Kris,

I'd like you to go over your sound settings like you list under lick of the day for example. Maybe there could be a 101 lesson or discussion here on how to get a good guitar tone from your equipment. What is your reasoning behind your bass, middle, and treble amp EQ? Plus how does your guitar tone knobs interact with your amp EQ, etc. It might be useful to both guitar veterans and novices like myself besides mastering playing technique alone.

Thanks,

This post has been edited by Ikaros: Jan 19 2007, 09:37 AM

I am by no means an expert on tone but th advices I have gotten on this subject is too:

1) Turn all knobs on your amp to 5 (neutral, or whatever)
2) play on E and A and adjust the bass untill you like the sound it gives
3) play D and G and adjust middle
4) Play B and e and adjust treble
5) Try turning your tone on the guitar up n' down. My guitar is too cheap for that too have any real effect but what the hell

And that's the basic idea, I think. And after a while I guess you develop a feelin' as to what knobs should be where for what sound.

For me, fiddling with the knobs and the knobs on my OD-20 can take a looong time untill I get a tone Im happy with (and even then it's not quite what I want). So maybe a lesson is in place but I think I have the basic idea down. Fiddling usually does it to some degree.

Thats good, I never thought about playing pairs of strings like that for the 3 EQ ranges. I'll try it out. What confuses me, is I was reading this article (http://www.freelicks.net/Equalisation.htm) that says to adjust each knob until you hear a swell in the sound? To me a swell means a volume increase but maybe in this context it means something else?

It is a significant volume increase. This is very noticable with tube amps. Basically as you are turning the dial up from 0, you will get an increase in volume, as the frequencies start to appear in the sound. But there will be a point where there is a quick increase. (The only way I could describe it is a "swell"). You'll find that if you keep dialing up after this point, you'll not get much more of an increase. This point is the "sweet spot". If you balance your amp by finding the sweet spot for bass, treble, and mid, you can then add a little bit more of what you need if you want more sparkle, you dial up a slight bit more on the treble, but everything else will still balance nicely.

The common mistake when setting amps is to say "I want a bassy sound", and crank the bass all the way up to 10, leaving the mid and treble down at 5. For a while you think "Yeah thats a great bass", but you try to play a little lead, and think "the high notes are weak", so you crank up the treble. Eventually, all the settings are at ten and everythings competing, and it all sounds bad.

If you want a bassy sound, you find your sweet spots, then push the bass up 2 notches, and crank the volume up. The bass will be slightly louder than the mid and treble, but they'll still be there at sweet spot levels. If you want a trebly sound, you move the treble slightly, and crank the volume, etc.

You'll probably find other ways to set amps, but this one has served me well through use of several different amps.

Hope it helps

/T

And I think it's also worth mentioning it's not only about the EQ settings, different speakers will deliver different sounds. If you want the mid frequencies you go for one kind and if you're looking for scooped mids you go for another.

And if you're really into finding the right sound you would wanna pick your pickups carefully and which wood your guitar should contain... even the thickness of your pick etc.

This post has been edited by MickeM: Jan 19 2007, 11:52 PM

Thanks Tank!

I wanted to ask you if it matters if you adjust each tone knob separately with the others still at zero, or do bass, then middle, then treble or another combination? Would it be easier to hear each range sweet spot alone and mark the settings, etc? Maybe it doesn't make a difference but I thought I would clarify it with you.

[EDIT] I tried this adjustment per your instructions but couldn't detect any swell on my amp. It might be because I have just a Roland Cube 20X solid state practice amp. The tone knobs seem very linear with a only steady volume increase as I turn each knob. I realise you did point out it works well with tube amps so that is probably my issue. The EQ I'm using on my Cube that sounds good in my living room is bass=3, middle=8, and treble=6 for a warm almost tube-like sound.

This post has been edited by Ikaros: Jan 20 2007, 05:38 AM