# Cheap head for stoner metal?



## Thin_Ice_77 (Mar 29, 2009)

I'm forming a stoner metal side project soon and I need a cheap head to be able to capture a Kyuss type of tone. Something with lots of gain, almost a muddy tone and that'll withstand any abuse I throw at it. Here's a good example of the type of sound:



Any suggestions? Prepared to buy used, budget is about £350-400. Cheers


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## plyta (Mar 29, 2009)

IMHO a perfect recipe for that:

1)All mahogany shortish scale guitar with vintagey pickups (think gibson, prs);
2)Uber-thick strings+downtune;
3)Some old tube bass head+bass-heavy distortion box;
4)bass cabinets

Search for a beater old tube bass head  (and cabinet, guitar cabinets might crap out from bass head  )


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## HamBungler (Mar 29, 2009)

Old, vintage-styled equipment and fuzzboxes are your best friends. A Marshall Valvestate would probably get the job done, or a JCM 800 clone probably. If you didn't mind spending money I'd totally go for an Orange Rockerverb 100  or a Sunn or Soldano amp of some sort.

There's also a plethora of Fuzzboxes to help you get there, the Big Muff Pi should be more than enough, but there are also more interesting beasts like the Z-vex Fuzz Factory that can be used for more than just fuzzy distortion.


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## Panterica (Mar 30, 2009)

a fuckin Randall dude, Randall, Peavey XXX


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## EdgeCrusher (Mar 30, 2009)

A Fender Bassman cranked all the way up and boosted with a Tubescreamer should work nicely.


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## CynicEidolon (Mar 30, 2009)

Fender Supersonic would do the trick. And smaller strings to help with the loose-ness when you downtune to F1


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## tbird11 (Mar 30, 2009)

HamBungler said:


> Old, vintage-styled equipment and fuzzboxes are your best friends. A Marshall Valvestate would probably get the job done, or a JCM 800 clone probably. If you didn't mind spending money I'd totally go for an Orange Rockerverb 100  or a Sunn or Soldano amp of some sort.
> 
> There's also a plethora of Fuzzboxes to help you get there, the Big Muff Pi should be more than enough, but there are also more interesting beasts like the Z-vex Fuzz Factory that can be used for more than just fuzzy distortion.



+1
yeah man a big muff or an old fuzzface with the right eq settings on your amp and you'll be in stoner sludge heaven. 

This is a good cheap solution as most of the tones on Kyuss records to my knowledge are found on boutique or vintage amps.

As far as cheap amps go I would look at some secondhand Marshalls. (JCM 800, JCM 2000 or as mentioned previosly Valvestate)

Good Luck!


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## furrevig (Mar 30, 2009)

yeah, a old tube bass amp and a RAT distortion pedal would sound sick.


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## Daemoniac (Mar 30, 2009)

+1 to the marshall idea. Kind of loose, and really good for getting a more fuzzy tone. Maybe even a peavey, i know you can get a thick as tone from the peaveys, as long as its not too tight i think it'll be fine.


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## Crucified (Mar 30, 2009)

cheapest? a 5150. from there, look for sunn amps, or a jcm 800, maybe 900. look for anything high wattage that you can crank and boost.


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## Harry (Mar 30, 2009)

I'll have to disagree with the XXX, they're really a modern metal and shred sound and honestly too clear sounding for stoner metal. They were made for shredders and guys that play precision riffs and solos which is a utterly totally different sound to what a stoner metal guy would want.
For stoner metal, avoid modern, "clear" sounding amps to get a serious stoner tone.
Ask the kings of drone metal themselves (drone doom/metal and stoner have guitar tones you could use for both), Sunn O))).
They rock Sunn amps, and their tone absolutely drips of pure stoner/doom guitar tone.

Plyta nailed it above, when he said tube bass amps and bass cabs.
Taking a cue from Josh Homme from Kyuss, buy a bass amp, because of the extended low frequency range that helps to give guitars that muddier sound desirable in stoner/drone metal.
Throw some distortion in there and you're well on your way to rocking a stoner tone.

Find an old, cheap bass tube head and it will get you closer to a stoner tone than you could with the JCM2000s and 5150s suggested above.


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## Scar Symmetry (Mar 30, 2009)

HamBungler said:


> A Marshall Valvestate would probably get the job done, or a JCM 800 clone probably.



^^^ this

that's what I was going to suggest, Marshall does stoner pretty well dude.


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## Thin_Ice_77 (Mar 30, 2009)

I like the idea of getting an old bass head and cab. I play bass in a metal band now anyway, so it may be worth it...


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## xtrustisyoursx (Mar 30, 2009)

I have a friend who gets an INCREDIBLE stoner tone, and he didn't pay much. He got an older tube ampeg head (might be bass, might be bass/guitar), plugs in his sg to big muff, and then into the head, into a 2x12 v30 cab


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## groph (Mar 30, 2009)

oh god, I love stoner setups so much.

I bet those new Fender Bandmaster VM heads would be pretty cool, check them out on Musicians Friend, they're not all that expensive. They're 40 watts so you can probably crank the shit out of them, and definitely boost it, or use a fuzz of some sort. Some Mastodon-esque band played a show over here once and the guitarist was using an ancient Fender head and his tone just raped for what they were doing. It was so gritty. But any sort of old tube bass head would be pretty gnarly, just get it sounding fuzzed out like hell.

I second the Gibson, or basically any other guitar that is more or less a solid slab of mahogany with really mellow pickups in it. Also tune low, definitely tune low. It's almost as if you're going for a purposely bad tone which is what I love about these setups.


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## WhiteShadow (Mar 30, 2009)

I personally use my Fender Bassman LTD reissue with some kind of Bass distortion pedal, i dont know the name of it, cause its beat to shit, but its in the shape of a diamond. Scooped it up from a pawn shop. Nails the Kyuss tone, specifically the tone on the song "Freedom Run" ( i love this song).

By the way, Kyuss owns ALL of your souls. Well, i should say, they DID own all of your souls.

I'd agree with the same formula others have suggested: Some kind of all tube high gain amp (with the mids cranked, bass cranked, and the highs backed off a bit) and some kind of distortion/fuzz pedal. I think the best pedals to nail the Kyuss/stoner tone are Bass distortion/fuzz pedals, not guitar distortion/fuzz pedals. Reason being the effects pedals made for basses, obviously accentuate the low frequencies...a must for the stoner/Kyuss tone. I learned the bass pedal "trick" (if you will) from Buzz Osbourne of The Melvins from an interview i read. His tone is very similar to the Josh Homme Kyuss tone.

Basically just a thick high gain sound, with plenty of bass and mids and do whatever you gotta do to mellow out those highs. Theres a pissload of ways to achieve this.


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## Thin_Ice_77 (Mar 30, 2009)

I've researched what Josh Homme used in the Kyuss days and here's what Wikipedia says



Wikipedia said:


> Homme is very evasive about his guitar equipment, choosing to either change the subject or even lie when asked about his setup in interviews.[33] However it has been established that Homme owns three 1984 Ovation GPs (one sunburst, one black, and one red),[34] and that he often downtunes his guitar to C standard.
> 
> Amplifiers:
> 
> ...



I think I'll go for an old bass head. I'll be killing two birds with one stone really as I am now a bassist in my first 'proper' band. They seem pretty expensive though, so does anyone know if a solid state head will to the job? Also, I don't know much about bass amps, so will one will be able to give me enough gain or fuzz, or will I definitely need a boost? I think I've only seen about 2 bass amps ever which actually preamp gain.

Thanks for the help everyone.


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## Meldville (Mar 31, 2009)

Thin_Ice_77 said:


> I've researched what Josh Homme used in the Kyuss days and here's what Wikipedia says
> 
> 
> 
> ...



You'll definitely want a boost/fuzz in front of it, a bass head itself will not give you that kind of tone.


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## poopyalligator (Mar 31, 2009)

get a randall head, one of the really high wattage ones (cyclone,titan). I have a cyclone and it can achieve stoner metal tone fairly easily. If you are not fully cranked it sounds a little muddy. It also has a built in eq also. So you can do even further adjustments to it. You can use it for a bunch of other styles also.


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## Panterica (Mar 31, 2009)

i can turn the presence or whatever that fuckin knob is on my Savage and get it pretty much dead by lowering the gain and playing through a ampeg 4x15 or something


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## Nightcrawler (Mar 31, 2009)

Ampeg V4 head 
Ratt distortion

most importantly, get some good weed and the tone will come to ya


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## Stealthdjentstic (Mar 31, 2009)

For a second there i thought the title was "Cheap head for stoner"


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## Thin_Ice_77 (Mar 31, 2009)

^^ It still applies


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## maat (Mar 31, 2009)

Behringer Ultrabass BX4210A <<Awesome.

Two things though, you'll have to swap the speakers to midrange drivers and get an extra cab.

You'll need a distortion pedal.
The ones I'd recommend are...
Line6 UberMetal
Ram's Head Big Muff Pi.
Sandford & Sonny Bluebeard Fuzz
EarthQuaker Devices _Hoof Fuzz Pedal

_


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## metalmonster (Apr 23, 2009)

an used fender bassman ? 

hey , why not ... and a danelectro baritone guitar (they just released uber-cool guitars looking like jazzmasters) and fuzzboxes . A setup of this kind would rule , man ! not the clich&#233; stoner rig , but a cool rig ...


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## Tukaar (Apr 24, 2009)

Okay. What I've been REALLY satisfied with lately is a Fender FM100H head with a Fender FM412 cabinet with an MXR Blue Box and an MXR Distortion + front ending it. Also, in the loop, I have a Boss DD-3 Delay.

Pretty thick sound. Getting ready to switch out the MXR's for a RAT, though.


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## liamlw (May 21, 2009)

he mixed his gear a lot.
watch videos on youtube, marshall heads and 4x12 cabinet, sometimes 4x10, 8x10 bass cab, 2x15. and normally with an ampeg guitar/bass head. some of the time he is using Tubeworks Mosvalve bass head for power amp, he mixes it up a lot.
get a nice fuzz with a cranked old tube amp, tone adjusted and you're there imo


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## Justin Bailey (May 21, 2009)

a valvestate will do you good.


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## dorfmeister (Nov 8, 2009)

Traynor YBA-1 + A Dwarfcraft Devices Eau Claire Thunder.

Basically a vintage Marshall JTM45 without the high cost and a Big Muff Variant with huge bass response.


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## Ketzer (Nov 8, 2009)

I suppose it's really convenient that he already has an 8100, then 

I got great stoner tone out of my old Madison Divinity II. I don't think those come with a way to de-saturate them. Example: I ran a modded TS7 in front of the gain channel with the gain on 5, and got no perceptible increase in gain or volume, only more feedback. I was running it through an early 90s Mesa 2x15 for a while... fucking oppressive as hell.


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## ellengtrgrl (Nov 8, 2009)

If you can find them, most of the Sovtek heads are pretty cheap, and the do great stoner tone.


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## Randy (Nov 8, 2009)

^


That, with a hot-OD or a distortion pedal backed off most of the way (a Big Muff or Metal Muff). The Sovtek will give you the bite and the OD will give you a little bit of "fuzz".


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## Thin_Ice_77 (Nov 8, 2009)

6 month old bump ftw 

Isn't really needed anymore, but this information may well be useful for someone else


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## christpuncher66 (Nov 9, 2009)

ellengtrgrl said:


> If you can find them, most of the Sovtek heads are pretty cheap, and the do great stoner tone.



ive seen two stoner bands live using sovtek amps and they sound perfect. fuzzed out, loud, bassy, old school. they are awesome for stoner. big muffs are classic. and v30's help too for low end and creamy mids. 

for more expensive tastes old marshalls, sunn, orange, electric amp usa, and matamp are unbeatable


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## chips400 (Nov 10, 2009)

marshall valvestate


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