Choose a pedal for warm jazz sound

[pgadam]

I am a beginner and a long time enthusiast who finally got my first electric guitar a fender american stratocaster and a fender deluxe reverb tonemaster. But the sound I am getting out of it is not the sweet jazz tone and I am not sure how to exactly describe it.

I am thinking maybe a pedal might help me explore some tones. I see the Boss ME 80 is pretty popular on youtube, and considering it for the supposed abundance of features, but again I don't much care for the distortion/rock/metal sounds.

Is there any other pedal I should be looking at as a beginner, given my current guitar/amp setup?

Thanks much!

[Laurence Finston]

The typical jazz tone is that of a hollow-body, often an archtop, without any effects. Stratocasters, Telecasters and Les Pauls are solid-bodies. There may be some modelling devices that simulate the sound of a hollow-body, but I personally wouldn't go that route. There's nothing wrong with the guitar you've got, I think your best bet is to play it for awhile and try different settings and to see what's possible with it instead of trying to get it to correspond with a pre-conceived idea.

Personally, I love pedals. My pedals have pedals. However, I recommend getting a couple and using them for awhile instead of buying a whole rackful at once.

I would recommend as a starter at most a compressor, a vibrato, a tremolo and an overdrive in addition to your reverb. The compressor doesn't make weird sounds; it evens out your signal. That's basically what you get with a solid-body: a signal. Of course, you get a signal with a hollow-body, too, but it's more influenced by the body of the guitar. Of course, the choice of pedals depends on your taste. Maybe you'd rather have a chorus or a flanger, I don't know.

[pcjazz]

What strings are on your Strat?

[339 in june]

Neck pickup, with tone and volume down a bit (maybe a little more than a bit) and you can start to get something like a jazz tone from a Strat
Then you can try some heavier strings, maybe flatwounds
And of course tweak your amp to adjust the sound
And of course find the right pick, the right attack in your right hand ....
Maybe then, you'll feel the need of an archtop ....

[marcwhy]

Hey @pg -- welcome to the Forum!

As others will tell you, jazz can be played on any guitar, but if you're shooting for that "warm/sweet jazz tone," certain gear will get you there easier than others! BTW, which jazz guitarists do you enjoy, tone-/playing-wise?

For pedals to warm you up, check out a Combs JJ-150 -- very nice in front of solid state amps!

One of my favorite players, who happens to play a strat:

Enjoy!

Marc

[EastwoodMike]

Mate I was in your exact position a few years back.
your Amp isn’t the problem.
Your pickups are fighting the tone in your head.
A few ways to beat the spanky glassy thin Straty top end-

Go up a few gauges for the top strings at least. Go minimum 10s if not higher. Not much bending happens in Jazz.

lower the Treble side of the neck pickup a bit. Try to even out the B string dominance.

deck the trem or block it if you have the means. I added an extra two springs and had it pretty much decked.

I backed my tone down to about 6 or 7. Jazz still needs clarity in the top end so don’t cancel the treble range out completely.

After that you can consider downstream hardware. Curly leads can increase capacitance and act as a bit of an inductor. That will take bite out of the top end spikes a bit. Takes your treble away. A Hendrix trick.

As noted a compressor is good but remember a compressor can take away from what little dynamic range you have. If you find a compressor with a clean blend that will work well. Xotic SP comp or Wampler Ego mini are good contenders. That effectively adds a compressed signal next to your clean signal. So if you have a 70/30 mix you can play dynamically but takes edge off loud transient spikes.

A ‘transparent’ overdrive can also give you some of that softer compression without colouring your tone too much. A Mooer Pure Boost is a good entry level contender here. MXR Timmy would work as well.

Really any overdrive with a drive and volume control would work, but most will impart a shift in the EQ curve to give the pedal a unique voice. Some styles will have harsher ‘drive’ sound depending on what bits are in the circuit. JHS made a good video describing different types of overdrive. For me I find a FET based drive the smoothest. Your ears may have a different preference.

The pedal I used most with my Strat for Jazz was a Tech21 paradriver. This had an analogue drive that I could blend in, and an EQ that let me adjust the midrange boost centrepoint before the drive blend. This lets you run the Strat full volume full tone, adjust the dry signal at the pedal and if you wanted to, blend in some light through to heavy drive.

good luck and enjoy! Plenty of people play Jazz on a Strat. Mainly fusion style- not so much swing standards, but to get started it is a hella more comfortable than a 3.5” thick hollow body or a LP boat anchor. Not to mention near immune from terminal damage.

Cheers
EMike

[Tal_175]

There are different jazz guitar tones. But I suspect the particular variant of jazz tone that you have in mind is not typically obtained with Stratocaster single coils into a scooped amp. At the very least you might want to try a humbucker guitar. You can also check if your strat is routed for H-S-H configuration. You might be able to just put a humbucker in the neck position and it'll make a big difference for the tone you're after.

[Laurence Finston]

I am a beginner and a long time enthusiast who finally got my first electric guitar

What does this mean exactly? Do you have other kinds of guitars? Do you have prior experience playing guitars or other instruments?

[burchyk]

There are a few things I like to do to my guitars in order to make them sound more "jazzy":

- Use the neck pickup.
- Lower the pickups. This will reduce the output but also help to soften the treble.
- Pure nickel strings sound warmer.
- String gauge at least 11, ideally 12 if you can play those. Try to only go up 1 gauge at a time to let your wrist build up the muscles. The guitar will need to be set up each time you change gauge - truss rod, bridge, nut slots. Have a luthier or a knowledgable friend do this.
- Action set where each note rings clearly.
- Nylon picks at least 1mm thick tame the brightness again. Jazz 3 and Fender nylon are my favourites.
- Tone control down a bit but not too much unless you want the "blanket over the speaker" sound.
- Guitar volume just below 10. Removes another bit of brightness.

You've got a great amp for jazz. You should not need any pedals to get a legit clean jazz sound from it. A few tips:
- Set the treble and bass below 5. I often run black panel Fenders on settings like Treble 4 Bass 2. That is with darker humbuckers.
- Deluxe might have a bright cap on the second channel. This means that the 3rd and 4th input from the left have extra brightness when the volume is 5 or lower. Not sure about the ToneMaster series, but you could experiment eithe plugging into the Normal channel or turning the Vibrato channel volume up and at the same time turning down the volume on the guitar. See if this makes a difference.

Finding your sound will take some time, enjoy the adventure

[Bobby Timmons]

EQ PEDAL

You can dial in a warm jazzy sound in 2 seconds with an Eq pedal.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

I’d avoid pedals until you dial in the best tone you can get. Once you achieve that, you probably won’t want or need anything else. And if you do, it’ll probably be something like a Jr Barnyard or a tube preamp rather than anything that grossly changes your basic sound.

The dynamic range of an American Standard Strat is no different from that of most other electric guitars, so a compressor won’t change anything. Tremolo and vibrato are of little use in jazz, as is OD unless you’re doing fusion.

The neck pickup on an AS Strat makes a decent jazz tone if you roll off the tone pot on the guitar and keep treble & mids down on the amp. It won’t get you the rich sound of a HB, though. For that, you’ll need a HB. I used a Duncan Hot Rails neck p/u in a a Tele for a few years and loved the full jazzy sound.

You can also change the values of the pots and tone cap in the guitar. A 0.047 microfarad cap will give you a darker, bassier sound if your OE cap is smaller. Others have already suggested a 100k volume pot, a 250k tone pot, and use of no-load pots.

Use a long, standard cable from guitar to amp, rather than one with low capacitance. EQ may also help if your amp tends toward the bright side. Use the amp’s tone pots aggressively before giving up and thinking about an EQ pedal.

[Tal_175]

There are also noiseless single coils that are really vertically stacked humbuckers or single coil sized humbuckers (like the hot-rails mentioned above) if your guitar isn't routed for humbuckers:
Seymour Duncan Single Coil Humbucker | Seymour Duncan Pickups

[John A.]

I play an American Standard strat through either a Princeton Reverb or a digital model of a Deluxe Reverb and can get a nice fat jazz tone through either without any pedals. The trick is to turn the bass and treble all the way down on the amp and to turn the tone control on the guitar down to around 3. It also helps to turn the volume up on the amp up a bit (3 or 4 on a DR) and control volume from the guitar. You can never get quite the midrange fullness of an archtop with a strat, but you can get a fat tone that retains the strat’s basic character and works well for jazz.

[st.bede]

Personally, I love pedals. My pedals have pedals.

That is brilliant… “My pedals have pedals”

[Cunamara]

Neck pickup, with tone and volume down a bit (maybe a little more than a bit) and you can start to get something like a jazz tone from a Strat
Then you can try some heavier strings, maybe flatwounds
And of course tweak your amp to adjust the sound
And of course find the right pick, the right attack in your right hand ....
Maybe then, you'll feel the need of an archtop ....

Spot on, and position your hand to be picking around the end of the fingerboard which will give you a softer, fuller and warmer sound than picking back by the bridge pickup, which Strat players often tend to do. Even with all that, it's still not going to sound like Jim Hall on an ES 175, but you can get a very nice jazz sound out of the Strat. Rolling off the volume and the tone a bit knock down the high end and the glassy sound Strats are famous for.

also, you can remove the digitally modeled "bright cap" from that amp via the editing software, which a friend of mine did with his and that was quite helpful with a jazz tone. Also, run the wattage knob down pretty low and turn the amp up a little bit to compensate; that will provide just a little bit of hair on your tone and fatten things up a little bit.

[Vihar]

.012 or .013 gauge strings (preferably roundwounds), bridge pickup on, clean amp with treble turned low (like 1 or 2), bass to where it doesn't fart out and mids to get just enough definition. Works with a compressor as well, and for a singing lead tone, with a compressor feeding an overdrive. You can get this with pristine clean amps like a Roland JC. It's similar to a pedal steel tone and works great for all kinds of jazz. Don't forget that in the first couple years of the electric guitar, there were many of them with a bridge pickup only.

Yeah, I know you didn't mean the above jazz tone, but any tone works for jazz if you mean it.

[st.bede]

An AM Stand Strat, should be fine… if I remember right (and I get this backwards all the time).. just lower the PUs a little. Down is warmer, towards the strings is brighter… or am I backwards. I forget ever time.

I like to put a spot of paint (from a paint pen) or (before paint pens existed) nail polish, to mark my starting point on the screw and pick guard. That way I can keep count and go back to start. Do both sides equally and check as you go along.

Then I would use the “fake” attenuation on the tonemaster to juice up the amp a bit, and roll down my tone knob a little… or a lot. (The trick is to get fat single notes but not so fat as to lose chord definition. That issue warrants a whole separate discussion).

I like to leave my amp tones set around 5 or 6, and use my guitar tone knobs for adjustments. I adjust my amp tone knobs for room considerations. However, I do break that rule often enough, for various reasons.

I would also think about picking up closer to the neck with not much of an angle… more of the flat part of the pick and less of the edge.

I like EJ jazz III picks.

Also I would put on nickel roundwound… DR blues (?)

My hands are small and wimpy… so I use nothing over 9 with roundwounds.

That is what I would do, if I was playing gigs where I had to get a jazz-ish tone for a song or two, and using a strat. That should work until you really get deep into a certain type of sound.

Eventually a PU swap could be cool, but I am always searching a particular thing with a PU swap. What ever that is, is a thought out goal based on a lot of playing. Anytime I have just bought a PU without really focusing on the guitar and what I really want, it has not gone well. I tend sell of those PUs and then think about what I am doing. I have even sold nice guitars, instead of trying to get something from them through PU swaps.

The whole pedal thing is truly a slippery slop and an endless search… if I am honest with myself, the fundamentals of hands, guitar, and amp relationships are where it all begins…

[vintagelove]

Flatwounds.

[Laurence Finston]

That is brilliant… “My pedals have pedals”

Thanks!

[pauln]

As some have mentioned, first thing is to do what you can do with what you have to see how close you can get - lower pickup height and slant under the strings, bigger nickle strings, higher string height, guitar controls, and amp controls.

Find an example(s) of the tone you want to hear by checking jazz guitarists sounds on youtube - so you have a reference(s) to which to compare. Start with guitar volume and tones full up and play with the amp controls until you are as close as you can get to your reference tone. Don't make assumptions or be shy about what might seem to be weird amp settings - try everything. Then work with the guitar volume and tones. At this point you should be getting fairly close enough to be happy with it. Play that for a while (weeks) and let it sink in...
For the long run, make a note of how the pickups are positioned (heights and slants), and each string change try lowering them, or lowering just one end (the slant thing). I suggest saving this for string changes because you want to take your time approaching your reference tone.

[Laurence Finston]

While I'm sure that a lot of the advice on this thread is good, I think it might be easier to exchange your guitar for a hollow-body/archtop, if the place you bought it allows it and that's what you really want. Or return it, if possible, and buy a guitar from somewhere where the salesperson discusses your desires and expectations and the possible choices before selling you an instrument. Or you could buy another guitar in addition, if your budget allows. Guitars do tend to accumulate.

[Laurence Finston]

The whole pedal thing is truly a slippery slop and an endless search… if I am honest with myself, the fundamentals of hands, guitar, and amp relationships are where it all begins…

Very true, on both counts. A pedalboard is a hole in your floor that you throw money into. If we're talking about conventional music, if it doesn't work without pedals, the pedals aren't going to make it any better: Garbage in, garbage out.

If we're talking about things like loops and envelopes and sequencers, i.e., basically using a guitar and pedals like an old-fashioned analog synthesizer with patch cords, then those are things that you can only do with pedals (or a guitar synthesizer or your computer or whatever). However, that's obviously not what you were asking about.

[rpjazzguitar]

You've gotten a lot of terrific advice.

I have an Am Std Strat and I can get a pretty warm tone. For a while, I installed a Seymour Duncan Lil 59 humbucker in the neck position. It was more humbucker-like, unsurprisingly, but I felt like I lost what caused me to buy the Strat in the first place. The single coil gives you sparkle.

The tone is in there someplace. Twist all the knobs until it comes out.

One other point. I always play with the ME80. I tend to agree with the criticism of the drive/distortion tones, but there are a zillion ways to get that sort of tone and I'd guess one of them must be good. I just don't know which one. But, there is enough to like in the ME80 that I use it every time I play.

[Average Joe]

While I agree with previous posters that you can go a long way tonewise with just the amp and guitar controls (and strings), some amps benefit from a bit of help from pedals. The regular tube deluxes are among those imho, but I don't know the tonemasters. I like a RAT in front of something like a deluxe reverb, with the gain set as low as it will go, and the tone around 3 o'clock. That will shave a bit of treble off and boost the mids.

[Tal_175]

Here is Cecil Alexander with a great jazz tone on a strat. A good example of a tone being strat-y and jazzy at the same time: