I like high gain, compression, high output pickups, power amp distortion, and plenty of fat midrange. I also like a fat but tight bass end and enough treble to hear the pick attack. As far as the picking itself goes, I tend to prefer using the very tip of the pick at about a 45 degree angle to the strings, between my index and thumb. Mids are the key though...scooped is lots of fun to play but it doesn't sit very well in a mix. Also with enough mids and just the right amount of overdrive, you can get a sustained note to start resonating on its harmonics, a la Santana or Andy Timmons.

For some applications, only solid state will do, as much of a tube guy as I am. There's nothing in the world tighter than a quality solid state head. Ampeg VH140C is the top dog, with Randalls following closely behind.

My ideal clean sound is a blackface pushed just to the brink of breakup, and either using the neck / mid single coils, or the neck / bridge humbuckers in parallel with each other.

For bass guitar, I just try to picture what Geddy Lee would sound like if he were playing in a modern hard rock band ;). That's my ideal bass sound.

I also like to carve "niches" out of the spectrum. Guitars seem to like 1-3khz, and i'll scoop out around 1.25k to allow the bass guitar to cut through. I'll also pretty much leave everything from 200-1000 as bass guitar territory, and everything from 200 and below for kick drums. Everything else can just find its place.

The only effects I like to use on a bass drum are compression and limiting. I've discovered the use of a sub-harmonic synth for live applications though...really makes the bass drum incredibly deep and powerful.

To me, drums is an entirely different animal. I don't have a whole lot of experience miking drums, but i do know that a gate is a good piece of gear to have for them, to enhance separation.

I can't be very specific, because I like different things, none of which has been personally tested in a band situation.


I like growling rythm. I like a solid amount of mids in the rythm, to make it growl rather than buzz.
I like creamy leads. I'm not a big fan of hearing the pick hitting the strings, even though I like it when there dynamics in the pick attack. Very harsh, very treble-y or very mid-scooped metal (or blues for that matter, think BB King a lot of the time) lead guitar sounds usually irritate me, unless there's a good reason for that, meaning some other instrument is using the mids as a niche.


I like the drums punchy but usually a bit discreet. I don't like it when they drown the rest of the music. Also unbalanced sets irritate me. You know, when one piece stands out over the top, be it the cymbals or the snare or anything.


For the bass I'm comfortable with various settings. I like it big and fat and tight (not necessarily so tight that it sounds like a fart, although than can be cool too). More importantly I like to be able to hear it in the mix. Sometimes people make it too muddy or low in volume and it virtually disappears.

my favorite sound is balls slapping against ass.....what........ too much???

I like the bass and drum sounds of Tool...think Aenema.
As far as guitar sound goes, listen to Mark Tremonti on Creed's album Human Clay. That's the way I like the guitar.

Depends on the kind of music. I don't really spend too much time on my tone, I just go with the closest thing I can get and roll with it.
But as far as favorites:

Clean - W. Montgomery
Dirty - SRV
Hard Rock - Satriani and John Sykes come to mind

Typically I like a tone thats fat, but cuts through the mix and has a tight bottom end to it without being muddy. I'm using a Gibson SG through a solid state Vox with amp modeling circuits.

The settings for my lead tone may vary depending on the sound I'm going for, but my general tone is as follows: Treble between 2 o'clock and wide open (suprisingly when using the bridge pickup - it's brite but, not Icepick in the forehead bright), mids between 11 o'clock and 2 o'clock, (this gives my tone most of it's fatness) and bass around 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock (just enough to tighten up the bottom without making it muddy and to take away some of the briteness).

If I want a brite tone with pinch harmonics that scream I'll use my bridge pickup, if I'm looking for a more mellow lead tone along the lines of Santana or Cream era Clapton I'll use my neck pickup or roll back the tone control.

My Rhythm tones are basically the same but I roll back the treble a bit.

Also, since my amp can only have 2 presets assigned to the channels, I set my gain on the rhythm tone so that it cleans up when I roll back the volume and/or lighten my pick attack.

There is a way to set the amp so my rhythm and lead tones are on switchable on channel 2 and a 3rd tone on channel 1. I'd done it before and can't remember exactly what I didn't like about it, but there was something about this feature that made it more trouble than it was worth. I may get an overdrive pedal and set up the second channel with a good clean tone.

I've never listened too closely to whether the pick attack is chirping or not, it depends on how I'm picking (different pick attacks also affect tone) and what pickup I'm using.

Lol. Just thought of a funny line.

I like tone like I like my women, tight bottom end with ample mids but not a lot going on up stairs.

Being in the studio with most of my spare time, I like my sound pure and true. It's not about EQ settings. It's not about the bottom end or the highs. It's initially not about shaping the sound to get what you want. It's about recording the sound so you get exactly what's coming from the instrument. Just like a sculpture, you need to start with raw material and that material needs to be as perfect as possible. And just like a sculpture, if you have flaws in your original material, when you "chip off" a piece in the shaping process you could lose a lot more than you bargained for!

Recording is like sculpting. You start with the most you can possibly get and then chip away, until what's left is a final representation. Have to wonder at all those folks who use their EQs to boost frequency ranges and not cut them. Makes for lots of problems in the studio. You should be recording as flat as possible and getting every single bit of frequency response you can, THEN use the EQ to shape the sound by REMOVING those frequencies you don't want, which in effect brings the frequencies you DO want to the front. Generally, boosting EQ's causes frequencies to step on other frequencies resulting in a muddy mix at best. We had a group come in to record a demo. Actually, re-record a demo. What they brought from the other studio had a HUGE kick sound, but it was so overbearing that it was killing all the low mids and even some of the high mids so the guitars sounded like crap.

Give me pure true sound anyday over the highly processed, over compressed, autotuned, plugin'd to death crap that's coming out today. Go ahead and use your "ProTools" to "fix it in the mix." There are so many sofware options to "correct" bad engineering that engineers are getting lazy. If you get it right from the start, then you won't be adding crap to the sound to fix what you were too lazy to do right in the first place!