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Powerful, and has four presets to cover lots of bases. Mine cuts or boosts bass and treble v effectively with various amps
They're very useful for tone shaping and clean boosting.
You'll be surprised at how useful they are.
is good too with the advantage of presets. Another sleeper is the Zoom MS series - they have both Parametric and Graphic EQs and can also store presets.
Much warmer than the Source Audio - which did sound quite 'digital' to me, but I loved the presets.
It is also one of those 'add a little bit of something' pedals.
So, for those that have them - essential bit of kit? Nice to have? Manage happily without? And how would you describe what it is they give you?
I'd say "great to have available" rather than essential, like the LS-2 Line Selector is.
I use a GE-7 for shaping sound and also as a boost capable of 15db into the amp input, to push the preamp rather than use a drive pedal. So yes, a boost with sound shaping options
The GE7 is a good cheap shout, and surprisingly good - although can add a bit of noise.
If you can get the Analogue boded ones, they are superb and silent. Id forgot about them !
Positioning choice is vital as it will work differently. In front of the amp an EQ will add gain as well as tone shaping. In a serial effects loop it will be clean and you can use it purely for tone shaping and clean volume boost. Some folk even use one at each end to give them extra flexibility. You don't need to spend a fortune and could start off with a cheap one just to get the feel of what an EQ does and experiment with slider shapes/settings. If you have the budget, the latest 'silver' MXR 10-band is a great EQ and very quiet.
A great many players struggle with their tone and spend absolute fortunes on changing pickups and speakers - sometimes they can be very happy with the results, but other times less so. An EQ is a really simple, fast and inexpensive way to add huge tone-shaping control that you simply can't get from your amp's on board EQ and is immensely versatile depending on how you use it and where you place it. I would never be without one now and particularly when used in the FX loop it can be like taking a blanket off your amp that you never knew it had, to make your tone clearer and punchier.
You'll also see a lot of discussion re parametric vs graphic EQ - they are slightly different in how they work but fundamentally do very similar things but in a different way. I'd personally suggest starting with a conventional graphic EQ to begin with because these tend to be less expensive and you can more easily hear the tonal impact within each frequency range.
There are also pedals that are a kind of EQ but work a little differently. A BBE Sonic Stomp Maximiser is an example - you can see demos and hear explanations on youtube. It's most effective when used in an FX loop and brilliant re 'taking off that blanket' I mentioned earlier. It's a weird pedal in that you get used to the tonal change very quickly - it gives a more fuller '3D' clearer tone. After a few minutes you don't realise it's on - until you turn it off! Hence, it's an always on pedal in the FX loop of eg my Valvetronix amp. And because it works differently to an EQ ythey work really well together - but just keep the BBESSM last in the signal chain for best results.
Free the Tone do a nice 10 band unit room - analog circuit with digital programming .
This is worth a watch imho
https://youtu.be/OxGftBt4Jrk
unlike some other posters above, the thought of adding an eq pedal into an fx loop horrifies me. If I was unhappy with the overall eq of an amp, I’d look for another amp. There’s something about using a graphic eq that tends to make amps sound very solid state, or artificially eq-ed, rather than warm, beautiful tone imo.
this is not meant as a criticism of those players who find eq pedals crucial. It’s just to try to point out that there appear to be two types of players - those who love eq pedals, and those for whom eq pedals seem to actually end up subtracting from the sound quality - not enhancing it,
but I guess until you try one, you have no idea which camp you’re likely to fall into.
The other caveat is that you really need a serial not parallel fx loop as the latter won't let the full signal through. My amps that sound great with the EQ in the fx loop include my Laney Cub 12R, Marshall DSL401, and Vox Valvetronix AD120VTX. Not so effective in the fx loop of my Laney VC30-210 and Marshall Valvestate 8080 as both of these have parallel loops.