Amp tone controls question

Billbill

Billbill

Power User
There was a thread awhile back on how amp's tone controls interact. I had a big issue with this as I had little experience with it so didn't know how to adjust and was using up all my precious time endlessly tweaking after I pay mama damn good money to go shopping and leave me the hell alone for a few hrs!
Question is, is there a setting in amp block to reduce this behavior? I remember reading something about pre vs post EQ too ...what's that about? Sorry still learning my machine.
 
You could change the tonestack type to active which will stop the interaction, but then you’re likely significantly departing from the way the amp is meant to sound (the vast majority of guitar amps do not use active tone controls).

It’s just an unavoidable quirk of the way passive tonestacks work, and the particular idiosyncrasies in question vary quite a bit from one type of tonestack design to the next. If you want to get a better idea of how different tonestacks behave and interact, I’d suggest downloading a tonestack calculator (something like this: http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/ ) which will give visual data on how each control affects one another and let you play around with different types of circuit to see how they vary.

As far as pre vs post EQ, that’s a whole other can of worms that I’d probably recommend not worrying about too much until you’re comfortable with the basic amp controls. Utilizing additional EQ blocks will only add more complexity to the dialing-in process.
 
Unfortunately (fortunately?) spending endless hours tweaking and testing is the only way to really get to know how to get the best out of the AxeFX for you. I think you might find that auditioning tonestacks (there are a lot of them) would be worthwhile. Once you find one you feel happy with, you could try swapping it in on all of the amp model you use, which would give you familiarity at the cost of some authenticity.
 
When I first started my fractal journey, I started with factory presets and very closely studied the ones I really liked. Eventually, I started to build my own, using my experience with real amps I had owned (VOX, Marshall, Fender, Boogie, etc.). My experience was that the Boogie amps behaved a bit differently in that each tone stage had an effect on the next (meaning bass, mid, treb). Other amps not so much. I do know that each amp had to be dialed in to get the sweet spot. As my playing evolved, my choice in amps evolved too. What is so great about the Fractal gear is that I can work with a bunch of different amps without spending a fortune buying and selling amps.
 
Recon24 said:
You could change the tonestack type to active which will stop the interaction, but then you’re likely significantly departing from the way the amp is meant to sound (the vast majority of guitar amps do not use active tone controls).

It’s just an unavoidable quirk of the way passive tonestacks work, and the particular idiosyncrasies in question vary quite a bit from one type of tonestack design to the next. If you want to get a better idea of how different tonestacks behave and interact, I’d suggest downloading a tonestack calculator (something like this: http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/ ) which will give visual data on how each control affects one another and let you play around with different types of circuit to see how they vary.

As far as pre vs post EQ, that’s a whole other can of worms that I’d probably recommend not worrying about too much until you’re comfortable with the basic amp controls. Utilizing additional EQ blocks will only add more complexity to the dialing-in process.
Click to expand...
Cool! Thx for all the info guys. I guess I'll have to continue experimenting during my re-rig process until I know these amps like the back of my hand, And thanks for the link Sir!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom