Chords for How Nita Strauss Gets Huge Tones with No Amp

I guess this is a good segue to talk about your really minimal,
last time I saw you_
As minimal as possible.
Last time I saw you, ridiculous huge rig.
Yeah.
Five guys setting it up.
Totally.
Yeah.
Yeah, the behemoth rig of the Allis Cooper Tour.
Right, right.
And now you're like as lean and mean as it could possibly get.
So this is the Boss GT 1000?
Yes, the Boss GT 1000 has been my go-to fly rig since it came out.
And before that, it was the GT 100.
And I've been super, super into_
I mean, I had it from the GT 10 to the GT 100 to now the GT 1000.
Yeah.
And it's been my go-to.
If you guys have ever seen videos of me playing the National Anthem,
playing at WrestleMania,
you know, playing America the Beautiful at the LA Rams football game,
like anything big that I do like that is this little baby direct into the board.
It's a gig bag and that.
Yeah.
And _ one XLR.
It's a single XLR.
We have two now and one of them is you guys. _ _
But, you know, the thing about this tour is, you know, we're a small tour.
You know, this is my solo tour.
It's a really, really small crew.
And we're all hands on deck with the band and crew for setting up and loading out and tearing down.
And we can't, you know, we don't have the budget for, you know,
carting out cabs and heads and all that stuff.
So actually everything that you guys are seeing and hearing on my solo tour is all direct.
If you take a look around the stage,
feel free to bring the cameras around later after we're done.
There is not a single cab on stage.
Everything is direct.
We've got fractals across the front and then my GT 1000.
And so the PA drops out.
All you hear is drums.
Yes.
And drums.
Luckily, I have a really great drummer.
So he carries it until the PA comes back out.
But everything that we bring on on this tour can be carried on the plane in your hands,
which is, you know, I think important for people to know that it can be done.
Right.
You can get this huge, massive, you know, arena sound.
I have done it in a football stadium more than once with just this on its own in a single XLR.
And at this point, you're as comfortable with this as anything.
Yeah, maybe even more comfortable.
And you know, the cool thing is it's actually got so many bells and whistles that I haven't even played around with yet
because I got this exact unit on the day of my first clinic on the unit.
So I was just reading about it and studying about it and I dialed in these patches
and I've just been going through them.
Would you mind taking us through some of your like your go-to patches?
For sure.
So I set up all my rigs the exact same way.
You guys might remember this from the last one.
I always have clean rhythm lead and effect lead like something like an auto wah,
which is my go-to because I like an auto wah.
Who doesn't?
I know, you know, and actually I'll show you a couple different ways.
This has a regular wah and an auto wah on it.
And then the last one is a cool little effect one that I'll show you.
So you guys heard my clean sound.
[Em] It's sort of [D] a 12-string sounding sound.
[Dm] _ [Bb] _ [F] _ _ [D] _
[C] _ [F] _ _ _ _ Surprisingly [Dm] almost acoustic overtones.
That's why I like this one so much.
[Bb] _ If you go to this split pickup when you're splitting the humbucker and the single,
[C] _ [Dm] _ _ [F] _ [Bb] _
_ [G] _ _ [Cm] _ [A] _ _ [Dm] _
I [G] mean it sounds like a nicely mic'd acoustic.
Yeah, it really sweetens up.
And then from there of course you need a solid rhythm channel. _ _ _ _ _
_ [B] _ _ [G] _ [C] _ _ [Eb] _ [G] _
_ [D] _ [C] Now do you remember what amp you're basing that on?
You know, the GT [Ab] doesn't have the amps per se.
[N] You just find a sound.
I go by ear anyway.
I find if I start going, I need it to sound like a triple rectifier or whatever it is,
you get a little too caught up in, I need it to sound like a JCM800.
It doesn't sound enough like a JCM800 so I don't like it.
Right, yeah. You know?
Yeah, and it's kind of a silly thing that we equate things with.
Yeah.
It's like a reference that is just a word.
It doesn't really mean anything anyway.
I think it's easy to get caught up in that as a guitar player and going,
well it doesn't sound realistic enough to be a JCM800 or a JVM,
which is what I use on stage with Alice now.
I would rather just go by my ear.
It may very well have that amp model in there, but if it does,
I just keep flipping through it until I find one that I like.
Yeah, yeah.
Hate it, hate it, love it, love it, love it.
Hate it, hate it, no, no, no.
Love it, love it, love it.
Exactly.
And then from there, my lead sound is pretty much like that jumped into a pool.
[G] _ So you see it's got a nice [C] long delay, not too high of a level on the delay.
[G] _ _ [E] But something that's got a couple different, you know, it comes back a couple times.
Is there a little DB bump on that one?
Oh yeah, have to.
[F] _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [C] _ Just enough to say, here I am.
Right here.
I'm [N] drowning out the drummer.
Yeah, and that's actually as much for on stage as off stage,
because we have a great front of house engineer that's out here.
He'll push me in the front of house when I need to be,
but if I need to hear myself a little more,
it's always important for guitar players to have that boost,
so you can hear what you're doing.
Yeah, and good bands mix themselves.
Exactly.
So that's all kind of part of it. Exactly.
So here we've got, and actually, you know what, while we're on that one,
I'll show you a couple more things you can do with it.
Cool, I like it.
So we've got that lead sound, right?
And right now, as you guys see, the GT has this here,
which usually I have it set as a volume as well.
[G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ But it also has a pressure switch at the top, so if I go up here,
_ and then I put some weight on it,
_ _ _ _ _ it becomes [N] an expression pedal, so you can use it as a wah,
you can use it as a volume, you can use it as an octaver.
I think I've got this one set as an octaver. _ _ _ _ _
_ So it's sort of its own whammy pedal.
So how do you do the, it looks like you're doing the switch just by,
I mean, like, how are you switching it over?
It's a pressure sensor, so you basically just put some pressure on it,
and the key is when you're doing the volume swell,
to make sure you're keeping the pressure on your heel
and not putting the pressure on the front,
because that's how it activates the second expression pedal.
But how do _ you differentiate between the wah and the octaver?
So I've got the wah set on one, and I've got the octaver set on the other one.
So this is my rhythm [G] pad, and that's the one I've got the [C] octaver set on.
[D] _ [Ab] _ _
And then, [G] same thing, now we go to the lead,
_ volume swell, _
_ [D] _ _ _ [C] _ _ [Fm] and then it's a wah.
And it can be a slicer, it can be a harmonizer.
I mean, boss effects are great.
Yeah, I think I've got a harmonizer dialed in [C] on the_
No, not that one.
Ew.
Where is it?
[F] _
_ _ [N] _ _ [F] _ _ _ [G] _
[Bb] _ [Am] So it's got [N] harmonizers, it's got all kinds of fun stuff built into it.
I can't get enough of this thing.
Then we have, of course, my favorite, auto wah. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [G]
Auto wah is [Ab] always fun.
[E] And then the last thing that this [Bb] thing has,
not the last thing, [B] it's got an infinite amount of cool stuff.
The last thing you're going to use on this gig.
The last thing I'm going to show you guys for right now.
So I had the Boss synth, where you had to use the GK pickup,
and it was a whole extra step,
and I never ended up taking it on tour,
because it didn't seem like a road thing, it seemed like a studio thing,
but it made all those cool synth sounds, these cool keyboard sounds.
And when I started playing around with the GT-1000,
[G] I came across this.
_ _ _ [Eb] And [F] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ _ _ how [Abm] cool is that, that they [Bb] managed to get that synth sound
with a regular instrument cable.
Okay, and [N] for the record, I think you're related to Johann Strauss, right?
So, go neoclassical on him.
I would love that.
I mean, it's a little bit more of a pad than a real synth,
but still, I think it's cool that they got that sound out of it,
and were able to do it.
Yeah, you could totally go Strauss.
Yeah, Strauss plays Strauss.
That's your next concept record.
And then the last thing we have up here is a Shure GLXD wireless.
Super reliable.
I use this any time I'm not out with Alice.
This is my