F30 Tone Controls

[markblasco]

I just got an F30 combo, and aside from the lack of a presence control I am very happy with the clean channel. When it comes to the distorted channel however, I can't seem to get the tone controls to do much. It seems like no matter how I adjust them, they barely make any difference to the distorted sound. The clean channel controls seem to work fine.
I also have a V-twin rack, and the tone controls on that seem to make a ton of difference, even with a lot of distortion.
Is there something off with my amp, or do the tone controls on the F30's crunch channel just not do much to the sound?

 

[no soul]

how do you usually have it dialed in?

 

[markblasco]

Well, that's the thing. It doesn't seem to matter much. I usually start with the gain at about 10:00, and all of the tone controls at about 9:00. This gives me a pretty full distortion. From there, if I take any of the 3 tone controls and turn them most of the way up, I don't get much of a tonal change. On the V-twin preamp, if I turn any of the tone controls even a little bit I can clearly hear the difference.

Would putting in new tubes make a difference? The amp was not new when I got it (although it is only a few months old), and it may have been a floor model. I already replaced the second tube because of microphonics, but if replacing the rest of them would help than I would do it without a second thought.

I will try to record a few tracks this week to demonstrate.

 

[hal9000]

Try out my settings, and see if you can hear a difference. Also, note the position of the master volume for each setting.

Finally, read the manual. Mesa does a good job explaining how everything works including the treble, mid and bass interactivity.

 

[markblasco]

OK, I only had a few minutes, but I threw together 3 clips. The first one is with all of the tone controls at 9:00 , the gain at 12:00, and the master at 10:00 with a volume pedal in the loop to attenuate the signal. All of the samples are in contour mode. The second and third samples are the two top settings from hal9000 (Humbucker metal rhythm and vintage hi gain). I can hear a slight difference, but not much, between the samples.

http://www.podcastthemes.com/audio/f30tonetest.mp3