Thoughts on totally cutting the lowest & highest global EQ bands

Alan Benjamin

Inspired
Greetings,

Although I've had my AX8 for over a year now, I haven't had a chance to play out with it yet (due to the fact that my prog band, Advent, lost our bassist beforehand and we have yet to find a replacement). I just started using my AX8 for recording (for Advent's upcoming single and also a guest appearance on an Italian prog project release due out later this year) and have adjusted pretty well to recording with the unit.

Now that this recording phase is over, I've been routing the AX8 back into my pair of Alto TS-212s and rediscovered how brittle the tone was in this configuration (though moving the Alto's back to the floor helped a little, though boosted the bass a bit, as expected). As I was just invited to a jam this Sunday, I've been trying to get my rig as close to "live ready" as possible and, on a lark, decided to verify that AX-8 Edit would allow me to set the global EQ (on output 1 in my case) and, once I verified this worked, I ended up completely pulling down the lowest (31 Hz) and highest (16 kHz) bands down completely--and, based on a very quick sampling of my favorite presets (factory and self-built), everything seems to sound so much better.

With this in mind, I'm wondering if anyone else has had success with this approach and/or has suggestions about any further easy tweaks that might be worth investigating.

Thanks and take care,


Alan
 
I usually end up pulling the global EQ down at 16kHz.
I played recently a gig (no FOH, just instruments as is and 2 PA speakers for vocals; the smallest clubs...) using a 4x12 which was extremely muddy (high cut at 6kHz), so I set the 16kHz back to something around -3dB to comb with the rollof.

Anyway, what I want to say is:
There is no 'right' or 'wrong'.
Depends on what you have to work at the location.
 
Appreciate the feedback. I've made some EQ adjustments in cab blocks when building my own presets, but have also grown to appreciate more of the factory presets and, in general, they all sounded to harsh and gritty--especially through the TS-212s--so I figured I'd see if there was something quick and easy on the global EQ that would make a positive impact across the board. This definitely seemed to do the trick.

Cheers,


Alan
 
I make EQ adjustments at every sound check until it sounds good.

I err on the dark side. I've found that works best for me. I get tremendous ear fatigue during a long show if the guitar monitor is too bright.

I cut the highs until it sounds just a little too dark. That is the sweet spot for my ears.
 
I make EQ adjustments at every sound check until it sounds good.

I err on the dark side. I've found that works best for me. I get tremendous ear fatigue during a long show if the guitar monitor is too bright.

I cut the highs until it sounds just a little too dark. That is the sweet spot for my ears.
Very much this. I do the same. It seems to come across less shrill through the mains.
 
Hi again,

Brief update: I ended up taking this setup out for the jam and, while it took a little getting used to having my guitar come through a single TS-212 (on the floor facing everyone from the front), the results mostly sounded good. In this type of environment, though, I might be tempted to bring up the lowest frequency band (31 Hz) up a bit to see if the end result could sound a little bigger. I'm sure that some other fine tweaking might help too, but the tones were definitely in the ballpark.

Thanks again to everyone who replied here.

All the best,


Alan
 
On the fly last night during sound check I randomly tried this same kind of thing. Cutting all of the 31Hz and i took out like -8 of the 16hz. I tested it by how it sounded in the house and it seemed to help a ton. I plan on fine tuning this but found this thread after searching for someone doing similar things. To me it seems odd that I haven't seen this done until i searched for it though. I've done tons of low cuts in PEQs and cabinets (and still do), but never heard about doing it globally. Very glad i did though. One observation I had was my monitors at home didn't even pick up the 31hz when i was messing with it. Seems like even more of a reason to smash those to know how you will actually sound in venues. While in my case I was coming in muddy due to those extreme lows that I didn't know existed.
 
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I cut the same frequencies. My Global EQ Out 1 to FOH has a general frown shape to it. Same thing on the Out 2 Global EQ to my XiTone’s. But that varies from venue to venue depending on the stage.
I use low and high cut in cab block but always wondered if I should also be using the global EQ as well. Is this for blocks/effects that are parallel to or post CAB block?
 
On the fly last night during sound check I randomly tried this same kind of thing. Cutting all of the 31Hz and i took out like -8 of the 16hz. I tested it by how it sounded in the house and it seemed to help a ton. I plan on fine tuning this but found this thread after searching for someone doing similar things. To me it seems odd that I haven't seen this done until i searched for it though. I've done tons of low cuts in PEQs and cabinets (and still do), but never heard about doing it globally. Very glad i did though. One observation I had was my monitors at home didn't even pick up the 31hz when i was messing with it. Seems like even more of a reason to smash those to know how you will actually sound in venues. While in my case I was coming in muddy due to those extreme lows that I didn't know existed.

Yes, is what I do when not using Hi/Low Cut in Cab block. I pull down both low bands.
 
Yes, is what I do when not using Hi/Low Cut in Cab block. I pull down both low bands.

In my case I'm still using a low cut at 80 and a high cut at 7500 in the cab block and still found the global EQ tweeks to have massive differences. Is that normal? It seems odd to me that changing the 31hz global EQ changing things so much when I have a cut at 80hz. I definitly don't know much about how this all works though o_O haha
 
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