Good evening Guitargearheads!
A cry of help coming from Belgium here, I'd been hesitating a long time to come to a forum regarding my guitargearproblems, but now that my band has changed its line-up into a powertrio, I thought it was time...

So let me sketch the situation and the "problem" I'm having here... I'm in a band called Remote Control, we play some sort of rock.. it's hard to define, but we're a basic powertrio: Drummer, Bassist and the Guitarist/Singer(me). Ofcourse we knew when we started the powertrio that it would be more difficult to fill up our sound and don't sound empty, and luckily when we started out we found out that it definately does not sound empty, the 3 of us are rather talented and we keep it together well and don't make it sound dull or empty at any time.

But lately i've found my guitarsound to not be as I wanted it to be, I'm rather perfectionistic (this is normally one of my bad feats but in music it's a good thing). I'm trying to get a deep sound from my guitar, we play a lot of Hendrix, and I find his sound beyond intriguing.. He can fill it up during the parts where he has to act as a Rhythmguitarist and yet have some cut-through-all solo's. Now i'm trying to find a similar sound, I want to be able to get a good filled up sound and an undescribable leadsound.. So the gear I got right now is :
*Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Custom Texas Red with a Vintage Celestion Gold 30. (knobs: Treble 6, Bass 12, Mid 10, Presence 3, Reverb 4)
*Fender Stratocaster '70s classic player MIM Olympic White, plays smooth like velvet
*Dunlop Crybaby Classic wah with Phasel inductor (holy #OOPS# is this a sweet wah)
*BSM Treble Booster (replica of the '60s trebleboosters with germanium transistors)
*Big Muff PI (no need to explain)
*Boss TU-2 Pedal
My chain right now is : Guitar->Tuner->Wah->Muff->TrebleBooster->Amp

I hope we can start to doctor out some things.. I'm sorry if the BSM Treble Booster is not commonly used in the world, but it IS a key factor in my sound and I can advise it to all you people out there ;)

Cheers, and thanks on forehand!
~Matthias

Hi Matt_RC,

I am glad you choose our forum to post you gear questions. That is really what we are here for.

From what I am reading, I think you would possibly want to look into some time based effects such as reverb, delay, and chorus. These will help to make your guitar sound fuller and will probably give you what you are looking for. I would also suggest a BBE Sonic Maximizer which will give you incredible clarity to any sound you are playing. The Sonic Stomp has a prominent position is all of my guitar and bass rigs. I hope this helps. I am sure that some others here can suggest some other things that may help.

Gary Allen

Great advice from Gary. An octave divider, which combines your signal with a note pitched an octave below, will give more depth to your guitar sound, as long as it doesn't fight with your bassist's playing registers.

In addition, you may also want to experiment with combining the treble booster with an overdrive that delivers a lot of harmonic content. This is a very subjective topic and the level of distortion from your amp should also be considered in your choices. Overdrive character comes in a very broad range of colors, and the interaction between the treble booster, the Big Muff and the amp are also part of the tone equation. I sometimes will cascade combinations of different overdrives to achieve new tones. Hendrix's "big" sound has a lot to do with the wealth of overtones at different octaves that the cranked Marshall stacks deliver when hit with a guitar signal going through a Univibe, Wah and a Fuzz Face and then an Octavia.

Thanks for the responses! I'm sorry to announce though that I took the right in my own hands 2 days ago and I decided to no longer use my drivechannel. I'm doing this because now I can just crank up the clean channel, pushed by the treblebooster and big muff. So most of the time now I'm using the neckpickup, because combined with the treblebooster it gives a crisp enough yet bassy sound, but right now i'm experiencing some signal loss with my cables.. I'll try to fix this first.. Any of you have experience with Fender Koil Kords? Or Fender's cables in general?

Right now I'm running my rig like this :
neck pickup -> boss tuner -> BSM Treble Booster (at about 6 o' clock) -> Big muff pi -> dunlop wah -> texas hot rod (settings have changed: Clean volume at 7, treble4, bass12, mid10)

I'm really considering another pedal for my next purchase but am not sure which to take.. I want to stay true to the purity of my amp and thus not load it with anything digital, are there any good germanium fuzzes on the market?

Cheers, and thanks for the help so far.

Oh and by the way, the combination of the muff and the treble booster are deadly on generating hiss... I can't leave the muff on with the treble booster when not playing, because it creates a very loud hum... You will all probably say something about the fender pickups, but I'm really glad about their sound.. is there an alternative?

For Timing type stuff I'd try a H2O fro visual sound it's got an echo and chorus in it! SOunds great through my fx loop!