Unlocking your amps best tones

Cabicular · October 2014

In addition to the "tone is fingers" thing, one of the main components of a good sounding amp is the guy twiddling the knobs

I'm a man of limited patience which makes amps like the Mesa mk iv difficult to get what I consider a good sound from. I've heard other people get them to sound great but Jesus there are just too many controls! I tend to start with amps in the 12 o'clock position as I (incorrectly as it turns out) figure this is what the manufacturer wants you to hear
So ....
What are your top tips to wrestle a good tone out of an amp?

ecc83 · October 2014

You will LOVE this then!

http://www.zzounds.com/item--BLCS200W

Dave.

John_BlackWolf · October 2014

Use the least amount of gain you can to get the feel/sound you need.

start with the eq controls at half way, then starting with the low end go from minimum and increase until you hit the sweet spot for that frequency band. then go on to treble, then mids etc.

For example when adjusting the bass control, I'd start with it all the way down, and play open palm muted repeats on the E/A strings and bring up the bass control until I get the amount of bloom and low end response that I want. I often find this is around 3 or 4 on the dial.

For the treble control I'd play the 7th fret harmonic on the B/E strings.

ICBM · October 2014

I actually find the amps with *proper* multiple sets of knobs like the Mesa MkV easy to set up. The problem is ones like the MkIV - or worse, the MkIII - where some of them work in more than one mode.

I don't really have any particular method, other than to just listen to what all the knobs do over their full range of travel and experiment to find the best combinations. Sometimes it can be a pain because it changes with volume.

That and turn the bass up full, of course.

ThePrettyDamned · October 2014

Genre dependant.

@john_blackwolf I agree for general stuff, rock, blues, funk etc except controls are often interactive, so I tweak all 3 at once, rather than one at a time.

I find dialling in amps very easy - maybe I'm unfussy, but it doesn't take too much work to dial in a bass, mid, treble on a classic style amp

simply play something that the amp will be used for and tweak from there according to what your ears tell you.

On a modern style, it's more work because the eq is very powerful (5150, 6505 etc). But follow the same steps, it's easy

Just use your ears.

longi · October 2014

Cabicular;26146" said:
In addition to the "tone is fingers" thing, one of thie main components of a good sounding amp is the guy twiddling the knobs
I'm a man of limited patience which makes amps like the Mesa mk iv difficult to get what I consider a good sound from. I've heard other people get them to sound great but Jesus there are just too many controls! I tend to start with amps in the 12 o'clock position as I (incorrectly as it turns out) figure this is what the manufacturer wants you to hear
So ....
What are your top tips to wrestle a good tone out of an amp?

Lots of midrange, it's where all the character is not to mention the cut.

richardhomer · October 2014

With Mesas, the best advice is 'read the manual'. They are not particularly intuitive and even their more simple offerings like the Lonestars have features which most people need to have explained to them.

If you use their recommended settings as a starting point they dial in pretty easily in my experience. If you take the 'everything at twelve o'clock' approach, they will disappoint.

ICBM · October 2014

longi said:

Lots of midrange, it's where all the character is not to mention the cut.

I do the exact opposite.

Bass on full - that's where the depth and space is.

Mid on zero. That's where the boxiness and harshness is.

Treble on wherever it sounds right - usually above halfway somewhere. That's where the sparkle and cut is.

OK, that does work best on an amp which is middy in the first place, but most guitar amps are. And it's really a starting point rather than a final setting, although it's rare that I turn the bass down unless the amp is too boomy.

timmysoft · October 2014

longi said:

Cabicular;26146" said:
In addition to the "tone is fingers" thing, one of thie main components of a good sounding amp is the guy twiddling the knobs
I'm a man of limited patience which makes amps like the Mesa mk iv difficult to get what I consider a good sound from. I've heard other people get them to sound great but Jesus there are just too many controls! I tend to start with amps in the 12 o'clock position as I (incorrectly as it turns out) figure this is what the manufacturer wants you to hear
So ....
What are your top tips to wrestle a good tone out of an amp?
Lots of midrange, it's where all the character is not to mention the cut.

Yeah I don't agree on the whole mids thing. It's fine to scoop the mids, it's fine to have balanced mids too. Most touring sound guys I've worked with hate the boosted mids thing, yeah you'll get heard but you'll also cloud the vocals, cymbals and upper bass stuff.

Cabicular · October 2014

Funny I boost my mids for just that reason What sounds good in the house rarely works well on stage. Not much point boosting the bass to hell as I'm fighting a pleccy played 70s precision. The highs are washed over by the cymbals a lot of the time. Mid range is where me and the singers live. I try to stay out of their way unless I'm playing on my own

samzadgan · October 2014

On most amps ive had the EQ is pretty much the same for me...bass on full, mids on full and treble and presence close to zero. Most of the amp i have had have been marshall or british amp which are middy...so not sure how i would set a peavey or the more modern amps.

ICBM · October 2014

Cabicular said:

Funny I boost my mids for just that reason What sounds good in the house rarely works well on stage. Not much point boosting the bass to hell as I'm fighting a pleccy played 70s precision. The highs are washed over by the cymbals a lot of the time. Mid range is where me and the singers live. I try to stay out of their way unless I'm playing on my own

So you're a lead guitarist :-P. (There is logic to this, read on...)

I generally find the bass is below the bottom end of the guitar even when the guitar amp has the bass up full, which is actually more of a low-mid than real bass. (This is generally not boosted, just not cut - active EQ makes this less of a good idea.) I also like to physically raise up the guitar amp, which rolls off the bottom octave to a large extent - then with the bass amp on the floor, it literally sits 'under' the guitar.

There are no real highs in a guitar amp - they don't go above upper mids, because a guitar speaker can't actually reproduce real highs. Whatever you do the cymbals, top end of the vocals and any acoustic instruments will go higher and should sit over the top - although bad vocal mixing to fight feedback sometimes prevents this.

I think of live mixing as like a fruit trifle (bear with me

) - if you make a graph of all the frequencies with the instruments on top of each other, they should roughly fit together so the total level at any frequency is about the same... like a cross-section through a trifle

.

So the bass should be very deep, but can also have some highs in it (hence why modern bass amps often have tweeters). The rhythm guitar should be scooped, with low mids ("bass") and high mids ("treble") up and mid-mids cut to fit inside that but still leave a scoop in the middle, which is where you want lead guitar (which needs to be mid-boosted and bass/treble cut) and vocals (which need mids for intelligibility) to fit - these two generally don't want to be there at the same time. The drums are a fairly scattered mix of frequencies but are discrete events within the mix rather than continuous sound, so they're like the fruit

. Then on top of it all you have the cymbals and things like tambourines and shakers which are like the sprinkles...

I actually find that sounds which work well at home can work well live as well - particularly rhythm ones - provided you don't overdo it. You just have to be aware of the context and always mix with your ears, and not just turn the mids up to "cut through", when what you actually need to do is *fit in*. It also works better with big amps than small ones, the correlation between low and high volume is much closer - small amps tend to go muddy and harsh if you try to push the bass and treble up.

RandomGecko · October 2014

The Mark IV is a strange beast. I owned one for a few years - it's a great amp but it does require a different approach to most.

You have to keep the bass low on the EQ knob - maybe as low as 2, but you can boost it on the sliders. The Mid knob is a funny one, it's not incredibly powerful so you might as well leave it around 5 and affect the midrange with the 750 slider. Treble control affects the amount of gain, so the higher it is, the more gain, which you can then attenuate with lead gain and lead drive. Kinda weird, but once you get it, it sort of makes sense. Enough to make it sound good anyway.

Of course, this is without bothering with the push-pulls and various other switches...!

monquixote · October 2014

I generally find that I either like the basic tone of an amp with everything at 12 and then do a bit of EQ as the icing on the cake, or I don't and no amount of tweaking ever makes me like it.

The only knob I really use on my amp is the treble.

p90fool · October 2014

I have a Princeton, so I generally have bass set somewhere between 0 and 10, and the treble somewhere between 0 and 10.

Where exactly doesn't seem to matter that much.

Voxman · October 2014

Amp settings at gig volumes need to be more mids heavy than home tones. Its due to something called the fletcher munson curves and the way our ears work. Some amp eqs are ineractive eg the behaviour of the treble depends on where the bass and mids are set. Other amps have eqs where each control behaves the same regardless of other settings.

Amp positioning is important too. If you place an amp on eg a carpeted floor you'll lose some tone and volume into the floor.

But if you're struggling to get the right tone from just using the amps eq I thoroughly recommend trying an external eq. Depending on your amp this can be particularly effective in the fx loop.

ThePrettyDamned · October 2014

p90fool;392314" said:
I have a Princeton, so I generally have bass set somewhere between 0 and 10, and the treble somewhere between 0 and 10.

Where exactly doesn't seem to matter that much.

Damn good sounding amp though, right?

Cabicular · October 2014

I only really struggle with Mesa
In the whole I'm pretty happy with my tone
But I never turn down the opportunity to put my ego in my pocket and learn something new
Lots of stuff here I'll try, some I'll keep some I'll throw away but a great opportunity to benefit from other people's hard win experience.
Good forum this. Lots of knowledge

Roland · October 2014

Cabicular said:
What are your top tips to wrestle a good tone out of an amp?

Somewhere there's a video of Matt Schofield talking about amp settings. He believes that every control has a "knee" where sound changes quite a lot for very little dial rotation. Find that point on each control, and you've got the amp set up at its most responsive point.

Me, I get the cabinet off the floor, at guitar height, and between 3 and 6 feet away. With a two channel amp I set the clean EQ for a sound which will cut through the band, inch it up a bit, and back off the guitar tone to compensate. This means I've always got a bit of top end spare if I need it. Then I set the lead channel EQ for something similar, and bring up the drive until it just reached the level of saturation I want with the guitar on full volume.

Cabicular · October 2014

See I rarely take the amp off the deck
I like it on the floor where I can push it harder but taking the directionality of the speaker away
But then that's a 1x12 combo
I like the dispersion and tone of a 2x12 but things like the Matchless are just too loud for most of the venues (although interestingly enough ICBM prefers a big amp running quietly so I might revisit that)

robinbowes · October 2014

My moment of enlightenment was when I realised that the tone stack in most amps* is passive, ie. it can only attenuate signal, not boost. So, my route to optimal tone is... turn all tone controls to maximum!

* I generally use vintage valve amps like my Traynor Reverb Master YRM-1SC. This is not mine, but looks the same:

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