Alex's Sound

[winter17]

I just have some very simple, relatively cheap equipment at home.

 

Epiphone Les Paul

Cheap amp (can't remember the name), but it's 15G and just has the treble, bass, and volume controls with an overdrive switch

Behringer pedals:

-Tuner

-Chorus

-Tube Overdrive

Donner Mini-Phaser pedal

 

I'm playing on Ernie Ball regular strings

 

I know that the better equipment I have the more flexibility I'll have with the tone I can produce, but really I'm just wondering if there are any suggestions in how to get my tone to sound more like Alex's on a variety of songs.

[Fridge]

I just have some very simple, relatively cheap equipment at home.

 

Epiphone Les Paul

Cheap amp (can't remember the name), but it's 15G and just has the treble, bass, and volume controls with an overdrive switch

Behringer pedals:

-Tuner

-Chorus

-Tube Overdrive

Donner Mini-Phaser pedal

 

I'm playing on Ernie Ball regular strings

 

I know that the better equipment I have the more flexibility I'll have with the tone I can produce, but really I'm just wondering if there are any suggestions in how to get my tone to sound more like Alex's on a variety of songs.

 

Ok, given what you have I would try and aim for his 70s sound as you are more likely to get closer to it than other eras.

 

First of all, I would use the amps clean sound...cheap amps tend to have pretty poor distortion . Does it have an fx loop?...if so, I would put your modulation pedals in there (chorus and phaser) as they are usually best after your preamp.....if you don't then don't worry just put them in front of your amp...in any case, your tuner should be first in the chain then your distortion pedal and the two modulations afterwards.

 

I would start with the amps eq controls set at 12 o clock for reference.

 

After that, it's really just a case of tweaking the pedals until they sound right....Lerxt doesn't use too much gain, so be careful of overdoing it...he does have a fair amount of bottom end in his tone so allow for that as well.....the chorus was an essential part of his tone late 70s , and it will really depend on your model, but as a rule have quite a lot of depth with slow wave and adjust the mix until it's not too dominant.....same with the phaser which will get you that 2112/COS goodness.

 

That's for a rhythm tone anyway...for lead, does your amp have a footswitch?...if so, you could try tweaking it's overdrive function until it gives you a bit of boost rather than much more gain...if not, then an eq pedal or similar may be necessary

 

Finally, do you have any reverb control?....he does use some of that as well.

 

Hope this helps and it's just my take on it...there's no "right" or "wrong" way to do it.