Click Clack on the Chords

Well, me and a drummer friend messed around the other day and recorded a few improvised songs onto his computer.

We were using this cheap little amp... the drive/gain/distortion on it really really sucked so we had to pretty much go way more "clean" than "dirty" so that it wouldn't sound like white noise (when you get the snow) on a broken old television set.

I had my guitar tuned down to "B" baritone and I was using big huge fat@$$ 13 gauge strings. Normally my guitar is tuned no higher than C#. It's not so I can do the nu-metal chunka chunka one chord noise thing... or even to play death/doom/goth metal or whatever. I just like going low... and having several extra notes to hit when soloing (I more often work it towards the head than towards the heel).

I noticed whenever I struck it hard, like when doing chords, a sharp clicking sound from the pick striking the strings would make it through the amp speaker and into the recording device. Click-click-click-click... in rapid succession if I wanked down on four strings... downstroking on a chord, I suppose I could say. Like, do that thing where in motion you snap your three fingers off your thumb....

I was using a very, very thick pick... the thickest pick that Clayton makes. I almost always do.

Why did this happen?

1. Thickness of the strings?

2. Big huge pick?

3. Cheap amp without any distortion/FX being run through it?

4. I was wanking at it too heavily?

5. Some combination of two or more of the preceding?

If I had a better amp and could run a bit more dirtiness and certain effects (reverb, echo, etc.) would that... uhhhhhhhh... fix this problem? Or would I have to play not-as-aggressively or get skinnier strings or use a thinner pick?

You know... next time I'll run it through my bass amp... I had half a mind to do that yesterday, but I went with the wrong half. :mad:

sounds to me like the amp was clipping (or something equivolent to that) small amps are not meant to handle frequencies as low as that.
If you are going to tune down that low, an amp with atleast one 12" speaker is essential, although even a 1x12 is cutting it fine.

I'm gonna guess that your strings were hitting your pickups. If that's the case, just lower them a little until you don't hit them anymore. That's a fairly common problem when tuning that low on a regular guitar. If that's not the problem, you might be over exerting the speaker. To fix that, turn the volume down and lower the bass a bit.