I finally was able to have the house to myself for about 4 hours today. I tested two setups. The first was into a Alto TS210 powered monitor. The 2nd was into the FX return of my Marshall DSL 40C.
I got a chance to go through the Fractal presets a few nights ago at lower than TV levels through an old solid state combo amp. The tone was sh!t but it was a great exercise in learning to navigate the footswitching and wrap my head around the difference between a preset, a scene and X/Y switching. Between now and then I've been watching youtube vid's - AB's Gain Staging, several Leon Todd, etc.. I bought Austin Buddy's Naked amp package and glad I did. The amps are set up with the levels already usable and it's very easy to audition or sift through different amps looking for specific tones. Eventually I'll make my way through all of them...maybe.
When I first hooked up the TS210 and began the tone was pretty crappy. My first thought was that hopefully I can resell it pretty quickly and take the speaker back to guitar center since it's within 30 days. But I also recalled that I needed to take the time to set up the proper gain staging and then also knew that these speakers need some EQ-ing in the low and high end. So I watched the gain staging video again and tweaked the global EQ to a frowny face and got much better. But it still wasn't the 'golden tone' or anything deeply inspiring. There is still a bit of odd sounding distortion or clipping going on.
So, I decided to test the thing into my DSL 40. Eww. That's a tad worse and after tweaking a few Pre-Amp oriented amp models, removing the Cab and Pwr Amps while also turning off the SAG, I got a few usable tones but not quite pristine. So, I plugged straight into the Amp and set up my normal set up....loud. I noticed that when the thing is blasting me in my face there's quite a lot of messy crap going on there too. It's only when I move away from the amp, does it become good. And that's when I realized that even my old '73 JMP sounds like sh!t when it's blasted right at my face.
I went back to the TS210 and turned it up loud. I was rewarded this time with a tone cleaner than the amp and once I cut the high's and low's the mid felt like it might cut like the amp. But there's still some garbage in the tone frequencies that I feel shouldn't be there. I feel like maybe it's clipping although the clean sounds are clean. So I ask the following:
1. Is the guitar input level supposed to be 0db? - There is a little bit of red input clipping on some of the harder picked or chugged notes.
2. Is using the global EQ really the best way to zone in on the frequencies causing the percieved issues? - I just read the EQ wiki and saw that maybe I an make a PEQ block and use it globally to cut unwanted frequencies.
3. If No. 2 is true do is it also necessary to cut the cab's frequencies? That seems redundant to me
4. Do you guys find it's necessary to add a noise gate? There's a bunch of clutter that the default gate cuts but you can still notice it.
Sorry for the long post. Hopefully someone who's new will get something out of it. FWIW I found myself gravitating to Austin Buddy's Marshall SuperLead (not the early Plexi) preset and the Fractal Modern II. I like the EVH tones too and love all of the cleans.
cheers
I got a chance to go through the Fractal presets a few nights ago at lower than TV levels through an old solid state combo amp. The tone was sh!t but it was a great exercise in learning to navigate the footswitching and wrap my head around the difference between a preset, a scene and X/Y switching. Between now and then I've been watching youtube vid's - AB's Gain Staging, several Leon Todd, etc.. I bought Austin Buddy's Naked amp package and glad I did. The amps are set up with the levels already usable and it's very easy to audition or sift through different amps looking for specific tones. Eventually I'll make my way through all of them...maybe.
When I first hooked up the TS210 and began the tone was pretty crappy. My first thought was that hopefully I can resell it pretty quickly and take the speaker back to guitar center since it's within 30 days. But I also recalled that I needed to take the time to set up the proper gain staging and then also knew that these speakers need some EQ-ing in the low and high end. So I watched the gain staging video again and tweaked the global EQ to a frowny face and got much better. But it still wasn't the 'golden tone' or anything deeply inspiring. There is still a bit of odd sounding distortion or clipping going on.
So, I decided to test the thing into my DSL 40. Eww. That's a tad worse and after tweaking a few Pre-Amp oriented amp models, removing the Cab and Pwr Amps while also turning off the SAG, I got a few usable tones but not quite pristine. So, I plugged straight into the Amp and set up my normal set up....loud. I noticed that when the thing is blasting me in my face there's quite a lot of messy crap going on there too. It's only when I move away from the amp, does it become good. And that's when I realized that even my old '73 JMP sounds like sh!t when it's blasted right at my face.
I went back to the TS210 and turned it up loud. I was rewarded this time with a tone cleaner than the amp and once I cut the high's and low's the mid felt like it might cut like the amp. But there's still some garbage in the tone frequencies that I feel shouldn't be there. I feel like maybe it's clipping although the clean sounds are clean. So I ask the following:
1. Is the guitar input level supposed to be 0db? - There is a little bit of red input clipping on some of the harder picked or chugged notes.
2. Is using the global EQ really the best way to zone in on the frequencies causing the percieved issues? - I just read the EQ wiki and saw that maybe I an make a PEQ block and use it globally to cut unwanted frequencies.
3. If No. 2 is true do is it also necessary to cut the cab's frequencies? That seems redundant to me
4. Do you guys find it's necessary to add a noise gate? There's a bunch of clutter that the default gate cuts but you can still notice it.
Sorry for the long post. Hopefully someone who's new will get something out of it. FWIW I found myself gravitating to Austin Buddy's Marshall SuperLead (not the early Plexi) preset and the Fractal Modern II. I like the EVH tones too and love all of the cleans.
cheers