I'm still working on my Bobby sound, so far I'm using an Ibanez Artcore AS-73 (ES335 knock-off) with stock p-ups, thinking about upgrading to the DiMarzio virtual PAF's and Coil-tapping them? And I'm running directly into my amp which is a Peavey Classic 50. I'm going for the early 70's sound, and this set-up has been working out for me so far. What are you guys using?
I'm not a real bob player in a dead band or anything, but I'm really into his current sound and I've been getting some really great tones, especially lately as I've been learning more about EQ and how to set my gear properly! This is what I'm using : Epiphone Dot, run through several pedals (7-band EQ, compressor, flanger, phaser, delay/looper pedal - I use for slap delay mostly), into a pimped out Billm modded Blues Jr w/ a C-Rex speaker. EQing is key. On the 7 band I cut 100hz most of the way down, boost 200 slightly, cut a lot from 400 and 800, slight boost at 1.6, bigger boost at 3.2k, slight boost at 6.4k). The sweet overtones jangle with the muddiness in the low mids zone cut back. I leave the EQ and Slap Delay on all the time. Amp w/ bass at 2, mids maxed, treble 8-10. If it's too bright I back off on the tone controls and/or presence control a bit. Cranked into some power amp distortion it gets very crisp and expressive.
I don't mean to take the thread in another direction, I am trying to gather Bobby info to help our Rhythm guitarist lay down the right palate for the Dead songs we play. Good info here and around about his technique, but I am wondering about setting up a twin like amp to get a good tone, probably more like an early to mid 80's clean/phase tone. How do some of y'all get your Bobby mojo working on your regular amps, (for those without the entire Bobby setups).
In my experience, you have to clean up a lot of the low mids for any bob or jerry tone. In order to get a cut in that frequency range (because the treble control in fender amps sweeps the midrange cut) with a fender-style amp's tone stack is to turn the treble knob up really high. So I think a key is that it's better to crank the treble on the amp and then roll off the tone knobs to take away the excessive brightness.
