TIGHT HIGH-GAIN HEAT

Blowtorch gain that retains its definition and detail…

Not all players want gentle, organic drive tones – some need the high compression and intense clipping that suits harder prog and metal styles. But as metal and prog can be harmonically complex at times, you’ll also want to keep things focused. Dan Steinhardt explains how.

“When you have ridiculous gain, it’s über-important that everything is clean [hum-free]. The signal path must be clean, the power must be clean, because that level of gain can be like an antenna and it just picks up noise from everywhere. You want to give it the best chance of sounding good by keeping that signal path pure, and powerful and everything. Keep it really, really clean.

“With this sort of music, we are playing so fast and so precisely, you need those transients. You need those clearly defined edges. So we need the power section to be able to amplify everything really quickly, so those amps will have a massive power-amp stage. But really it’s more about what the preamp is doing. So getting most of our distortion within the preamp gives us really controlled parameters that we can work with. Then we don’t have to worry about the speakers and that sort of stuff adding extra compression and sag that we don’t want. For example, I can get a really brutal metal sound with a Hiwatt and, let’s say, something from Amptweaker. It’ll sound absolutely crushing because that Hiwatt can just take all that gain and deliver it with clarity. Whereas doing that with a cranked Plexi is borderline impossible.

“Also, it’s really easy with that level of gain to completely get rid of any dynamics. But there are players who do it brilliantly. Steven Wilson, when he goes really heavy, will use that heaviness as a dynamic element. He doesn’t go there all the time, but when he does, he’s really dark and really full on.”