Why do some players roll off a certain eq on the amp and the.....

bingefeller

...add them back in with an EQ pedal / rack unit?

i was surprised to learn that Dimebag scooped the mids on his amps, used an eq to scoop mids and used another to boost them again.

Dimebag “stumbled” upon his tone when he won a Randall half-stack in a guitar contest. The important thing to note is that Dime found something in this rig that was unique and worth working with. From there, he sought to “clean up” the sound with an MXR 6 Band Equalizer (the blue one). Further tweaks consisted of installing Bill Lawrence L-500 humbuckers in his guitar and adding a Furman PQ-4 (later a PQ-3) Parametric Equalizer. The beauty of all of these outboard devices was a controllable form of preamp gain. Dime used the hot Bill Lawrence humbuckers to push the MXR EQ (set to a mid-boosting “frown face”) to push the Furman (set to boost the highs and lows while scooping the previously boosted mids) to ultimately drive his Randall (solid state Century 100 or 200 heads) into overdrive. By using the unique cascading forms of gain, Dimebag was able to sculpt a tone all of his own.

I also found that, when he used his Lab amps, Ty Tabor rolled off the bass on the amp and added it in again with a rack eq.  Although, I guess Ty wouldn't want that much bass frequencies with Dougs huge bass rig on stage too. 

hugbot

Is one pre gain and one post gain?

Roland

It allows them to apply more overdrive to a chosen frequency range, normally mids. If you distort bass too much is gets tubby and muddy. If you over distort the treble it grates. However you can selectively increase mid range distortion by boosting mid range volume with pre EQ before the amp, and "un-boosting" the volume after.

peteri

Also - and this is only a minor point in reference to the above points.

Don't think all EQs are the same, different 'Q' settings and different slopes to that EQ can make it very different, let alone if other 'mid' has a different centre frequency.

Remember the classic Fairchild Eq, that exploited this by having both a boost and cut at the same time.

Winny_Pooh

^You mean a pultec eq

chromatuna

I take lots of the mids out at the amp to give me a clean / slight breakup sound I like and then for  fat solo tones my MXR Custom Badass OD puts some mids back in (even with 'bump' off), works for me. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

ICBM

It's all to do with the interaction between EQ and distortion at various points in the circuit. Pushing some frequencies and pulling back others before they distort does a very different thing from distorting the whole signal and then boosting and cutting the same frequencies. This is one of the main reasons Fender-style amps sound completely different from Marshall-style ones - Fenders (BF-type) have the EQ near the start of the signal path, Marshalls have it later on.

Also, different EQs have different frequency centres, so running one after the other even with no distortion in between won't sound the same as just using one of them set to the 'average' of the two.

peteri

Winny_Pooh said:

^You mean a pultec eq

duh!

Thanks yes, Fairchild compressor, Pultec eq.

It was late! (for me)

PinstripePhil

There is a good article here that covers the use of EQ Pedals pre and post gain stage:
http://www.legendarytones.com/eq-tips/

bingefeller

hugbot said:

Is one pre gain and one post gain?

I think Dime's were all pre-gain.  I'm not 100% as I'm not really much of a fan of his but, from what I've read I think they were.  

chromatuna said:

I take lots of the mids out at the amp to give me a clean / slight breakup sound I like and then for  fat solo tones my MXR Custom Badass OD puts some mids back in (even with 'bump' off), works for me. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

These guys I'm talking about removed the mids / bass and then put them back in with an EQ, and left them in rather than using the EQ device for a solo boost.

thomasross20

Great topic!! Going to read that link...

In a normal amp, where does the equipment usually come in?

thomasross20

I mean how often do you REALLY work the eq controls on your amp properly?

peteri

There's also another answer - these people knew the same as us (meaning they didn't have some divine insight), one day they turned on a few pedals, liked the sound and just left everything as it was.

And then moved onto being rock stars.

IF only they'd spent the time more wisely, for example on guitar forums

thomasross20

I usually set my bass/mid/treble at 4.4 / 6.5 / 5.5

ICBM

peteri said:

There's also another answer - these people knew the same as us (meaning they didn't have some divine insight), one day they turned on a few pedals, liked the sound and just left everything as it was.

That's pretty much how The Edge's stage rig is set up, as far as I understand - multiple signal chains that duplicate how he got the sounds in the studio.

peteri said:

IF only they'd spent the time more wisely, for example on guitar forums

I realised some time ago that knowing all this crap is *why* I was never going to be a rock star, not some sort of freakish coincidence .

bingefeller

thomasross20 said:

I mean how often do you REALLY work the eq controls on your amp properly?

Assuming you have bass mid and treble, I would set the mids where you want them, turn down the treble and add it in until you get some clarity then start adding bass until you get some warmth and the desired thickness.  

guitarfishbay

bingefeller said:

thomasross20 said:

I mean how often do you REALLY work the eq controls on your amp properly?

Assuming you have bass mid and treble, I would set the mids where you want them, turn down the treble and add it in until you get some clarity then start adding bass until you get some warmth and the desired thickness.  

I just turn the volume up til I can't hear anyone else.  Cuts through 100% of the time.

Sassafras

ICBM said:

peteri said:

There's also another answer - these people knew the same as us (meaning they didn't have some divine insight), one day they turned on a few pedals, liked the sound and just left everything as it was.

That's pretty much how The Edge's stage rig is set up, as far as I understand - multiple signal chains that duplicate how he got the sounds in the studio.

peteri said:

IF only they'd spent the time more wisely, for example on guitar forums

I realised some time ago that knowing all this crap is *why* I was never going to be a rock star, not some sort of freakish coincidence .

Thank God you didn't become a rock star.
You serve a far higher purpose on this forum.
  

bingefeller

If @ICBM was a rock star I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have 11.6K wisdoms.