Weird: into tube poweramp without poweramp sim is too dark, with sim too bright

J

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Ok, this is weird. When I hooked up by axe-fx2 to my tube power amp (two-rock with buffered loop) and turned off the cabs, it was waaaaayyyy too bright. If I turn off the power amp sim, it's a bit too dark. With my Ultra last year, I could leave the power amp sims on for a bit of meat to the tone. Granted, that was a different power amp which I no longer have, but still....

Any idea what's going on here? I am using short high quality Vovox cable!!
 
I'm experiencing something similar when running into my Mesa Boogie F-50 FX Return. When toggling the global poweramp emulation, the signal without the poweramp emulation is actually darker in contrast to the brighter/grainier tone with the poweramp emulation switched on. This seems kind of counterintuitive, because usually the preamp signal is supposed to be brighter and thinner while the poweramp contributes smoothnes and warmth to the sound. I haven't tested this on too many models though (only the FAS Modern and the different 5150 models) and I still haven't checked if turning down the sag control produces the same effect. I also don't use cab models since I'm running to a 2x12 guitar cab.
 
When you turn the power amp sims off, the presence control change from boost only to cut & boost so you need to set it to 5 & then tweak from there. Also, the deep control is disabled. As far as the op saying it's too bright with them on, you need to tweak to your system. There is no way to make factory presets sound good on all systems. The cab sims add a lot of lows & low mids & sound terrible when running thru guitar cabs.
 
Funny I just experienced the same thing today,I have an old ada power amp with the 12xa7's,with my ultra it just wasn't alive sounding ,missing something,I plug into my tube amp return(cab sim's off ,power amp sim's on) and it was smokin. With the II ,way to bight in amp return and sounds better with ada power amp?
 
notalemming said:
When you turn the power amp sims off, the presence control change from boost only to cut & boost so you need to set it to 5 & then tweak from there. Also, the deep control is disabled. As far as the op saying it's too bright with them on, you need to tweak to your system. There is no way to make factory presets sound good on all systems. The cab sims add a lot of lows & low mids & sound terrible when running thru guitar cabs.
Click to expand...

^This is right. Cliff said this a while back.
 
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