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What is the approxamate settings you use on you amp when playing your Paul, Strat etc. as far as the Bass Mid and Treb. (anyone can pipe up here too). Been playing around with mine a lot, just kinda wondering how others do it.

George,

I play a different amp than you so it may not matter so much. I find myself going for more and more classic tones these days.

My first channel is set up clean, there is a switch on both my amps. One thing to remember on tube amps is that the signal starts at the gain control and then goes thru the treble to the mid to the bass and then presence. On my amp my gains on all my channels clean to dirty start around halfway, noon or 5 if you are going by the numbers, my treble controls tend to be around noon or straight up also, when I get to my mids I scoop them down some, on my clean channel I have the mids almost turned off, on my vintage distortion channel I bring the mids up to about 9-10 oclock, and then my modern distortion Ive been kinda jumping around from either a scooped out setting around 8-9 oclock all the way up to 2-3 oclock, the bass setting on most of my channels is set around noon. On the Mesa amps if you jack up one of your eq controls to an extreme setting it tends to take away from the next dial in the signal path. If you turn your gain all the way up, none of your tone controls will do much. I think the gain and treble are the most important parts of your tone structure.

On your Carvin, I would turn the master all the way down to start and then set everything to noon or 5, if you have reverb I tend to set mine real low. On my little combo amp I set it at 1.5. Turn your guitar all the way down and bring the master up, then turn the guitar up. For an open backed combo you will probably have to turn your bass controls up higher than what I do to compensate. My little Mesa I set the gain around 8, treble, mid, bass, presence at 5, reverb at 1.5 and then use the guitar volume to add more breakup.

Any amp will have a sweet spot. If you are going for extreme metal tones you may need some kind of distortion pedal to take the amp over the top. I like to have the gain on the amp lower and kick in a pedal insteand of diming my gain. You might take your recorder and record different settings on the amp and listen to it, sometimes what is going to tape sounds different than what you hear standing next to the amp.

Dont mistake being loud for good tone. There are good tones to be found at lower volume levels, sometimes being loud gives you more of that thunk sound you may want for metal. Also the louder you play generally the less gain you need. If you are practicing at low levels you may have the gain turned up high to get your crunch, but as you open the master volume turn the gain back.

Once again most good guitar sounds start with the gain and treble, next comes your bass control. Mids can make your guitar cut thru the mix, thats why you see a lot of guys insert and eq pedal into their effects loop with the mids turned up. Presence is kind of a high treble control that takes over frequencys above your treble.

If your guitar is cutting thru to much dont forget the tone control on the guitar. On my Les Pauls I roll of the tone control to about 6-7 a lot to take a little bite out of the guitar.

Hope some of this makes sense. I play with the eq all the time on my amps. I kind of have a feel for basic settings but it changes almost daily, so the quest continues.

Remember its all in the chase!

Makes a lot of sense and answered some questions I had in my mind but really was not sure how tp phrase it. Been reading and hearing a lot about scooping the mid but had no idea what they were talking about
Thanks again. It is a blessing for me to have exp. people to talk with as I muddle trough all this that is so new to me.