You folks ever spend time trying to dial in different models just to realize...

M

Mark Wein

Inspired
that you're making them all sound the same because thats the sound you hear in your head?

I have some pretty good live presets but I wanted to build a library of different versions built around different amps...sort of like bringing a pedalboard to a gig with a different amp. After building a batch of these presets I realized that regardless of amp type they all kind of sounded the same with just a slight difference in flavor.
 
Makes sense really, If its a "go-to" personal tone then your going to be biased to a certain sound. My preferred Gain tone is more mid heavy and I never heavily scoop the mids out so besides amp to amp inherent difference I always tend to end up with consistent sort of sound no matter the amp. Now how many additional Drives, EQ's, parameter adjustments beyond the "stock" settings I use to get that sound is where differences between models shows up.

What the tone settings on the amp models looks like while deriving the same general tone would be an interesting thing. I'm sure you'd see some very different dial settings which may not look "right" but give a similar end sound. That's where people can become conflicted depending if they're listening with their eyes or ears.
 
I definitely am guilty of this, with real amps as well as models. I have only in the last couple years learned to recognize the character of a given amp and come up with a tone that highlights that character. I've sold a lot of amps because they sounded just like other amps I had, only to realize that it's because of how I used them.

I am also making sure to keep a variety of cab IRs in rotation so that I don't fall into the same tone trap. It's my experience that about 60% of the tone comes from the IR. Same cab on two different amps already sets me up for duplicate tones.
 
Absolutely! I always end up trying to “Marshall-ize”’an amp because of the songs i play most of the time which require that hard rock lead sound like a Slash or VH. I’ve been getting much better with it. All my live experience is playing lead guitar in cover bands. Half the battle is understanding and committing to the type of lead lines you’re going to play with different tones. For example, im not gonna play an Yngwie lick with a lighter gain sound; certain styles of lead playing come from certain tones
 
I've developed a habit of running through all my amps at one time to see if they overlap. If they do, I look at whether it's a "me" problem (amp is dialed to sound like another amp) or an "overlap" problem (amp sounds too much like another amp). If it's me, I go back to finding that amp's character and re-dial. If it's an overlap, I flip it. Takes a lot of time to dial and redial amps, but I always find it's worth it. A big part of this process is pairing with the right cab IR. I tend to go with the classics - recto cabs for my Mini Rectifier, GBs for my SV20H, GBs for my JJ Jr because that's what Jerry Cantrell uses, V30+GB for general rock, GB or Blackback for EVH, various 1x12 and 2x12 and 15" for clean.

With models, I am either trying to copy my real amp or using it for its unique quality. In the former, I will go to great lengths to A/B and dial, since I already did that on the real amp. For the latter, I rarely turn the knobs or mess with IRs at all, particularly if I copied from another preset I liked.
 
Kind of...the tone and sound I'm inclined to gravitate towards seems the same for several of my presets...

But then, when one downloads a free or paid preset, that equation changes.

My personal feeling is, if you have several tones for your guitars that might be slightly different, but not too drastically, that difference might be something of value. Yet, if you're not planning on changing any of your preferred presets, likely the different ones are relegated to their own file folder, for future reference, if any.
 
Yep- even with real amps and pedals, first thing we all do is try to find the sound in our head. Buddy of mine has 10+ boutique heads from Blankenship to Bogner and both of us always seem to end up dialing to our sound we like best....
 
I'm guilty of dialing in whatever I'm using to sound like what's in my head. Glowing glass or modelers.

Even worse ...I heard a video clip I tried to emulate for years of a K&M (Two Rock) Jade amp that had this perfection of clean pick attack mixed in the warm OD. ...Only to realize much later that I was actually hearing the camera mic picking up the pick because the amp was turned down really low.

Seriously. Years chasing that thing. Glad I didn't throw down a small fortune for a Jade to figure that out.
 
WKSmith said:
I'm guilty of dialing in whatever I'm using to sound like what's in my head. Glowing glass or modelers.

Even worse ...I heard a video clip I tried to emulate for years of a K&M (Two Rock) Jade amp that had this perfection of clean pick attack mixed in the warm OD. ...Only to realize much later that I was actually hearing the camera mic picking up the pick because the amp was turned down really low.

Seriously. Years chasing that thing. Glad I didn't throw down a small fortune for a Jade to figure that out.
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This very realization is what pushed me to add a Rane splitter mixer to my rack back in 1990 to mix in a little compressed, direct signal into many of my heavier tones. It was very subtle but it made a huge difference.
 
I was doing this for the longest time then stopped. Using a different guitar, single coil / Humbucker and tone reference AC30 / Hot Rodded Marshall helps etc, as you tend to use the type of the guitar to help dial in the sound reference at least it works for me!
 
Yep, I'll even will tweak a song specific preset to the point it no longer sounds like the song and still hit the Store button.
 
This internal style-taste-bias can go way beyond tones.

Back in the day, I would sometimes "fix" and/or "improve" arrangements when I sequenced a track rather than just making the sequences "sound like the record".
 
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