Vai guitar sound

Does anyone here know the basic sound that Steve Vai uses? What kind of distorion. I got a gnx4. Can i tweak it to almost his exact sound?

I would love anyones help :D

Originally Posted by: spearballDoes anyone here know the basic sound that Steve Vai uses? What kind of distorion. I got a gnx4. Can i tweak it to almost his exact sound?

I would love anyones help :D

Vai uses a robert keeley modded Ds-1 Ultra. Find something close to a ds-1 (even though his is so much better).

Originally Posted by: spearballDoes anyone here know the basic sound that Steve Vai uses? What kind of distorion. I got a gnx4. Can i tweak it to almost his exact sound?

I would love anyones help :D

You should go to the Digitech forum and ask the people there for help,
They have lots of patches and info about the Gnx4 including a Steve Vai patch to download :)

Passion And Warfare era was played using:
Ibanez Jem with DiMarzio Evolution humbuckers (some more recent tracks like "Bad Horsie" used DiMarzio Breeds)
Boss Distortion pedal (probably a different distortion pedal to what he uses now)
Morley wah pedal (now tweaked and remarketed as the Bad Horsie)
Eventide Harmonizer H3000 digital effects rack effects (not sure if it was the SX or the D/SE)
then a bunch of cabs (now mostly Carvin gear).
The tone he achieved for all of his effects was done on an Eventide Harmonizer (now discontinued) - you can still pick them up on E-Bay with the Vai patches intact (I got one a while back - excellent piece of gear but quite expensive)...
As far as using a GNX series goes, you can get an approximation on the Digitech forum... it may be close but it won't be the 'real' thing.

i have a marshall valvestate and a boss ds-1, with a hot rodded strat. i get almost vai's sounds perfectly by setting the amp on the clean channel to bass: 4.5 mids: 5 treb: 9 for the bright clean sisters type of tone and use the fourth position on the selector.

for all his other stuff, i set the amp to bass: 7 mid: 8 treb: 5.5 and get the boss settings like dist all the way, tone about 9 o'clock, and level all the way

if ur using the fist settings with dist, have the same settings on the boss but bring the tone down to 8 o'clock to compensate for the bright sound.

that'll give u the basic steve vai sound, but it changes with the way u play as well.

as for the pedal u have, i havenn't the foggiest...

steve uses the american knd of distortion with some kind of compression from a tiny compressor-pedal. use DiMarzio pickups to and you're there... :cool: