MusicRadar Basics: electric guitar part 14 - achieving basic guitar tones
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Once you're plugged in and ready to go, you might want to know how to achieve some basic sounds from your amp.
A non-distorted tone is usually described as clean, and you can get this by keeping the volume below ear-bleeding and the gain knob turned down.
On a dual channel amp, simply keep to the clean channel and toy with the controls for different sounds. Dial in more treble for top end, more bass for the lows.
If you dial in a little gain, you'll hear your sound start to break up and distort. There are many different types of distortion - some amps will give you a sound better suited to metal, others to blues or hard rock.
You can also use pedals to achieve specific types of sounds, including various distortions and, well, just about anything you can conceive of. We'll talk about pedals in the next video. In the meantime, spend a bit of time playing with the settings on your guitar and amp and you might be surprised at the range of sounds you can access.
