Ochanomizu said:
I don't want to sound like a nit picker or anything like that, but why do we need to add in EQ to fix the sound. I'm using the word fix as opposed to modify because it doesn't seem right somehow to setup all your amp blocks etc, and then need to add an EQ at the end of the chain to make it sound better.
Peace and all that stuff.
It's not about "fix." It's about getting what you want. A lot of folks get turned off because they set up a preset using, for example, a Mesa amp model and then can't get it to sound like the real Mesa they had. When EQ gets suggested, they often exclaim that it should be enough to use the virtual knobs to get it to sound right. And that ain't necessarily so. The knobs don't represent the sum total of EQ that's happening in an amplifier, ESPECIALLY in a Mesa. Ignoring for a moment what happens on the input jacks of a Mesa, and ignoring the effect of speakers and cabinetry, there are components in the circuitry that "EQ" the signal, and those components and values changed such that earlier manufacturing examples have different componentry than later examples. The only way, then, to tune the model to get to the sound you want is to add EQ. In the case of many of the Mesa Mark series amps that came with graphic EQ's, you MUST add an EQ block to even begin to get those right, even if you only ever left them set flat in "your" Mark - and by "your" I'm speaking generically.
The point is that there is more EQ going on in any amplifier than people often stop to think about, and if one isn't managing to get the results he expects, EQ is a good place to go next. Also, there is more "EQ" going on in the Axe than we often stop to think about, because many of the advanced amp settings in the Axe are really implementations of EQ.
Now, when we start trying to recreate tones for recording, it gets REALLY whacky because it doesn't matter that, picking an arbitrary example here, you've got that picture from Guitar Player of Stevie Ray Vaughan's rig during the recording of "In Step." The fact that you can see all the amps and all the mics is still only a small part of the story. Even if you happen to know what speakers were in those cabinets, and how the amps were modified, you still can't replicate the room in which they were recorded, the barometric pressure and relative humidity of the room, the age of the diaphragms in the mics, and we won't even go into what console those mics were plugged into. So on, so forth, ad nauseum.
So it's not about "fixing," it's about getting the results you want to get, and also about getting them under conditions that don't necessarily represent the real amp experience - such as running output direct-injected to a PA system. No matter how good the amp models, cabinet IR's, and the mic models may be, they aren't perfect and they represent particular amps and mics of a particular age and level of use under a given set of environmental circumstances with some forgiveness programmed in. But your particular experience with particular mics and amps and PAs are very unlikely to match all of that. And this is where the challenge often lies in debates over modeling.
The equalizer, of course, is the equalizer. If one is happy with what one gets with just an amp block and a cab block - and I very often am satisfied with that because I don't have any real strong need to recreate the experience of particular amps I used to own - then carry on and don't worry about EQ. But when you're trying to get to a particular tone in your memory or your imagination, you're going to need EQ.
My opinions, etc...your mileage may vary.
Paz, Raz