Advice on amp settings

Glydeside white

This might seem weird, but i have been playing guitar for almost a year now but yet i still cant seem to get the right sound from my amp. does anyone know the best adjustments for different genres, such as rock songs or lead riffs etc??? i tried putting the gain up full and then adjusting the drive volume to about 2 with a bit of mid and treble, but i just get a load of distortion and it sounds bad. advice anyone??

Karl Hungus

Depends on the amp. Each amp is completely different, there's no universal setting that'll sound great on all amps.

What you're best of doing is starting with everything but the volume up half way, and tweaking each setting slightly.

It would help if you could tell us what amp you have.

steveland?

Very, very basic approach but:
Lead - higher treble than bass
Rythm - higher bass than treble

Use that as a starting point. Keep the gain low at first. You'll probably get a good bit of feedback if you've got it up loud with the gain up high. If you want good crunch go for the mid and treble around the same amount, bass turned down lower than the others, low to medium gain and high volume (if possible ).

It all depends on your amp of course but, assuming you're using a solid state combo, this is what works for me.

Rustar

Glydeside white wrote: »

This might seem weird, but i have been playing guitar for almost a year now but yet i still cant seem to get the right sound from my amp. does anyone know the best adjustments for different genres, such as rock songs or lead riffs etc??? i tried putting the gain up full and then adjusting the drive volume to about 2 with a bit of mid and treble, but i just get a load of distortion and it sounds bad. advice anyone??

Sometimes less is more. Try not to turn anything up full. Start with your EQ in the middle, and turn your preamp (drive/dist) up to where it just starts sounding "dirty".
This is an Overdrive sound used for blues/blues rock, etc. Turn the mid up a little and you have the 'Santana' sound.
Add more distortion (but still not full) and pull the mid back to halfway. That'll be a basic rock sound.
Turn the distortion up heavy (still try to avoid 'full-on') and bring the mids down below half and you'll approach a 'metal' or 'crunch' sound.

Much of this really depends on your amp...if you have a small modeling amp that's made to sound 'metally', then that's basically what you get.

Something like the Roland Microcube, however, has different amp models that do a fair job of approximating different overdrives and distortions. And it's cheap!


Aside: :rolleyes: <

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What the heck is THAT!!! A Cyclops pacman? What emotion would that represent??? :pac:

Voodu Child

Karl Hungus wrote: »

Depends on the amp. Each amp is completely different, there's no universal setting that'll sound great on all amps.

Yep, thats pretty much it. Every amp is different, there's no point in telling someone to scoop the mids if they have an amp whose tone stack already has the mids 'pre-scooped'. Or vice versa with mid-heavy amps.

Putting the gain all the way up might be a bad idea on an amp with shedloads of gain, but might be necessary on a milder amp. So again, there's no point in telling someone to 'turn down the gain' without knowing specifics about the situation.

The best advice I could give across the interweb is to tweak blind, i.e. don't pay attention to the number or position of the knobs, just look away and try and tweak by ear as much as possible.

Rustar

voodoo_child wrote:

Yep, thats pretty much it. Every amp is different, there's no point in telling someone to scoop the mids if they have an amp whose tone stack already has the mids 'pre-scooped'. Or vice versa with mid-heavy amps.

Yes, that's why we've all been giving the "really depends on your amp" disclaimer.

Using your ear is the best advice ever. I know I can go to almost any amp with a drive stage and tweak it for a blues tone or a hard rock tone (and sometimes metal!) based on the limitations of the amp, and using those basic tenets I described.

Of course, choice of guitar makes a difference as well...blues-based stuff just seems so much easier on a Strat or Tele than an SG or LP. For me, anyway.

Glydeside white

Thanks everyone il try a few of those tips, just for the record, its a small fender amp that i got with the guitar.

Karl Hungus

Glydeside white wrote: »

Thanks everyone il try a few of those tips, just for the record, its a small fender amp that i got with the guitar.

So it's basically just a cheap begginer amp then? If that's the case, then you're probably trying to get tones from it that it's just not capable of.

You should invest in something better, like a Microcube.

fourmations

hi all

just curious, would he not be better off getting
a cheap multi fx like the pocket pod at 99 euros

seems like a better bang for the buck
and a lot more options

rgds

4

Glydeside white

I think il head into dundalk tomorrow and see what they have, i seen in total guitar mag that the amp, its made by orange is supposed to be class:D

Fingers Mcginty

danny's in blackrock?

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

fourmations wrote: »

hi all

just curious, would he not be better off getting
a cheap multi fx like the pocket pod at 99 euros

seems like a better bang for the buck
and a lot more options

rgds

4

cheap multi fx are nearly always pretty crap. if you are going to spend 100 on a pedal, id say just get a distortion pedal, not a multi effects. i have a multi effects and all i ever use is 3 patches for tone and 2 for delay. looking back, i should have just bought a distortion and a delay pedal!!!

btw, ive never played through a pocket pod, but i have played through a few cheep zoom pedals. own the zoom g2.1u, its just ok, nothing special.

Karl Hungus

Multi FX or any kind of stomps are going to sound like ass through a cheap amp, so that solution would be like trying to polish a turd. The amp is the problem here, address that first.

Glydeside white

Fingers Mcginty wrote: »

danny's in blackrock?

No i went to the place in the demense, its got a good selection of guitars but the amps were just ok. Comiskeys on clanbrassil street is terrible imo terrible selection of guitars.