Why are so many modern guitar amps so middy and muddy?

impmann

These outpourings about tonality *are* opinion. 

You dont like a sound? Fine. Don’t buy the amp.
There are plenty of players who actually seek out amps with a lack of treble - for example Nels Cline, he rolls all the treble off his amp and then uses a bright guitar.
Its personal preference. And opinion.

I would also suggest trying out a couple of the very latest Blackstar amps - such as a Studio 10 (EL34 version). You’ll be very surprised - shocked, even - by it. It’s a genuinely great sounding amp - and not middly at all.

ICBM

impmann said:

These outpourings about tonality *are* opinion.

The measured frequency response of an amp is a fact, not an opinion. At least one of the amps mentioned earlier has an obviously heavily reduced top-end in the power amp when looked at on a frequency response chart.

impmann said:

There are plenty of players who actually seek out amps with a lack of treble - for example Nels Cline, he rolls all the treble off his amp and then uses a bright guitar.

I understand that entirely. Rolling off the treble is fine if you want that sort of sound, and has been possible with amps since the invention of tone controls. What I don't understand is designers making that compulsory...

So I'm no nearer to getting an answer really, other than "you're old, get over it" .

Fenderish

It certainly is what's been said already : at the age of youtube demos, especially rarely "in the mix", high mids and trebles are found too harsh by many, so it's being reduced.

there's a tendency also to not tolerate having to roll off eq controls under noon, maybe some people think it's some kind of castration of their expensive amp...

We should advertise : "It's OK to put your treble at 9 o'clock when you're playing alone, but you'll likely need it at 3 o'clock when gigging, that's a normal thing !"

Modulus_Amps

Fenderish said:

It certainly is what's been said already : at the age of youtube demos, especially rarely "in the mix", high mids and trebles are found too harsh by many, so it's being reduced.

there's a tendency also to not tolerate having to roll off eq controls under noon, maybe some people think it's some kind of castration of their expensive amp...

We should advertise : "It's OK to put your treble at 9 o'clock when you're playing alone, but you'll likely need it at 3 o'clock when gigging, that's a normal thing !"

You would think in this day and age having your control set to noon as a test of whether or not an amp sounds good would be outed as pish. because it absolutely is is pish, that is why amps have controls in the first place, so you can twist your knobs!

Fenderish

maybe with a touchscreen instead of knobs...  

thatguyoverthere

Fenderish said:

It You would think in this day and age having your control set to noon as a test of whether or not an amp sounds good would be outed as pish. because it absolutely is is pish, that is why amps have controls in the first place, so you can twist your knobs!

Actually, I prefer a good default “noon” setting so that as rooms and environments vary, I can adjust my EQ accordingly. Eg. If I’m close to a wall I’ll wind back the bass, if I’m in the middle of a hall I’ll probably need more, if a room sounds dead I can crank the treble, etc. I love the EQ of the Hamstead Artist 20 for this reason.

Fenderish

I have a tendency of cranking the eq to the max and rolling back what's unnecessary, but it's a matter of personal habit too...

Maynehead

I think it's just a modern trend. There seems to be a phobia towards "fizz" in recent times, so amp designers are doing all they can to eliminate the fizz under high gain conditions, no matter what you set your controls to, which usually means killing more of the high treble / presence frequencies than otherwise necessary.

I think the idea is to try and not allow the amp to sound "bad" no matter what you do, which is seen as an evolution or improvement over previous generation of amps, but in practice it just gives less options to the user and brings everything towards a boring middle ground.

Sassafras

Fenderish said:

I have a tendency of cranking the eq to the max and rolling back what's unnecessary, but it's a matter of personal habit too...

That's how I do it.
I generally end up rolling back the mids.
Love a bit of sparkle and thump without the nasal honk.

p90fool

thatguyoverthere said:

Fenderish said:

It You would think in this day and age having your control set to noon as a test of whether or not an amp sounds good would be outed as pish. because it absolutely is is pish, that is why amps have controls in the first place, so you can twist your knobs!

Actually, I prefer a good default “noon” setting so that as rooms and environments vary, I can adjust my EQ accordingly. Eg. If I’m close to a wall I’ll wind back the bass, if I’m in the middle of a hall I’ll probably need more, if a room sounds dead I can crank the treble, etc. 

We all need to do this, but the noon-as-default thing is irrelevant. 

It depends entirely on pot taper, a lot of my amps (from totally different manufacturers) have their most sensitive spot on their EQ knobs at around ten o'clock. Noon would be way too bright on those amps.

As long as their is enough range to have not enough or too much it doesn't have to sound good exactly halfway up.

thatguyoverthere

p90fool said:

We all need to do this, but the noon-as-default thing is irrelevant. 

It depends entirely on pot taper, a lot of my amps (from totally different manufacturers) have their most sensitive spot on their EQ knobs at around ten o'clock. Noon would be way too bright on those amps.

As long as their is enough range to have not enough or too much it doesn't have to sound good exactly halfway up.

Of course, as long as you have some degree of control either way. A PRRI doesn’t go well for me for instance, as the bass rolled off to 0 is still too much for some circumstances. Everyone’s mileage will vary on that naturally..

noisepolluter

Fenderish said:

We should advertise : "It's OK to put your treble at 9 o'clock when you're playing alone, but you'll likely need it at 3 o'clock when gigging, that's a normal thing !"

I have to admit, this would be a useful thing for me to bear in mind at times!  I do have an irrational reluctance to run the amp (or drive pedal) treble below noon. Given that I play a naturally bright drive pedal through a naturally bright amp, I’m surprised I’ve not had the bat protection league after me...

(edit) hang on, I think I read your post backwards. Or possibly my ears are on backwards. Or I can’t tell the time.

gibsongretschfan

Modern amps have too much headroom. For the preamps in Victory and Cornford amps to come alive there needs to be some distortion coming from the power amp section otherwise they can be quite lifeless especially when cleans. And by distortion I mean it in the electrical engineering kinda meaning and not the Van Halen brown sound kinda meaning.

Do modern amps have more "refined" highs? Well yes.... but that also is a problem for a lot of modern overdrive pedals too. 

I prefer a Super Reverb to a Two Rock and a Plexi to a Bogner but I do think ICBM has went a little deaf  

ecc83

Re all this talk of tone pots and "noon", you would all benefit from downloading Duncan Amps Tone Stack Calculator. Then you will see that none of the Big Three are even remotely "flat" with the pots central. Bear in mind however that this is just the response of THAT tone stack, what goes on before and after is in the lap of the gods.

Dave.

ICBM

ecc83 said:

Re all this talk of tone pots and "noon", you would all benefit from downloading Duncan Amps Tone Stack Calculator. Then you will see that none of the Big Three are even remotely "flat" with the pots central. Bear in mind however that this is just the response of THAT tone stack, what goes on before and after is in the lap of the gods.

Exactly. While technically correct, that Tone Stack Calculator is very misleading when taken in isolation - as you say, it's purely for the tone stack and completely ignores the rest of the amp, and in particular the speakers. Fender originally devised the standard tone stack for open-back combos, so the huge mid-scoop was meant to give a roughly flat response to the *whole combo*. People who use it and think that setting the mids up full and the other two at zero gives a 'flat response' are missing most of the picture.

Another problem with it is that it's very interactive, which is one reason the Princeton thatguyoverthere mentioned can't have the bass turned right off - like all the BF/SF Fenders with 'no mid control', it does actually have one - fixed internally, and at a fairly high value. The whole thing is actually very crude and was evolved by Fender from several earlier designs, apparently largely by trial and error.

And yet when 'proper' tone stacks like the Baxandall or the simpler 'James' version of it are used in guitar amps, they just don't sound quite right to a lot of players...

Octafish

I'm currently using a Bassbreaker 15 live and getting some of the best sounds live I've ever managed. I was using a Deville 2x12 before for 7 or so years and apart from being too loud/heavy was never quite happy with the sound, too much bottom end and harsh top end - in abstract terms it sounded stiff and brittle. I'm also found Ge style fuzzes sounded harsh, whilst they sound fat and warm through the Bassbreaker.

I use a lot of clean tones with some light/medium drive through to full-on fuzz and the Bassbreaker just sounds so good to me and fits into the mix well. I'am the only guitarist and we have keys player using a lot of Hammond and Rhodes sounds who occupies a lot of space. I have the treble at about 1 oclock and tone on the guitar (Strat wth vintage pickups) rolled off a bit, but with the amp vol at about midday it sounds pretty bright to me.

I guess a lot of it comes down to personal opinion.

ecc83

Just a thought about "subjective impressions"?  This could well be a factor. I know the MD at Bs has remarkably good HF hearing (well, he did 12yrs ago!) and, fwoabword, great "resolution".  
This was evidenced when we unboxed and tested the very first shipment of the A100 heads. They all worked and made a fantastic row into a 240W 4X12 but Ian said there was something wrong, a "fizz" or "glizz" on certain high notes. IIRC none of the 3 rest of us could hear it, pretty audibly battered anyway but, sho'nuff, there was a cap connected to the wrong tapping on the OPT secondary. The moral is, amps are perhaps better voiced by a committee?

Dave (and YCPAOTPAOTT)

ICBM

ecc83 said:

Just a thought about "subjective impressions"?  This could well be a factor. I know the MD at Bs has remarkably good HF hearing (well, he did 12yrs ago!) and, fwoabword, great "resolution".  
This was evidenced when we unboxed and tested the very first shipment of the A100 heads. They all worked and made a fantastic row into a 240W 4X12 but Ian said there was something wrong, a "fizz" or "glizz" on certain high notes. IIRC none of the 3 rest of us could hear it, pretty audibly battered anyway but, sho'nuff, there was a cap connected to the wrong tapping on the OPT secondary. The moral is, amps are perhaps better voiced by a committee?

The fact that there is a cap on the OT secondary at all is the obvious problem there .

This does confirm something I’ve said all along - the Blackstar voicing I (and as it appears, many other people) dislike so much is deliberate and what the designers are aiming for. It’s just the ‘why’ I don’t get.

I played an ID Core again the other day - I had to, it’s going out on sale in the shop... just awful. Not a single bit of sparkle or clarity to be had anywhere in it, not even on the Bright Clean setting.

guitarcookie1

My (limited) experience of Blackstar amps (HT20, HT40 & Fly) is that they always sound better through headphones using the emulated out than through their cabs. 

No idea what the “emulation” is though.. 

monquixote

I think it's driven from two directions.

Firstly much more guitar gets played at home so amps are going to be tuned for that environment primarily.

Secondly reviewers often claim that a pedal or amp has "no bad sounds" as a compliment but this really means that the range of tones has been tightly curated.

I'm sure many of us have had the experience of coming from a Marshall to a Mesa Mk and discovering that the EQ is insanely powerful and will likely sound shit if you don't know what you are doing. A lot of people just don't want that and if you flounder while trying something out in a shop you most likely won't buy it.