How to Dial in a Blues Tone with Amped 2

It’s hard to play guitar without acknowledging the importance and input of blues to the rock guitar world.

At some stage, most guitar players will play blues in some form. Blues is a style of music that is raw and emotionally charged and this is reflected in the playing style and the tones chosen. The tones for blues music should be raw and dynamic.

In this lesson we’re going to dial in a great blues tone to start you off using just Amped 2.

Amplifier

When it comes to getting a great blues tone, the amp should be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. You want an amp tone that is mostly clean, but can break up when you dig in.

For blues, a 6L6 response always works great. Paired with the low gain USA voice, you can dime the master volume and the gain to get some edge of break up tones. EQ wise, you don’t want anything too extreme here, but a slight mid boost helps your single notes feel a little fatter.

Reverb

As the majority of blues legends recorded their music with vintage amplifiers, a spring reverb is the best choice here as most vintage amps with reverb built in would have had real spring tanks. Try different amounts of reverb and see what feels right, there are no rules when it comes to blues reverb.

Drive

When playing blues, you want to avoid a lot of higher gain tones. You can use the drive section on the Drive mode for a nice mid-range light overdrive boost as seen in these settings, or switch it to the Boost mode for a clean boost to push the amp a little harder.

Modulation

In blues guitar, you won’t hear a great deal of modulation being used. Most of the classic blues records were recorded in a time before modulation was a main part of a guitar players rig, and many modern blues heroes prefer to follow the simplistic gear approach of the legends before them.

You can add a slow, shallow Tremolo effect to your blues progressions to emulate some amp-style tremolo that many classic, vintage amps had. This works great over a slow blues.

Delay

If you’re playing in a more rock and roll style of blues playing, a slapback delay is very useful. You can use the analogue delay with a fast time and a very short feedback level. You want to set this low enough that you just hear a single repeat just after you play the note.

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About the Author

This article on how to dial in a blues tone was written by Leigh Fuge. Leigh is a professional guitarist and content creator and also works alongside musicteacher.com to create guitar focused, educational and entertainment content.

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