Getting your desired tones from an amp

[Horace]

I just read Halowords' description of his new KBP ODS amp. (Boy, am I envious.) I was interested in all he had to say about the tones available and all the control knobs there were etc.

 

I learned guitar in the 60s on Class A amps with no master volume. A good distorted sound was often the result of a torn speaker! After a hiatus from playing music and a switch to keyboards I came back to guitar in the 90s. While I still play keyboard in a band I play guitar mostly for my own enjoyment. I play blues and am learning jazz guitar and generally play in clean Fender type tones. I use a Rivera Hundred Duo Twelve amp and it's fine for what I do and need.

 

Every so often though I explore other sounds on the Rivera and manage to find some cool ones without too much trouble. But I'm really shooting in the dark. With all the channel switching, treble boost, mid boost, gain, volume, bass, controls I never really know where to start when I'm looking for a particular tone or just browsing for available tones. I even had a mod done a few years back that let's me control the wattage from 5 tthrough 100 watts.

 

Can someone offer some advice on which knobs to fiddle with before fidlng with others ? Is there a hierarchy of tone shaping control in modern amps that I don't know about ?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Horace

[JeffB]

Depends a bit on the amp.

I have three modern,ish high gain amps and none really sound the same at any point. Setting the controls to 12:00 can be a starting point or not.

Im inclined to start there and pull out or put in more of what seems to be not right......pretty redundant sentence.

Good night.

 

Mids, mids are good.....unless you dont like them...

 

nah, Im out.

[bolero]

bah humbug..I prefer an amp with as few controls as possible

 

 

bass mid treble vol

 

 

man I swear this java app in the reply window keeps changing my keyboard to spanish or something....I try to type a question mark & get an `É symbol...the quotes don`t do anything....a that key above enter gives > instead....weird

[bolero]

anyway what I meant to say was

 

 

on those amps I usually set up a decent clean sound, and just add gain on the other channel if I have to....I guess I use it like a stompbox

 

I find differences in amps is due to the EQ more than anything else

 

one of my favourite amps I used to think was a piece of junk because I was using familiar Fender settings, just out of habit. well I found it has a baxandall tone stack, so is completely different!! had to dial the mids way out

 

so if you can just use your ears and ignore what the numbers on the dial are, you can find some good sounds that otherwise may pass you by....may make you cry....may make you blue...take it from Ringo

 

 

 

*groan*

[DetroitBlues]

Here's my 2 cents:

Keeping the volume and tone of your guitar maxed out:

1) Starting with the guitar on the neck pickup, let's work out the MUDD

• The mudd is sort of a muffled sound, like your amp is under a blanket with the neck pickup. So let's get rid of it
  
• Set your amp tone controls to the 1/2 way point, usually five or six depending on the amp
  
• If its muddy, turn down the bass, increase the treble. Just a little at a time while playing your guitar.
  
• If its a little bright, do just the opposite
  

Not all amps have this, but if you have a mid control, it can be used to make the neck sound either thicker or tinny when you use it. So adjust that a little once the MUDD is gone to get the desired tone for the neck pickup

Take note of the settings, write them down if you have to.

2) Now switch to the bridge pickup. Play a chord or a couple high registered riff's.

• Does it sounds really sharp, like ice pick?
  
• You'll have to decrease the treble, increase the mid's and the bass, just a little at a time.
  
• Keep adjusting until it sound right.
  

Some amps have a boost or a bright switch. Those cut out the tone controls to give you a wide open sound. Great for lead, not so great for rhythm, depending on your style.

 

 

Hope this helps get you started!

[rjsanders]

i've had a buncha M- and R- Riveras and recall they recommend starting with all controls at noon (loved my R55, M100, & S120, btw)...keep boosts, etc. off to start

 

couple other things to try:

- keep guitar vols at around 7

- Ch. 1 (Marshally) will be brighter than Ch. 2 (Fendery), so feel free to twiddle freely

- Ch. 2 "notch" really is very like the diff between tweed & blackface

- find tone you dig, then roll up guitar vols

 

enjoy

 

(o.y., personal prefs, i typically end up rolling off the BASS a lot, setting notch for tweed, boosting MIDs, leaving TREBLE at noon, fiddly with PRESENCE depending on guitar & pickups. just for comparison & reference)

[pushover]

This is a good question, and I think the recommendation to use your ear and not your eyes (who cares what the knob says) is the best one.

 

The only thing I haven't heard said yet is related to when you have "master" volume on your amp and it doesn't have a seperate hi-gain channel (my music man amp is like this). Under clean circumstances the master should stay maxed out and your channel volume sets the output volume you want. When you want some distortion set the channel volume up and turn down the master to control the output volume. This type of amp usually won't sound too great with distortion till it's quite loud (or unless you have an attenuator), to the point where you're saturating both preamp and main tubes.

 

All that said.. I find that I can waste far too much time twiddling with the knobs trying to get the sound I am looking for. So I usually just use a multi-effects peddle instead as my input to the amp with the various presets I know I like programmed into it. But we're all different about this and what we like, so it should all be about whatever works for you.

[DetroitBlues]

Master volume is the power tube volume. The other "volume" is sometimes referred to as the preamp or gain volume. That pushes the preamp harder before it hits the power tubes. Many use this to get high gain on low volume. Only issue with that is the power tubes don't reach their potential or sweet spot. Sometimes leaves the amp a little flat. But if you can raise the master volume until the power tubes start to really break up, do it! That's what totally rocks with tube amps.

[smurph1]

I trust my ears, which may or may not be a good thing.. I play more and more in the middle position..With both pickups on..Doesn't matter if it's my 535 or ASAT..Same deal pretty much..Bass Mid and Treble are all about midnight, and I use guitar tone controls to adjust if I do go to bridge pickup..Especially on the ASAT.. Last gig we played I just used the two amp channels (clean and overdrive) with a touch of reverb on both, and away we went..!! Both Clean and Dirty leads, and clean Rhythms sounded good to my 56 year old ears..My 2 cents..Have fun..

[barrymclark]

Truly different for everyone but try to approximate my guitars acoustic tone and the just work the gain.

[pushover]

Oh Yeh.. Another thing I haven't heard people mention is the fact that each amp tends to have it's own tone profiles. With some amp circuits the tone knobs are not even independent of each other (I'm sure our resident amp whisperer can say more about this than I can..). This means that adjusting the treble will mean that the the mids will then also change and need adjustment, and so on for bass, etc.. So it always takes some experience with an amp before you can get a feel for it. In addition most of us have GAS issues and have multiple guitars. Of course each guitar has it's own unique sound and so the amp settings that work well for one, don't work for another (i.e. try playing a single coil on humbucker settings). So it's a never ending game and adventure. I sure haven't figured it out yet, but I'm having fun playing the game

 

Finally, just as an FYI. One of my amps is a little Peavey Bravo (a really fun little amp). I thought it was really interesting that the manual comes with some examples of different amp knob settings that that will give you different tones. A link to the manual is below, and check out page 5. Of course it doesn't really dial-in exactly as they say it does, but it gets you in the ballpark and that's certainly better than starting completely from scratch.

 

http://peavey.com/assets/literature/manuals/80301262.pdf

[DetroitBlues]

And some amps don't have mid controls, so that makes things a little difficult too.

[bobmeyrick]

I rarely buy guitar magazines, but recently picked up a copy of the UK's "Guitarist" magazine, which had a feature "50 Steps to better tone". Matt Schofield (a great British Blues player that I think a few of you are familiar with) offers this interesting advice for setting up an amp when he can't use his own Two Rock -

 

"You'll find that every pot has an obvious cusp point in its rotation - every single one - where it goes from not doing much, to where it really kicks in. So I sweep through the pots one by one and find those spots... If you do that, the amp is set as evenly as it can be; not too trebly, not too dark. With everything set right on the cusp, you can push it over by digging in, or pull it back by playing softer."

 

He reckons the above also applies to pedals.