At disco king - have you tried the obvious method of unchaining everything and listening to the sounds one by one as you reintroduce each piece back into the chain? Does any of the noise stop when you touch the jack on your guitar or the strings or any other bit of metal?

I almost want to say whatever you are using for gain/distortion has a bad capacitor.

What is your chain?

At Elph - Dunlop for sure

I'm selling my car and getting a bike now that I've figured I can take the bus to school and with a bike it'd be about a 30 minute trip to work

I hate driving and mostly the car just sits outside my trailer

So I'm gonna have a few thousand that I want to put into music equipment the wah pedal is first on the list

I'm considering getting a keyboard I feel like I'd get a ton of use out of learning it, I'd play the Organ setting a lot underneath my guitar playing

can "and gear" mean non-guitar related music gear

Okay you just spent $60

At the wah comment

I'll probably get a legit amp as well I've noticed the amp you play through can make a world of difference

have none of you ever played a single coil pickup seriously they fucking howl on the clean channel if you turn your body the wrong way.

Elph oh holy sht you're gonna have fun auditioning tube amps. For your bright trebly thing there's a thing called a Fender Blues line of amps and some of em got the sparkliest crystalline tinglies

Also recommend shopping for a good head AFTER buying your cab and use same cab with each. There's cab makers online where u can customize the specs, looks, and speakers: I got an Avatar cab and I love it liked dealing with them

I have this thing against anything "Fender" where I feel like it's "playing teen spirit in Guitar Center poseur" brand tho I play a Fender Strat just because it happened to be the first thing that was given to me

Idk the way they market themselves as like "buy this and be a Rockstar!" do you know what I mean

but it's actually gibson who is in bed with guitar center.

Gibson as well really

Im not sure how to articulate what I mean other than it feels phony it doesn't feel like the tools of someone trying to make music the same way an author writes a book it feels like playing dress up

By all means try everything, play old dirty tube amps from sears, it's just that line of amps struck me as fitting some of the sounds you're chasing

The made in Mexico black and white Strat feels right to me though because of the simplicity of it

I'm not trying to make any statement with the instrument I'm playing I'd rather no one notice it at all

Been playing a Mexican strat for about 20 years, still haven't found a guitar as versatile or playable

tbh with a few exceptions I don't think "non-traditional" electric guitar makers have really succeeded in creating good alternatives to Fender and Gibson. There are makers who have captured significant attention in niche markets, but as versatile instruments with lots of unique character and sound, virtually nothing can touch the classic designs of the strat, the tele, the les paul, the sg.

just play your guitar you pretentious dork

i have a mexi strat too. i havent played it in like 5 years and it has a short but it was my baby. i almost traded it for $100 in drugs once. the guy changed his mind, if not i wouldn't have it anymore :(

I like the feel of PRS guitars but they are stupid expensive and i hate carlos santana

why can't music be serious

or the only time it's allowed to be serious is when it's Jazz

I want to exclusively listen to Jazz

unrelated but PRS actually went to and dropped out of my college. He built his first guitar in the basement of the building I lived in senior year. He brought his band to alumni weekend a few years ago and they played at the boathouse on the water with tons of super drunk people dancing on stage with them. one guy even jumped from the upper deck into the crowd. it was an insanely good time and he was the nicest, most humble and normal dude. he did smack some rando on the arm for messing with his wah when he wasn't looking

and yeah his company makes wicked guitars, this was actually the first one that jumped out in my mind as an exception to the fender and gibson are best rule. but too damn expensive, and seem to be favored primarily by shred assholes

Elph for the sounds you're chasing you either want a vox or fender silver face amp. Nothing digital. Tube or valve for vox but you could get away with a solid state fender amp. Voxs tend to be more chimey, while fenders sparkle more.

My problem isn't locating the source of the noise, it comes from my guitar and is amplified by any of my really high-gain pedals. Like, I hear a noise when it's just my clean guitar (it's a small, tolerable hiss that doesn't bother me), but it gets increased to shitty levels if I play through some of my fuzzes (my Big Muff makes it pretty loud, some boutique fuzz I have makes it even louder, but the pedal that I think is a Fulltone Ultimate Octave clone doesn't make the noise that bad), or my high-gain distortion (that is probably a Metal Muff clone). My overdrive and the pedal that I think is a ProCo Rat clone (yeah, I buy a lot of cheap clones) also don't amplify the hiss very badly.

My chain changes all the time because I have ~15 pedals, but a Boss pedal board with only five slots (haven't got around to building my own more versatile custom pedal board yet), so it's just whatever effects I feel like playing through at the time.

I have a keyboard and I've been meaning to learn it, but haven't gotten around to it. Used to screw around on it, but didn't play actual music.

I've always wanted to use keyboard/organ in my music, too, because of how I like stuff like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Strawberry Alarm Clock, etc.

I used to have an actual organ and I always regret that I never actually did much with it. At one point I was trying to teach myself key instruments on it and learning simple songs from some elementary piano book.

I've always also wanted to learn string-and-bow instruments, like cello, violin, viola, etc. But I feel like since I suck at guitar, why split my time learning more instruments when I could spend that time getting better at guitar? Plus, good violin-family instruments are probably expensive as shit. That's why only Chinese parents buy them for their kids.

This.

Buy a guitar you like and play it, Geez Louise.

I fail to see how avoiding certain guitars not based on sound, but the lack of post-punk image popular brand names exude, is any more "serious" or less try-hard that buying a popular brand because you want to tell all your friends at school that you are a guitar god and have begun to learn "Run to the Hills" on a real guitar after mastering it on Guitar Hero.

idk basically popular rock memes make me want to trash my guitar and make music on a computer

FFS b/c of some dumbass meme you're questioning your guitar? Maybe turn off the meme pipes for a week, month, year, decide what really inspires u, then make what u want

Seems u have a good idea of what u like already, but perhaps some soul searching is in order to ensure that your current preferences are not imaginary/result of memes or tropes subconsciously influencing your choices

I don't know why u wouldn't pursue other instruments. A dozen or so pages ago didn't we have a novel from u complaining that u didn't know where to start with guitar and you weren't really inspired enough in any event to just pick it up and have fun?

Why not do something for which there's actual demand? Learn the drums for example! I know u live in an apartment but I bet u can find a cheap used electronic kit to start banging on. There's such a glut of guitar players that you're much less likely to get anywhere with it, especially since you don't feel inspired by guitar in the first place. Or has that changed?

Multiple gain pedals will create a ton of noise if they're daisy chained together, which is what that boss board is. They all share the same power source so you're going to get a ton of noise by not having each one isolated.

I had that 5 slot Boss board for about 2 days before I returned it, as I was tired of using individual power supplies for each pedal. There was a night and day difference. I eventually saved up for an isolated power supply.

Overall, you can do what you want, but in my experience daisy chain power supplies will create a ton of extra noise. Especially if you're using "cheap" clones. I'm still going to stick to the theory that the capacitors in those aren't all that great, and since they're all sharing the same power supply, are just feeding off each other and re-amplifying themselves with every other pedal in the chain, especially if you're using more than one dirt pedal (in your post you only mentioned several different dirt pedals).

I have a fairly large board and have done plenty of "where the heck is this noise coming from" troubleshooting. I'm just trying to help because I know how frustrating it can be. I even used a DI box before to cut down on the noise.

You might even have a bad cable or a wonky output on a pedal. I have an older overdrive that gets silly once about every 3 times I use it and I have to hit it hard to make the extra hiss/noise stop.

That said, if you're using more than 3 dirt pedals at once, there's some noise to be expected. Probably not the level you're talking about though.

As someone else mentioned maybe your guitar isn't shielded very well. Or you have a ground hum in your home. It could be a lot of things but whatever it is, it isn't natural.

still been trying to wrap my brain around this. it seems like an outdated mode of thought.

most guitar center "posers" i see are more marshall amp, orange heads, with paul reed smith, or jackson guitars. you know, "heavier is better" kind of crowd.

i mean, by all means get a vintage japanese supermarket guitar and or amp but be prepared to face a lot of problems and learn how to do work on them. if you don't want a matching fender guitar and amp, just get a vox and be done with it.

also afaik most post punk and no wave bands were playing silver face fender amps and fender guitars. you can get a vintage silverface solid state fender amp for less than $200.

tube amps are only good if you can crank them. if you can't, you have to get a tiny one, so you can crank it. solid states are great if you use other pedals for your dirt/gain/bite.

if you want a tiny tube amp, get the vox actv4 with the load switch. It's 4 watts but lets you select between 4 watts, 1 watt, or 1/4 watt, so you can get great tube tone at a lower volume. Protip secret - most older (rolling stones and prior rock from the 50s) recordings were made with tiny tube amps mic'd closely. certainly not the same amps they would tour and perform with.

After you've been playing a pedal for a while, it's a good idea to open the pedal up, expose the circuitry, and scratch off the corrosion on the board that may have occurred while playing "hot licks" and "rippin leads".

You can use a fork to do this too. It will save you time.

Elph get a Vox AC15 or I'll beat you up.

sure just let everyone try to pull the sword from the stone with no practice

I have that little vox 4 watt tube amp, and can attest to some satisfying tones at low volumes. Breaks up (gets dirty) rather quickly, though, so there's not a lot of headroom for sparkling cleans at a volume that would be useable at, say, a band practice with a drummer. For live performance it would need to be PA'd for sure

I spent an hour playing music without my guitar actually plugged in today

I don't mean I played the guitar acoustically, I mean I played the Input Jack

You know what I'm talking about

Bzzzzzztttt Hummmmmmm Bzzzzztttt

*turns some dials*

hey guys i like guitar :billy:

Nice can I play too?

:jimmy: