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Something came to mind regarding how people dial in their amps.
A lot of times I see people complaining online about their amps "sounding bad" while they're afraid to stray to far from the noon/middle positions. Of course not ALL of the time, but I do see it quite often. At least, people are often subconciously afraid to stray too far from the middle. I've also fallen victim of this sort of habit in the past. In one case I just got a new amp, my ENGL Fireball 100, which is one of my favorite amps, and I wasn't completely satisfied with the tone until a friend suggested that I pushed the mids and treble to more extremes and tone down the presence. Pretty far from the noon positions but I tried it and it sounded SOOOOO much better! For some reason in my mind I thought that the amp "sounded how it supposed to sound with all the controls at noon". However, some amps really come to life when you try some more extreme settings.
The ENGL fireball is a great example because some people online like to claim that "ENGLs get lost in the mix". But I believe that it's likely due to the fact that people aren't dialing them in to reach their full sonic potential. Another great example is the Boogie Mark series amps. For chunky modern high-gain rock/metal tones these amps need some pretty extreme settings to sound great. My Mark V35 really has that going on. Turning the treble to 10 and mids + bass to 0 really makes it sound much tighter (not even taking into account the graphic EQ).
I made a little video on this with some sound examples so you can hear and see what I'm talking about. Have you fallen into this trap? What amp comes to mind that needs more extreme settings for it to sound good? Discuss!
UPDATE:
I got a lot of response to this topic and I still see people falling into this trap. Of course I'm not saying that all of you are actually doing it wrong but I'm just offering some food for thought. Here's another example of an amp that benefits from EQ settings other than the noon positions, the PRS Archon:
A lot of times I see people complaining online about their amps "sounding bad" while they're afraid to stray to far from the noon/middle positions. Of course not ALL of the time, but I do see it quite often. At least, people are often subconciously afraid to stray too far from the middle. I've also fallen victim of this sort of habit in the past. In one case I just got a new amp, my ENGL Fireball 100, which is one of my favorite amps, and I wasn't completely satisfied with the tone until a friend suggested that I pushed the mids and treble to more extremes and tone down the presence. Pretty far from the noon positions but I tried it and it sounded SOOOOO much better! For some reason in my mind I thought that the amp "sounded how it supposed to sound with all the controls at noon". However, some amps really come to life when you try some more extreme settings.
The ENGL fireball is a great example because some people online like to claim that "ENGLs get lost in the mix". But I believe that it's likely due to the fact that people aren't dialing them in to reach their full sonic potential. Another great example is the Boogie Mark series amps. For chunky modern high-gain rock/metal tones these amps need some pretty extreme settings to sound great. My Mark V35 really has that going on. Turning the treble to 10 and mids + bass to 0 really makes it sound much tighter (not even taking into account the graphic EQ).
I made a little video on this with some sound examples so you can hear and see what I'm talking about. Have you fallen into this trap? What amp comes to mind that needs more extreme settings for it to sound good? Discuss!
UPDATE:
I got a lot of response to this topic and I still see people falling into this trap. Of course I'm not saying that all of you are actually doing it wrong but I'm just offering some food for thought. Here's another example of an amp that benefits from EQ settings other than the noon positions, the PRS Archon:
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