StevieSnacks Blues Guitar Lessons

Shortly after purchasing my Blues Junior in Dec. of 2007, I recorded a demo of my rig at the time to a backing track for the song Texas Flood. While my playing was sloppy (as it always is when I'm out of shape), the tone was quite nice :-)

Amp Details

The amp being demoed was my Fender Blues Junior, purchased new in late 2007, the Tweed NOS edition with the Jensen C12N speaker. There were no mods to the amp.

Settings:

• Volume: 5/12
• Treble: 7/12
• Bass: 12/12
• Mid: 3/12
• Master: 4/12
• Reverb: 2/12
• Fat Switch: On.

Pedal 1: Boss PQ-3B - Parametric EQ Pedal

I use this pedal to dial in a boost right at about 1.5k to get that screaming tone you hear during the solos. I also add a little low end boost so that the tone remains balanced. This boost only really works while the other pedals are on because it adds quite a bit of gain to the signal and if the amp and other pedals aren't already overdriven, the volume goes up way too much.

The settings were as follows:

• Low: 5.5/10 (@ 200Hz on outer ring)
• Middle: Even, no boost
• High: 6.5/10 (@ 1.5k on outer ring)
• Level: Even, no boost

Pedal 2: Boss PQ-4 - Parametric EQ Pedal

I use this pedal to give a clean boost with no change in the EQ settings. On some amps, I dial in a little low end with the boost, but for the Blues Junior, I just set the Level knob to about 1:30.

Pedal 3: Nobels ODR-S Overdrive

I love this overdrive pedal. The distortion is fat and natural sounding. It's one of the few pedals I've used that actually can add distortion nicely to an already slightly overdriven amp.

Settings:

• Drive: 5/10
• Low: 5.5/10
• Mid: 6.5/10
• High: 6/10
• Level: 3.5/10

Guitar: Don Grosh - Retro-S

I bought this guitar used in Austin Texas a few years ago and it opened my eyes to what a well built guitar can do for your playing. The guitar feels much more solid than my strat (mexican), and the tone is just incredible. The swamp ash body gives it a very light feel, and a midrange dip in the tone. The brazilian rosewood fretboard is much brighter than indian rosewood. And the Lindy Fralin pickups just scream.

• Body: Swamp Ash
• Neck: Brazilian Rosewood over maple
• Pickups: Lindy Fralin Blues Special
• Strings: GHS Boomers ( 12 - 52 )
• Tuning: E-flat

Recording method.

I recorded this demo with a Shure SM-57 microphone about 18 inches away from the front of the amp, about 45 degrees off center and pointed at a spot close to the rim of the speaker. This gives me a little warmer tone than being pointed directly at the center. The distance from the amp gives the sound a little more space. The sound from the mic was recorded through a Motu 896HD firewire interface into GarageBand running on my MacPro. The guitar was mixed with no EQ, and the only effect added was the built in AUMatrix Reverb plugin that comes with OSX. The reverb plugin gave the guitar a little more room sound than what was recorded so close to the amp. The backing track was from an mp3 I found on the web of Stevie Ray Vaughan Backing tracks. I used the L3 Multimaximizer limiter plugin on the master channel in GarageBand to level out the volume and fatten up the sound a bit. This plugin can work magic on recordings that sound weak. The mixdown was exported to a 192Kb/s AAC audio file.

Making the video

I recorded the video of me playing with a JVC miniDV camcorder. I then imported the footage into iMovie '08. I then imported the audio file I had created in GarageBand and synced it up with the video. iMovie '08 make it easy to add professional looking titles to your videos very quickly. I then exported the movie as a quicktime.

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