Truefire Mike Zito's Down and Dirty Tone TUTORiAL

Learn How to Craft Great Guitar Tone with Minimal Gear!
One of the most powerful tools in your arsenal isn't just your technical skill - it's your tone. A well-crafted guitar tone can transform your performance, forge a deep connection with your audience, and amplify the emotional and energetic essence of the music. But finding the right tone isn't as simple as twisting a few knobs on your amp or toggling through your pedalboard. It's an art - a seamless blend of gear, technique, and musical intuition.

Mike Zito exemplifies this art like few others. A gifted singer-songwriter, electrifying performer, and extraordinary guitarist, Mike possesses an almost uncanny ability to dial in the perfect tone for any song, regardless of genre. In his masterclass Down & Dirty Tone, Mike shares his insights, offering an eye-opening and ear-pleasing journey into the craft of creating the ideal guitar tone with just one guitar, one amp, and one pedal.

“We'll focus on getting great tones with minimal gear - just a guitar, a clean amp, and one pedal. I'll show you how to dial in a classic rock sound, a Texas blues sound, a jazzy blues sound, and, of course, a chicken-pickin' country sound. They can all be done with just your guitar, a clean amplifier, and one pedal. Trust me, you can do it. It's a lot of fun.”

Mike will show you how to achieve an authentic Texas blues sound using a Fender Deluxe Reverb '65 reissue amp, an Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808 reissue pedal, and a Fender Stratocaster guitar.

Mike will demonstrate setting up the amp and pedal for rhythm and lead play. By adjusting the volume, overdrive, and EQ settings, you'll learn how to create a dynamic range of sounds ideal for Texas blues, emphasizing the importance of playing dynamics and the guitar's volume control for expressive sound shaping.

Using the same Fender Deluxe Reverb amp, an Ibanez Tube Screamer pedal, and a guitar, Mike will demonstrate how to introduce the Tube Screamer to dial in a more distorted sound suitable for classic rock.

Adjustments to the bass and treble on the amp, along with strategic use of the guitar's bridge pickup and tone control, will help shape the sound. You'll learn how to balance the pedal's overdrive and volume settings to achieve a rich, crunchy tone at a manageable volume.

Mike will show you how to craft a jazz blues tone using a Fender Deluxe Reverb '65 reissue and a Stratocaster by focusing on the subtleties that differentiate jazz blues from other blues genres.

You'll adjust the amp's settings to emphasize a warmer, cleaner tone and utilize the neck pickup on the guitar to achieve the warmth and depth associated with jazz blues.

Lastly, with a Stratocaster guitar, a Fender Deluxe Reverb '65 reissue amp, and a Boss digital delay pedal, you'll learn how to create a classic country sound by selecting the proper pickup on the guitar and making minor adjustments to the tone.

The critical element in achieving the country vibe is setting the delay pedal for a slapback effect, with specific attention to the delay time and feedback to avoid too long or brief echoes.

For each genre, Mike will also demonstrate and teach you the right and left-hand techniques, phrasing, vocabulary, and creative approaches for crafting the overall tone necessary to “dial in” the genre-all with just one guitar, one amp and one pedal.

You'll have TrueFire's interactive learning tools to customize your workspace and learn at your own pace.

The demonstrations and performances are tabbed, notated, and synced to the video lessons with controls for looping, slow motion, fretboard animation, and other tools designed to accelerate your progress.

You'll also get the tab and standard notation files to print out, downloadable Guitar Pro files to edit if you desire, and backing tracks to practice and record with.

Grab your guitar, and let's dig in with Mike Zito!

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