Prestigiousneck

What's up everyone,

I have had my Ibanez S5470 for a couple of years now. Recently, I have started to play a lot of progressive metal (Between the Buried and Me, Dream Theater, etc.) and I am having A LOT of trouble with my guitar/amp when I apply distortion. For clarification, my guitar has the standard Hot Grinder Humbuckers, I am playing through a Mesa Express 5:50 amp, and my pedalboard includes a TU-2 Chromatic Tuner, NS-2 Noise Suppressor, DD-3 Delay, and a ML-2 Metal Core (Used for distortion); all made by Boss.

Now my clean tone is fine: It sounds wonderful. But when I activate my ML-2 pedal to get those heavy riffing tones, I am having trouble when playing on my higher (G, B, and high E) strings. Say for instance I am playing a solo on the higher strings. Everything sounds fine tone wise, but if I stop in the middle of a solo, there is very audible feedback coming from my lower 3 strings. It sounds like artificial harmonics are being playing on all 3 lower strings and the noise doesn't stop until I physically mute the strings with either hand.

At first, I thought I needed my truss rod adjusted to straighten the neck, but that wasn't the issue. The neck is now perfectly straight and the annoying feedback still persists. Then, I tried raising the action, and even with the strings pretty far away from the fretboard, the feedback still continues. Next, I tried lowering my bridge pickup (since that is the pickup I use with distorted tones), and the feedback is STILL there.

Here is the bottom line: I basically can't play anything on the higher strings with distortion because of the unwanted noise coming from my lower strings. I have been playing for the past couple months with a scrunchee (hair tie) wrapped around the strings at the back of the first fret, but as you all probably know, that totally mutes any open notes you might be trying to play. Please help me out here - I really want to be able to play on the higher strings with distortion without having to worry about the buzzing from the lower strings!!!

Thanks

Prestigiousneck

Bump

guitarwarrior96

Hi, Probably you are picking in a bad way, probably every time you pick the high strings, you are hitting the low strings with your palm. I used to have that same problem

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Gear:
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Ibanez RT
Studio One 2
IK Stealth Pedal
Redwirez Impulses

OliOsbourne

I'm pretty sure it's just the pedal

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DarthV

Do you hear it when you're just playing acoustic? Maybe it's the distortion pedal causing the problem. I'd try using an overdrive pedal with the amp's 2nd channel set to burn.

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AcousticMirror

Mute your lower strings when your playing

You'll always have noise when u use a lot of gain.

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trashedlostfdup

the metalcore is your weak point. there are much better distortion or OD pedals out there. you have a nice guitar and a solid amp (not my favorite flavor of mesa, but surely not bad).

are you in a small room with lots of hard surfices? is the gain excessively high?

are you using the metal core over the OD channel on the mesa? or on the clean channel?

with volume up and especially with gain its easy to get feedback if you aren't muting your strings. i would adjust your technique and get used to muting strings you aren't using.

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Matt.Guitar

Hard to say really, but I'd bet on two things:

1. Too much gain
2. Sloppy muting technique

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Prestigiousneck

Hi, thanks everyone for the responses. The general consensus seemed to be I either have bad picking form, I am using too much gain, or it way be my pedal.

Guitarwarrior96: You could be right, but even when i pluck a single note just to test it out, I still get the feedback. I could definitely use some technique practice

OliOsbourne: That's very possible. The pedal is a couple years old and has had quite a few beers spilled on it

DarthV: No, only when playing electric. I will try your suggestion of using the amp's burn channel w/ an overdrive pedal once I can get my hands on one.

AcousticMirror: That is something I am very interested in learning. I called the guy at the local music shop with the problem I presented in this thread and he's like: "well, you know, Petrucci doesn't just have magical string muting powers, he still has to mute lower strings when soloing." I was really bummed to learn that Petrucci isn't magic. Like finding out Santa isn't real.

Trashedlostfdup: Nice name. And you don't like the 5:50, eh? I like it, but there are definitely some things I wish it had. Gain on the amp is at about 3 and on the pedal it's at about 7, so yeah definitely a lot of overdrive. Room I usually practice in is not small. Using the overdrive pedal on the clean channel, not on the Blues/Burn channel. And this issue occurs even if the master volume is very low (aka "practicing while others are asleep" volume).

Sledgeman

Check if the saddles on the bridge are loose. Loose saddles can give weird noises.

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