Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: benson_murrensun on November 06, 2013, 06:10:05 AM
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Hi there, Alembicians.
I'm looking for a quick tutorial on how to set an equalizer so it makes a clean preamp/power amp combination sound like a guitar amp.
I'm using guitar speaker cabs, a Crown D60 amp, a Roland 31-band eq, and have various preamp devices to jump the guitar signal up to line level.
Any suggestions or discussion would be appreciated!
Ben
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Ben ,
A 31 band EQ is able to make attenuation at 1/3 of an octave per slide pot. If I understand your question correctly you want to emulate a certain guitar amplifier sound and in essence want to replicate that amplifiers response characteristics .
Am I understanding your question correctly ?
First of all there are many variables that you are not mentioning;
What guitar amp.
what speakers .
what guitar .
etc ... etc...
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I have lots of experience with 1/3 octave equalization in doing room treatments with a Real time Analyzer or RTA
There are many ways to approach this task.
My first approach would be just to set the EQ FLAT and let the guitar reveal its true sound full frequency .
From there your ears can guide you.
You might want to trim off the extreme lows and start to shelf up toward the mids to around 1200HZ then flatten it out a little again and start to bring up the responses again around 2500HZ .
See how it sounds and mold the sound to your liking , Your ears can guide you for this sort of thing.
The most scientific method would be to get a screen shot of the exact amp guitar combo that you want and then replicate the settings on your 1/3 octave EQ
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Hi, Wolf!
At this point I am not trying to emulate a specific guitar amp's characteristic tone, but I may get to that later. I just want some general advice on how guitar amps are factory eq'd compared to a hi-fi amp (no eq), so I can add eq to a hi-fi amp to get it to sound like a guitar amp. As I said I will be using guitar speakers.
I've been doing some googling and it appears that guitar amps generally accentuate some bass and some treble to compensate for most pickups' midrange dominance. So a graphic eq would show a twin peaks curve on the sliders.
Am I on the right track here?
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Well I do have an old cheapo real time analyzer and a measurement mic; I could send pink noise through a guitar amp and look at the screen on the analyzer, then switch it all over to the power amp/eq setup and start adjusting the eq to match the guitar amp.
Two problems though:
1- I'm lazy
2- I don't trust my analyzer and mic to be particularly accurate (although it will give me a starting point).
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HI Ben.
Much of the characteristics of the sound that you are looking for I believe would be accessible in the preamp stages of a Guitar Amp If you would take for example a fine product such as an Alembic F2-B and connect it to your Crown D60 and leave out the 1/3 octave EQ that might be an example facsimile of a refined Fender Showman sound perhaps.
The Dead once had preamp outs on their various Fender amps feeding various Macintosh power amps after all . This is awesome history .
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I hear that. I have an F1-X but it's in use with another Crown amp for my studio's bass rig. And it sounds too good to dismantle it!
I am trying to piece together a guitar setup from gear I already own, but am not currently using for other purposes, so I can have an extra rig available for others to use during jams.
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Ben,
Yes , I can see what you are trying to provide. I hope that I have been able to help you shed some illumination with my thoughts .Speaking for my self , sometimes my personal journeys in looking for solutions have been like riding a motorcycle thorough dense fog. (done that too )
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Yes, thanks for the input. As well as for the analogy about riding through dense fog... Which I've done , too, with both external fog and internal fog (ahem ;-)).
I hear your suggestions about using an rta as well as how to set the eq. I don't trust my ears so much now that I know I have hearing loss in some ranges of sound.
If anyone else wants to chime in about how electric guitar preamps are typically eq'd before the signal hits their power amps that would be great.
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You might find the Tone Stack Calculator (free download here: http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/ (http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/) )
useful. It will show you exactly what's going on with a variety of standard tone stacks at your preferred settings. Also fun because you can change part values and see how it affects the tone stack response.
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That looks useful. Doesn't appear to work on iPhone, so I will look at it on a windows machine when I can. Thanks!
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Ben ,
In moments like yours in this situation I sometimes get GAS . (gear acquisition syndrome) In this situation an Alembic F-2B would be dancing in my mind ____LOL_!
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Kent, That link is very cool !
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Often a mid-range boost, probably need a tube preamp to liven it up and add warmth. You could buy an older line 6 POD to use in front for not too much money, it has a tube emulater setting..
Guitar tube amps are unique in sound and can be hard to emulate on a clean amp. I just sold a Lab series L9 transistor guitar amp and it came as close to a real guitar amp as any I have seen. Polytone did a good job for clean Jazz tone.
Frankly, a normal EQ unit does not add the tone I would conisder a guitar amp tone. Of course the F-2B is just the front end of a Fender type tube amp (with some tweaks) and does a great job.
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Yes, I get that, just trying to use what I already have. That said, I have an ART tube preamp that works but I haven't given it a critical listen with a guitar yet. It has no tone controls. I also have a Tech21 Oxford Character pedal that's supposed to emulate an Orange amp sound; it has lots of boost, but isn't very warm sounding.
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I'd boost bass and treble while cutting midrange - the smile setting. But I wouldn't expect a real guitar amp sound, which, by the way I achieve quite nicely with my solid state Pritchard Sword of Satori amp.
Bill, tgo
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Thanks for the input.
And.... Solid state amps are not evil! I love my Lab Series.
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You could also always consider a POD or Sansamp, but it won't be quite the same as a real amp. Amplifiers are as individual as guitars, and some are more musical than others.
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There are some amp simulators for iPhone that are actually not too shabby and are under $10, some are even free. I would look into one of those as an easy way to get started. Of course, you'll need an adapter to get the guitar into the iPhone, but those are cheaper than a lot of the other options (like another Alembic pre). I use JamUp for learning tunes and it's got tons of options, as far as amps, effects, etc.
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Fundamentally the catch is going to be emulating a 'guitar' amp (which even when dialed up for a 'clean' tone is still adding small amounts of distortion our ears interpret as 'warmth', whether solid-state or tube) thru components like the Crown which are running pro-level cleanliness.
Depending on what you're after, you may also run into the usual reaction a lot of bass guys get when they finally bin the SVT and go to a rack rig: It's soooooo clean and it just gets louder and louder . . . , though maybe not the louder part with that little Crown. D60's are mighty fine.
I'd rather take a beating than to try and find my tone on a 31-band. IF it were me, I'd emulate what a lot of amps do, but in a component fashion: Solid-state power (your Crown) with a tube preamp (f2b, etc.). Then to decide if you want pedal or line-level effects, and do you need switching from clean to distortion, etc.
J o e y
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Lots of good stuff here.
Still trying to do this on the cheap; I do have an iPhone and the Peavey Ampkit app and adapter for guitar plug in (good idea, Edwin). I think today I will try various combinations of the eq unit, ART tube pre, Tech 21 Oxford (Sansamp product) and the iPhone app and see if any is acceptable. Might even try some tube swapping in the ART.
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I bought a Fender Cyber Twin for $225 this summer and have been getting amazing sounds out of it after S&%*-canning the factory settings and creating my own. They are going for pretty cheap now and have 2 12AX7s in the pre section.
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For those still interested in this thread about how I put together a spare guitar amp rig with stuff that was lurking about in the closet, I got some good sounds this morning this way: Guitar (Gibson Lucille happened to be what I had ready to go) > Way Huge Red Llama clone (only on for over-the-top leads) > Boss RV-5 reverb pedal > ART Tube MP (input gain turned way up) > Roland 31-band eq with sliders set in an inverted W with peaks at 100Hz and 2kHz > Crown D 60 > speaker cabinets (Vox Wharfedale 12 plus Eminence Lady Luck 12).
Lots of fun and lots of ear fatigue...
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Way cool! I bet that the Tube MP helped to warm things up some. My interest continues to grow in regards to unconventional amps.
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This was #1 this week on my new / interesting / and certainly unconventional list:
http://www.kemper-amps.com/page/render/lang/en/p/184/ (http://www.kemper-amps.com/page/render/lang/en/p/184/)
Facinating, even for a technoklutz like me.
J o e y
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Technology is leaving me in the rear view mirror.