Matt Smith said:
Hi Guys--
Sometimes I find it kinda tricky to find the right amount of high end to dial into an amp. A lot of times my tone either ends up too piercing or too dull. Do you guys usually adjust the presence control after you've dialed in the highs, or before? Or at the same time? I know there's no hard and fast rule, obviously, but if you guys have a certain way you go about it, I'd love to hear it.
I find I really struggle with "hearing hangover." That is, my ears get used to the sound when I'm messing with EQs or whatever and I think it's sounding good, but then a week later I realize it's terrible. Way too shrill or way too dull or whatever. It's frustrating sometimes! It's hard to keep a point of reference. Maybe the trick is to take a lot of breaks and come back to it, I don't know. It can also be tricky to know, "Well, the low end sounds kinda muddy or cloudy...do I need to adjust the amp, or pull back the mic a little to get less proximity effect?"
I suppose there's no substitute for experience.
Matt,
Is this for recording? It sounded kinda like you were talking about a live/practice setup until you mentioned the mic part at the end.
Anyway, let me apologize for this post in advance because I'm stuck at work late and I'm totally bored, so here goes. Sorry if any of this is obvious, not applicable, or bullshit. And keep in mind when I say "you" below I don't really mean you personally. Haha.
Live or recording, there are many, many factors involved here that can lead up to the end result of the highs not sounding "right." guitar, amp -- tube or solid state, pickups, pedals, speaker cab, type of speakers, placement of your amp in the room, and how far away you're standing (or where the mic is) for starters. Even the pesky details can add up, like strings, picks, boxers or briefs... Ok, maybe not that. And last but certainly not least... how you play! It's a bit cliche, but most of the tone comes from you. If you suck at palm muting, chances are your amp won't "crunch" right for example.
IMHO, finding your tone it's a process of elimination kind of game, and it definitely requires tweaking from day to day or week to week, as you mentioned. Breaks during a session are very good, by the way. If you're coming back a week later and the highs are piercing, you probably had a nice case of ear fatigue when you settled on your final setting the week before.
But to your question, dialing in the highs on the amp. I'm gonna skip or gloss over a whole bunch of stuff to just try and give you my take on that part alone. And we're dealing with distorted guitar tone, of course. Probably heavily distorted, right?
I like the old "start with everything on five" philosophy. The knobs on various amps will interact differently, but this should give you the basic "sound" of your setup to begin with.
Tweak the gain settings to your liking -- just for starters. You're just looking for the "meat" of your tone here, not setting the world on fire yet. Plus, this will probably change depending on your eq tweaks later. It's all relative. Play with the preamp gain and the master volume and find the "sweet spot." I'm gonna use a scale of 1-10 for these half-ass examples. Let's just say, between 5 and 10 in the preamp and typically between 6 and 8 master volume on a 50/60watt tube amp, 4 and 7 on a 100 watt tube amp, maybe 5 to 7 on a solid state (haven't played one for a while). If you have a tube amp, you should be saturating the power tubes just right, evidenced by nice, smooth harmonics and compression, and tube or solid state, the cabinet should start to resonate nicely (thump, not fart) when you chunk it up on the guitar -- but that is largely dependent on your speakers as well (more on that later maybe). Now on to the eq...
I guarantee that to make everything work with a band, live or recorded, as much as it might tear against the fabric of your being, you'll need less bass, less gain, more mids, and probably less highs than you would normally dial in playing on your own. Left to your own devices, it's perfectly natural to dial in a massive uber-tone... and it sounds like shit when the band starts playing or you try to place it in the mix.
Here you're gonna have to do your homework with the rest of the band, especially if you've got another guitar player, so you guys aren't fighting for space and making everything sound like crap in the process. It's really much, much less about your personal tone than it is about making the band and the songs sound good. The bass should cover most of the lows and some mids and, like it or not, it's your job to fill in the mids, too, crunchmaster. At least if you want anyone to be able to tell what in the hell you're playing.
So how do you dial in the high end? I agree with Silverwulf in that you'll probably never have the presence and highs both over 5 without killing yourself or at least normal human beings. The highs might also react very directly with your preamp gain. Sometimes you can lower the pre-gain and raise the highs and get more articulation and not really lose much saturation.
If you've come this far and the highs still aren't right (and you don't want to shoot yourself -- or me) . There are other options like pushing your preamp and tweaking the tone with an overdrive pedal like a tube screamer as Diabolic5150 mentioned earlier in the thread.
You might also want to consider different pickups or speakers, but those are whole other threads in and of themselves.
Ok, I'll shut up now. Hope this helps, even just a little bit.
Bryan
