Hey doomers. I’ve recently got back to playing guitar, after many years of not doing so. I used to play mostly classic rock and stuff like Metallica. Now, since then I’ve gotten bit by the bug of doom. Sabbath, Candlemass, Electric Wizard, Sleep, the classics of the genre and more. And now, I want to make my own sound. My current guitar is an Ibanez Gio with a Floyd Rose bridge, and I can’t really bother with setting it up anymore. I’m going to buy a new guitar with a fixed bridge, potentially another Ibanez or an LTD Tele as I like their feel. I can’t really choose a tuning to stick with, however. I’m between D standard, C# standard or C standard, and their respective drop tunings. Which ones do you guys use? I’m thinking of using 10-54 strings, skinny top heavy bottom, but I might go 11-60.
Apart from that, I’m planning a budget pedalboard, as things are expensive in my part of the world. Current plan is: Joyo Splinter for a Rat sound, DOD Carcosa for that sweet fuzz, Joyo Oxford for that Orange sound, Caline Multimod for modulations, and Caline Ragnarok for Delay/Reverb. Any more recommendations or suggestions?
For guitar “feel” matters so much more than anything else so go with your heart/fingers.
I like humbuckers and they are the more standard choice for big fat doom tones, but single coil pickups are cool too especially with fuzz. I like Stringjoy strings personally so that I can get weird and specific with gauge/tension, but if you are going for D-C tuning somewhere between 52-56 is the range I would use. For reference I run 60’s for my drop A non Gibson scale length guitar. As for what tuning to use I’d offer that with C# standard you can play so many great Sabbath riffs, and with the turn of a machine head you’ve got access to drop B.
Definitely get a Behringer SF300 pedal. It is a cheap copy of the Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz and will get you that Electric Wizard tone. The ProCo Rat itself is pretty cheap if you have those available. Other suggestions are anything in the big muff family, for a cheaper option there the TC Electronics Honey Pot is basically a green Russian muff to my ears.
I always like best-of-both worlds options, so I’m going for a guitar with good high output humbuckers and coil splits on a push pull pot. Ah yeah I did like the sound of C#standard when I tried it on an acoustic guitar this week, and I hadn’t thought about being near Drop B. That’s a bonus! I know about the Behringer Super Fuzz, but I really don’t like the way it sounds. Feels like rattling a tin can of nails. Or angry wasps. I do like Fuzz Face style fuzz, and Muff style, but I want something in between them. That’s where the Carcosa goes. I listened to gear demos and reviews of a million fuzz pedals on YouTube and I cannot think of any other that I liked more than that one. The actual ProCo Rat is a bit hard to get here, that’s why I was looking into the Joyo clone. Other than it having the issue of not working well under intense heat, it seems to sound just as well as a regular Fat Rat. And I don’t intend on playing under the summer sun at midday anytime soon.