Recommendations for books or web pages about electric guitar tone (amps, pedals, sound design)

Practical tips for recording, editing, and mastering.

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
Basslint
Established Member
Posts: 1511
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:25 pm
Location: Italy
Has thanked: 382 times
Been thanked: 298 times

Recommendations for books or web pages about electric guitar tone (amps, pedals, sound design)

Post by Basslint »

Hello,

I know there are many books about electric guitar, but often they are a bit generic, for example they say there are various amps (Fender Super Reverb, Orange Crush, Marshall), pedals (distortion, overdrive, flanger, wah, etc.) and describe them in terms of how they sound or by pointing to some sample songs but they don't really describe the physics behind the various kinds of amps, effects and how they can be set up to work together.

This is also an obstacle for software users. For example, Guitarix throws you a list of tubes (12AX7, 12AU7, 6DJ8, etc.) but says nothing about their differences (I know about wiki pages such as this but they aren't hyper detailed (not Guitarix's fault).

Is there a book or web resource which has this kind of detailed information?
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

Jam on openSUSE + GeekosDAW!
User avatar
thumbknuckle
Established Member
Posts: 51
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:16 pm
Location: Western Massachusetts
Contact:

Re: Recommendations for books or web pages about electric guitar tone (amps, pedals, sound design)

Post by thumbknuckle »

Tons of great stuff here: http://www.valvewizard.co.uk
Faster than a laser bullet.
Louder than an atom bomb.
CrocoDuck
Established Member
Posts: 1133
Joined: Sat May 05, 2012 6:12 pm
Been thanked: 17 times

Re: Recommendations for books or web pages about electric guitar tone (amps, pedals, sound design)

Post by CrocoDuck »

thumbknuckle wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:50 am Tons of great stuff here: http://www.valvewizard.co.uk
+1. Great website. My go-to place when I was designing valve effects.

I remember tons of great pages I used to refer to when I was into designing analog effects, but I lost the links. I have tried to recover them below, but I am not sure they are the same:
https://www.electrosmash.com/fuzz-face
https://www.electrosmash.com/mn3007-buc ... de-devices

(this electrosmash place seems very good, but I think I found a better one about BBDs in the past). In general, I would suggest you search for the particular effect detailed analysis and schematics online.

Also, this forum: https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php, they really helped me in getting a LFO going. Also, this is another site where I used to go a lot: http://beavisaudio.com/.

If you are interested in DSP, this is gold: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/, a bit technical, but that's the nature of DSP.

About books, I can suggest these:
Helmuth Lemme - Electric Guitar - Sound Secrets and Technology. Not too great, especially in the parts where it seems like a commercial for Helmuth pickup measurement rig, but tons of good stuff in there.

If you want a good broad introduction to the topic of musical acoustics, I would recommend this: https://www.zanichelli.it/ricerca/prodo ... lla-musica. More general than guitar, but covers very well the basics of musical acoustics in an accessible way.

More advanced stuff? This: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461229803

Interested in physical models of music instruments and effect units? This is a good read: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/boo ... 0470749012

Along the same lines, but using different methods: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/ ... 615-0049-0
Basslint
Established Member
Posts: 1511
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:25 pm
Location: Italy
Has thanked: 382 times
Been thanked: 298 times

Re: Recommendations for books or web pages about electric guitar tone (amps, pedals, sound design)

Post by Basslint »

Thanks for all the suggestion! I will report back as soon as I read some of that stuff, although I'm open to more suggestions!
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

Jam on openSUSE + GeekosDAW!
CrocoDuck
Established Member
Posts: 1133
Joined: Sat May 05, 2012 6:12 pm
Been thanked: 17 times

Re: Recommendations for books or web pages about electric guitar tone (amps, pedals, sound design)

Post by CrocoDuck »

Basslint wrote: Fri Feb 28, 2020 6:09 pm Thanks for all the suggestion! I will report back as soon as I read some of that stuff, although I'm open to more suggestions!
My Bachelor dissertation contain a basic model of electric guitar. It shows how strings and pickups work. Not a lot of very practical stuff, but maybe some interesting things.

https://crocoduckoducks.github.io/publi ... 13-BSc.pdf
Post Reply