Cranking up the Marshall

Most of my playing has been on acoustic guitars or on bass guitar. As a result, my electric playing has always suffered. It suffers on the one hand because I don't do it very much, either practicing or with other musicians. It suffers too because I haven't really grown accostumed to playing with a lot of distortion. Now, when you're practicing you should only use distortion for specific things, otherwise for general practicing you should play as "clean" as possible so you can focus on you're technique, distortion and effects can mask problems in your hands.

So when I've played my electrics, and they've been plugged in-- which you don't have to be plugged in to practice--, I'm as clean as I can be. I've grown to like that sound a lot, but it might be closest to an old school jazz sound but with the attitude of modern blues or classic rock. Too rock for jazz, too jazzy for rock was always my problem. But it never mattered since I'm mostly considered a bassist by some people and an acoustic player by others. I even added a banjo to that end.

Still, I love playing the electric. I love a little distortion and mildly "Jimi Hendrix" flavored tones and crazy effects-- I just like them along side a very dry clean soung allows for a kind of pick attack and dynamics that gets masked behind most common guitar tones. Still, when I've played with rock guys I've often had to really try to get a distortion they'd find acceptable, and that matched what was going on and that I could still hear myself through. As time went on I've amassed a huge amount of overdrive and distortion and fuzz pedals that let me stradle that thin line between a guitar's natural tone and a distorted tone. That way I could keep a pretty clean amp tone for when a clean tone would work and dirty it up when needed. Basically I'd go into any live playing situation with four sounds within the clean-distorted continuum.

There is a draw back to playing that way. I never really learned to play though a cranked amp. So about a year ago I picked up a Marshall amp, even though I was in the midst of working on a house and not even playing anymore. Now that I'm back playing though I'm taking the time to play almost everyday through the cranked Marshall. I "crank" the Marshall then use an attenuator to get it down to reasonable volume.

I've found the following things about the cranked Marshall. Rivera's are great amps. The Marshall compresses and is overdriven right off the bat. I am a single coil player-- better tone--, but the Marshall sounds best with my SG (with stock humbuckers) than my strat or ASAT. Once I made the switch to the SG into the Marshall the tone was really nice. No Rivera, but nice and heavy and rocking.

It is a lot of fun, playing through a cranked Marshall. I might start playing out with it. We'll see what happens. I have to find a bassist first, which is why I used to always play bass-- because people need bassists. But the cranked Marshall is fun.