 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential, my name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MGRmusic.com and in this video we're going to be talking about how you can thicken up your guitar tone using the chorus and delay effects built into the Blackstar Silverline series. The amp I'm using in this video is the Blackstar Silverline Deluxe but the principles in this video apply to all of the Silverline amps. These principles also apply to any of the ID core range as well as they've got the same effects engine built in. So we're going to be taking a look at two core tones here. We're going to be taking a look at a clean tone and an overdriven tone and the entire aim is to thicken up and widen those tones using both the chorus and the delay effects in separate ways. These are really useful things to do if you're a guitar player that's looking to thicken your guitar sound out. Also this is really useful if you play any one guitar band but you want to sort of simulate two guitars in the mix. These tips can work great as well to give a sense of width and additional sort of thickness and bulk to your riffs. So we'll start off by looking at a clean tone. My clean tone here is completely dry. I'm using the clean bright voice of the amp along with the 6R6 response. So there's no modulation, no delay and no reverb on this tone. So the first thing I'm going to do is use some chorus to thicken that up. So chorus works by essentially doubling the guitar signal. It takes your guitar signal that goes in so we'll refer to this as your core signal. That's the completely dry signal that you're hearing there. The core signal goes in and what the chorus does is it duplicates that signal into two paths. One of the paths gets slightly delayed and modulated. The modulation takes shape in like a detuning sort of way so it slightly reduces the pitch of that. Then at the end it blends the two signals back together so you get your core tone and you also get this slightly delayed slightly detuned tone on the other side. They both merge back into one signal. What this does is it kind of creates the illusion of two guitar players. If you were playing guitar with a friend and you were both playing exactly the same thing even though you sound pretty tight and you're playing more or less at the same time there's going to be slight discrepancies in you know the tuning between the two of you because one of you might have a slightly flatter guitar than the other but it's not going to be noticeable as being out of tune. There may also be some slight timing variations between the two of you but only fractional not enough to be perceived as being completely out of time but enough there that it sort of thickens out and naturally choruses the sound. This is what happens when two guitar players play together. So the chorus is going to replicate that if we use it subtly. If we use a chorus in an extreme way it sounds like a big sort of swirly modulation effect but use subtly we can create that twin guitar illusion. So I'm going to come over to the top of the amp now and I'm going to turn on the modulation effect. The chorus is on this third led here on the type knob so I'm going to select that. I want this to be about halfway. If it's too far up we're going to get a real obvious chorusing effect so here's how the effect sounds as an effect. So when we use it that way we can hear that there's a swirl we can hear all the modulation going on. We want it a lot more subtle than that. So coming back to the top panel of the amp I'm going to set this to about halfway. I've actually got the level up full here I can probably bring that back a little bit as well and the other thing is the tap tempo switch. So we've got this little blinking led down here which is the speed that the effect is working at. Now you can control this to your own taste. I've got it just at a steady pulse. If you want it a faster or a slower sort of thickening effect you can tap that to taste. So if I now play the same clean guitar part I was playing earlier but with the chorus on very subtly you're going to hear the same thing. You're not going to hear that obvious kind of modulation detune swirl but you are going to hear a slight version of that. It's going to create the illusion of a thicker more robust guitar part. So you can hear the signals being affected but it doesn't obviously sound like there's a ton of chorus on it. What you get is this slight detune and slight modulation as if there's two guitar parts playing the same thing in tandem. Now obviously using effects in this way is completely subjective to your own taste so if that sounded a bit too extreme you can dial it back a little bit more as well and make it even subtler. This is a great way to use chorus to thicken up the tone and it also works well with an overdriven sound as you'll hear later on in this video when the first chorus units were invented in the 1970s that the sole purpose was for this reason. It was to thicken up tones and make it sound like two guitars playing at once but only later on when people started pushing the envelope of what chorus can do they started delving into it as more of a kind of swirly modulation thing. There are many big players who use this effect to thicken up the guitar sound in one guitar band such as Andy Samus from The Police or Alex Lifeson from Rush. So we move on to delay now. Delay works by taking the signal that you put into the amp and repeating it at a predetermined interval so the interval of the repeat is determined by what we tell the amp to do. We can have a delay that's incredibly short or incredibly long. For this thickening effect we're going to use what's called a slap back delay which is a super super short delay that basically just creates a quick repeat of what we put into it but also it creates some ambient space around it. So I'm using exactly the same clean tone as before. So I'm going to use delay now to thicken that tone up so we're going to come over now to the top panel of the amp again and I'm going to switch on the delay. I'm using an analog delay for this so I want the second light of the effects type selected but as with the chorus I want this quite subtle so I'm going to keep this as low as I can to the first LED without going too low and activating the first type but just above that. The level you can set to taste this is obviously going to be how much of the delay you're going to be hearing and once again the tap is down to you. Obviously as you can see from this blinking light I've got the tap very fast. So what you're going to hear now is the same clean tone but another version of it is going to be duplicated thanks to the delay but the delay time is going to be incredibly short. So if I just play a muted note you can hear a very very quick repeat right after my initial tone. What this is going to do is this is just going to double it up straight away and replicate that sort of twin guitar not perfect timing sound that you get if you play with another guitar player. If you play with someone else you're not going to be exactly in time there's going to be a little bit of variation between your natural timing. So here's how this is going to sound with some chords. So we could technically get that delay even tighter if we wanted by bringing it down a little bit more on the type knob and go in even faster with the tap. Obviously the tap is only limited by how fast you can physically tap the switch. So there's an incredibly short delay on that it's almost imperceptible because it's so quick but when you compare that to the dry signal you'll notice there's some ambient space and a very very small hint of doubling there. So that's the intended effect. So now we're going to look at this with overdrive. This is great if you're looking to thicken up your rock guitar sounds. So the dry tone I'm going to be using is a super crunch tone using the EL34 response. I've gone for a very British mid-humped kind of rock tone. So my overdrive tone there is completely dry. So now I want to thicken that up with some chorus. So once again I'm coming over to the top panel of the amp and I'm turning on the modulation. The modulation effects I've got set for this are exactly the same as the ones I dialed in for the clean tone. So here's how it's going to sound overdriven. We can hear the same core tone there, the dry overdriven sound blended in with a slightly detuned slightly delayed chorus sound. If that's a bit too extreme I can make it even subtler so I can come back over to the top panel of the amp and I can dial this type right back to just above the LED again. I can turn the level down if I want as well. This will just soften the effect, make it even subtler than what you just heard. If I take that exact same overdrive tone now and I change the chorus for the exact same slap back delay you heard earlier in this video, it's going to sound like this. So with an overdrive tone the slap back delay works exactly the same way. It creates that doubling effect by creating one guitar part that's completely dry and another guitar part with a slight delay pulling it slightly out of time. This simulates the idea of playing with a second guitar player. Both chorus and delay can be very very useful to use in this way. You can even double them up together if you want. So I'm actually going to turn the chorus back on now. So I've got my chorus and my delay on together. Here's how it's going to sound. So there's a lot going on there. There's the slap back delay creating the slightly out of time sound and also the chorus is doing the same thing as well as detuning a little bit. So that gets pretty thick and pretty wide sounding. Using different combinations of these effects even together like that you can really start to craft some wide clean and overdriven guitar sounds. And like I said earlier on this is especially useful if you play in a one guitar band because you can really fatten up the sound. This is also really useful if you use a twin amp setup. So you could have one amp running like this with modulation and or delay on it and you can have another amp running completely dry. That combination will also create a lot of width and a really kind of full fat guitar tone. So there you go guys. There are some tips and tricks on thickening up your guitar tone using the built-in chorus and delay on your silver line amps. And like I said don't forget if you've also got an ID core amp these principles are the same because you've got the same effects built in. So you can also try this out yourself at home. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you did let us know down below in the comments how you've gotten on with thickening out your tone with these little tips and tricks today. We'd love to hear how you've gotten on with that. Don't forget to go check out the Blackstar YouTube channel for more free lessons like this on dialing in your tone using your silver line amps and a bunch of artist style videos as well. Don't forget to let us know if there's any artists or tips and tricks you guys might want to hear about in future videos as well. And if anyone out there is looking for a guitar teacher please head over to mgrmusic.com. It's a network of great teachers all around the UK waiting to take you guys to that next level. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.