Ivano Icardi's Unconventional Jazz Pack for Valeton GP200
Ivano Icardi is a talented Italian guitarist and composer. With a music career spanning numerous successful projects and collaborations, Icardi continues to amaze and enthrall audiences with his creativity and his technical mastery.
Info:
I made the entire "Unconventional" album with a Suhr Classic T guitar (original without any modifications), all the lead guitar tracks were recorded with this instrument, passing through a hybrid analogue / digital chain, this chain is described in detail in the my book: “Unconventional - Un viaggio nella chitarra moderna” Pub. Volontè & Co. (Only Italian Language).
To recreate the sound of the album I meticulously profiled this effects chain and programmed the same settings for reverb and delay. I am extremely happy with the result obtained, practically identical to my original sound.
I thought a lot about how to name these sounds and I realized that the best description I could give them was using the nomenclature of the fonts: Light, Regular, Semi Bold, Bold and Extra bold.
I think these names perfectly describe the sonic character of any patches.
Between one sound and another there are small sonic variations which however are present throughout the entire album.
Scrolling through the patches you will realize changes in "thickness" of the sound and obviously the gain, arranged in ascending order from the cleanest to the most saturated.
These sounds are ideal for playing jazz (contemporary jazz) so they have a "clean" base, and give their best with a single coil of a telecaster-type guitar. If you want to use them with other guitars, perhaps with stronger pickups.
Play around with your device input controls so you can reduce (or increase) the input gain and bring the sound back to his clean basic matrix.
- Light: the first sound you'll encounter is best suited for delicate and subdued passages, for gentle arpeggios and very soft strumming.
- Regular: it's the most suitable sound to start working on chord melody, it has the right note thickness without ever being too thick, we can define it as the 'main tone' of this sound pack.
- Semi Bold: that delicate point every guitarist seeks, the edge of breakup tone when it starts to saturate without overdoing it, ideal for chord melody but also for blues/jazz solo phrases, remember to play around with delay and reverb, adjusting them to taste!
- Bold: here the tone becomes fat and full-bodied, ideal for single-note phrases, but try it even on something more harmonized, you'll see it can handle the stress... With this tone, even your Strat or Tele will sound thick on the first two strings! Remember to play with the tone knob to get an even darker and jazzier sound.
- Extra Bold: the lead sound! The most saturated one (but never too much!) ideal for jazz/Rock/Blues solos. You can think of it as a sound that approaches the style of Scofield or Henderson. Try it also for more aggressive rhythms, it won't disappoint you. Again, remember to adjust reverb and delay to your taste.