My Laney is cloudy as fuck

professorlamp

I are Joe
Nov 2, 2009
1,469
0
36
Wales, United Kingdom
So as my time draws ever nearer to buying a new amp I can't help but hate my laney lv300 more and more by the day.

Just yesterday I was writing a sort of twangy indie song (my favourite tones are definitely the twangy ones :D) and I got the most unuseable amount of mud in the low end it was unbelieveable and had to do some pretty drastic EQ to remedy it :(

This is what I had to do...

Lnaeycloudysettings.jpg


Now I know usually theres a BIT of mud around 200-300hz but not this bloody much!?

anyway without clips this whole thing would be pointless so you can judge for yourself (the guitars are soloed as I don't see how mud would work in the mix, besides eating up headroom and blurring everything :D )

1st Clip: WITHOUT EQ

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2872916/Laney cloudy EQ off.mp3

2nd Clip : WITH EQ

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2872916/Laney cloudy EQ.mp3

Anyone have any recommendations about amps or indeed their experience with this amp? I'm going to manchester tomorrow to hopefully test a buggerload of amps
Looking mainly at Orange,Marshall and Vox
Tone wise shooting for telecaster twang aswell as a slightly overdriven 'emo' tone.

Any suggestions would be beautiful and fully compensated with an E-cookie

edit: lastly, the tone is suffering because I can't even get a tiny bit of low end that isn't blurry :(
 
A bit too much 300 area going on, but what I heard was the tone is lacking the 1-1.5K area and 10k presence. Honestly it sounds like the result of a bad mic setup, not the mic itself rather, where the mic is at. And on your eq, when you start pulling away that much on the high end, it makes the sound flat thus making the cloudiness sound more defined. Best way to combat it is to increase the highs.
 
I don't think it's the mic position (although taking a bit more time positioning probably would've benefited) because even in the room its still pretty damn cloudy but turning down the bass just thins it out somewhat :(
 
Isn't that amp supposed to be like a JCM800? Are you using the combo speaker or a different cab? If you are using the combo speaker, I'd suspect a lot of your issues are there.
 

How about you try and remove the band cuts and keep the hi/lopass filters, and listen if these would sound similiar/better:

a) move the highpass frequency higher (like to 200-300hz)

b) keep the highpass where it is, but add just one lowshelf at 500hz

c) keep the highpass where it is, but add just a really deep cuts at 200-300hz

d) use a multiband compressor between 100-500hz
 
NO idea how to use a multiband compressor, doesn't seem to be much info on them. :confused:

For example here is a free one: http://www.geocities.jp/webmaster_of_sss/vst/#c3

c3multibandcompressor.gif


On the top left sector where you set the crossover frequencies, put:
F1 to 100
F2 to 100
F3 to 500
F4 to 500

turn the low band and high band compressor off from the "comp on" -button.

Then on the mid band set the ratio to like 2-4:1, attack to 2-15 ms and release 100-300ms for starters, adjust if it seems too mild/radical. Then lower the threshold until you get some gain reduction.

Listen and tweak, repeat.
 
Durr hurr , was using a semi hollow for the first recording which was probably a bad idea in its own right, so I switched to a single coil and all that was needed was one dip around 160hz and a HP and LP