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TONE! Guitarists have been chasing after the perfect tone for years. What is the perfect tone? I don’t know. I know what isn’t the perfect tone. It’s one that is too distorted or cluttered with every effect pedal you have. You might have 9 pedals on your board but that doesn’t mean that you have to have all of them on at the same time. Of course when you’re doing cover songs, you’ll need to find the tone or patch that sounds exactly like the guitars in the song, but generally you want to create a tone that can be used for the different songs in your set list. Usually that means a setting that has a clean crunch to it with just a hint of delay or reverb. What works most times is a setting where if you have your guitar volume at about 5, it sounds clean but when you turn it to 10 it gives you a full crunch that cuts through the mix.
Be sure to put your pedals in a good order too. This really depends on your taste & the sound you’re going for. Do you want the delay to come before the compressor or after it? Or the tremolo to go before or after the preamp pedal. It’s up to you, but your goal is to have it sound good without any buzzing, hum or static (don’t forget the ground lift). Oh, and by the way, if you are using a graphic eq for some reason, don’t scoop the mids. That’s the area code for good guitar tone. Guitars cut through the mix at around 500hz to 1kz so if you cut those out, you’ll have a tough time being heard in the audience. Good guitar cables help too, although I can’t really hear the difference between a cable that costs $30 and one that costs $75.
Here’s an example of what I would say is a good guitar tone. Even though Andy’s got a ton of effects, he knows how to use them to cut through the mix.