For the love of god sound ? HEEELP !

[not2secure4u]

Hi ,

I've got a line 6 Flex II and a rocktron intelliflex , fairly simple question : how do i get Vai's for the love of god sound ?

Plssssssss help

I'm playing it in a couple of days and my sound isn't what it should be !!!

ty !!


Nick

[davester1234]

where's hanban when you need him?

[Two hands31]

I've found I can get an ok Vai-ish sound out of the Modern High Gain 2 setting with lots of compression.

[Anton]

Originally Posted by not2secure4u

Hi ,

I've got a line 6 Flex II and a rocktron intelliflex

Theres your problem

[Petie]

A couple of humbuckers, distortion, wah and delay, and don't forget to compress the piss out of it (in Vai's words) at the mixing desk (or post-gain/effects if the Pod has that ability - I have no idea).

[Praetorian]

Hmm, let's see...if I remember correctly, Vai played FTLOG w/ a Universe which would mean it has Blaze pups (all this time I thought he did it with an early LNG Jem). Then add to that all the compression...quite a bit of reverb...etc.
OK, so basically have your humbucker guitar set in the bridge position with the tone rolled back just a tiny bit, use a lot of compression and reverb (and I don't hear any delay on the song), have a good high gain setting for a good shred sound, have a good wah for the middle part...and other than that I guess just make sure you play it like he does. That is to say, slide more than you hammer and try to do your vibrato like he does it (remember that he does it in a circle rather than just back and forth, combining classical guitar vibrato and rock vibrato). Other than that, I guess just make sure your fingers are fully warmed up when you do it or you'll choke in the insane fast parts. Oh yeah, and make sure you make those single notes in the beginning and end ring for a long time...it will haunt your audience and make them feel lonely and disallusioned, leading them to cry out, "for the love of God!" Well, ok, I guess if you put on a really emotional performance.

[Drew]

Hmm. A couple thoughts...

First, to my ears, FTLOG isn't THAT distorted, especially in those beginning notes. I'm not familiar with the flextone, but I screwed around with my friend's Spyder for a while, and I think you're probably going to get closest by cranking the gain on the marshall mode (at least, you needed to crank it on the spyder; it wasn't really a high-gain patch, more of a crunch rhythm than anything) and then compressing the hell out of it with the on-board effects or a compression pedal, rather than relying on the gain for that compression. Judging from his interview comments, this is also probably what Vai was doing...

A corralary of this, of course, is your finger articulation has to be DEAD on; any slightly flubbed notes will come through, even with all that compression.

So, humbuckers are a given... medium gain amp model with a decent amount of mids, and smooth highs; try maybe 6-4-5 for bass-treble, respectively, although that really depends on how bright your amp and guitar are. Have a wah laying around, and then some 'verb on the amp. I think i recall vai saying he used a touch of delay in addition to the compression on mixdown, but this is really subtle.

I hate to go back to that "tone is in your fingers" argument... ESPECIALLY after spending three paragraphs on amp settings... but this is a song where a lot of it really will come from the hands. You don't have much gain to hide behind, so your playing needs to be 100% confident for those notes to really sing.

-D

[davester1234]

agreed Drew. This song is about physical performance, not so much equiptment.

Just get a warm distortion sound, add a bit of delay and reverb, and practice your ass off until the notes do the talking.

[pinto79]

The first few bars are played on the neck pup... watch the G3 video (the original) you can see how many times he switches back and forth from neck to bridge. He must wear out a lot of switches

[.Matt.]

Yes, he does play the first few measure with the neck. I think he plays the rest with bridge, but he probably goes back to the neck for the main melody.

[Praetorian]

I didn't know that, I would have thought the whole thing was on the bridge. If I ever perform it I'll remember that...BTW Matt, what part of NM do you live in? Not too many of us on here. And Not2secure, how did the performance go? Have you even done it yet? Keep us informed dude.

[.Matt.]

Santa Fe.