones and computers. You'll need some sort of audio interface to plug, but something like that will give you a range of different sounds to explore. As a beginner, this really is a great idea!

Justin, what's your favorite amp?

I get this question every single day! I'm quite specific about what works for me - and I'd recommend you explore what works for you! But my favorite of all time is the Tone King Imperial in terms of amplifiers.

For me, the Tone King Imperial amp has a kind of Fender sound, but it just seems to refine it in a way that I really really like!

However, my day-to-day guitar playing is nearly always through a Kemper Profiler. I've been using it for a few years now. It looks like a toaster, but it can sound like many different guitar amplifiers, and that's a big deal to me. :)

💡 I mostly use profiles by Michael Britt. For sure, it's not a budget option, but it's unlikely you'll need anything else!

Check out the video lesson to explore some different profiles with me. It's super fun to understand how a little thing can change your entire tone! Also, it should be a part of your journey as a guitar player to learn to recognize and emulate a tone.

All Amps Have The Same Controls.

No matter which amp you choose to use, all got the same knobs. Every gear is different, so your first step is to understand how each control affects your instrument and interacts with each other.

Gain

Gain is a really big deal - it defines how much distortion we've got! Because every amp is different, you need to experiment and sort out your gear and how much gain you get from different things.

Bass

Bass is important too! Interestingly, when recording, you very often lose a lot of the bass on the guitar sound. That's why the bass is about your listening experience as much as anything!

If you're working with a digital audio workstation, a really useful experiment would be to record your guitar without touching anything. Then, muck around software to get a feeling for what it sounds like when you boost or cut down your bass.

Middle

If you want to make your guitar sound louder in a band, you often need to boost the middle knob - not the volume knob!

If you do that, the bass frequencies of your guitar upset the bass player. However, if you boost just the middle range of your guitar, you should be fine.

💡 Mids are really important in Heavy Metal, especially in the 90s. They did a thing called a Scooped Mid, where they turn the bass up, turn the treble up, and then turn the middle down.

That kind of sound was a real popular one. Do you like it? Let me know in the Discussion sections. :)

Treble

Treble is an easier one to get a grasp of what it's doing! It sounds like somebody's closed the door and is practicing guitar in another room. You open the door, and that it sounds like that - you know what I mean?

It's like you've got socks over your ears, and a bite of the sound has disappeared.

Presence

Presence is higher than treble. No amps will have a Presence knob, but if you've got one - remember you have to try! Mock around with the gear you have, and think about the sound you're getting. What's going on?

Reverb

I'm definitely a reverberaholic. For most of my life, I've always loved the sound of reverb, and I rarely buy amps that don't have reverb!

😅 That's not quite true - haha. Actually, loads of the amps I've got behind me don't have reverb. But I'd always prefer to play where I can hear reverb.

I'd definitely be adding it on later in the studio when playing with an amp without reverb. Often, producers will want you to play without reverb to add it later. That might make sense at a recording studio, where you've probably got access to better quality reverbs than what you might have built into your amplifier!

Experiment!

If you want to be a great guitar player and make the most out of your own gear, you've got to take your guitar and your amplifier and experiment! Spend some time doing nothing but mucking around with the controls on your amp and on your guitar too.

You'll fine-tune the detail on stuff like that as you become a more experienced guitarist. For now, just try to experiment with different types of amplifiers.

Hopefully, your ear will pick up the sounds that you like, and you can further refine the sound that you want to become your sound further down the line!

Following Grade 3? New lessons coming very soon!