Help me with my Stiletto Please!

[thorny]

Alright folks I can really use some help here. I like my Stiletto. I am having a problem with my lead tones however. It seems that they are so in your face. They seem to have a serious spike in them. I guess it could have something to do with the veteran 30s in the mesa rectifier cab. Maybe I can EQ this piercing tone out of the amp with the EQ in my TC Electronics G Major. Have any of you expierienced this? I have tried the clean channel with a distortion pedal, I have tried the Tite Gain Channel, the fluid drive, no matter what I do I cant get the spike out of it. HELP!!! Any suggestions would be great!

 

[Laskyman]

For a great lead tone - at least for my playing- I run Tite or Fluid, Presence off, Bass-1:00, Mid-12:00, trable-9:30 gain at 10:30-12:00. I also Boost with a Maxon OD808 for leads. I play with fluid a lot at home alone, but 95% of the time move int Tite in a band setting when the volume comes up.
Hope this helps-
This is a very urgent and Focused tone, yet not piercing or shrill.

 

[Herbvis]

Put a square of duct tape in fron of each of your speaker cones. Works great for me

 

[KH Guitar Freak]

It is suppose to be more on the cutting edge lead type of tone. You could try fluid drive, makes it smoother, looser, and bigger...

 

[Riff Blister]

It is suppose to be more on the cutting edge lead type of tone.

KH Guitar Freak has stated what I also have concluded. It is what it is by design. Look up the definition of Stiletto sometime.

That being said I too have struggled with the spike in lead tones.
This is what has helped me out (I think).
I bumped my channel masters up to around 1:00. To my ears that seamed to beef it up.
My EQ setting are very similar to Laskman's. Primarily the presence and treble.
Last but not least the addition of an overdrive with it's tone setting all the way off. That curbed that spike as much as I think I can.
I'm most likely the only one on the planet using a Bixonic Expandora overdrive pedal for that.

Good luck!

 

[flieger67]

I don't know if this will help much, but try the tube rectifier setting if you aren't already doing so and use the "spongy" power setting. To my ears, those both help to soften the sound a bit though the feel of the amp also changes, depending on what you're used to.

 

[rocksalt7]

Everyone above has the right idea...especially using the spongy / tube rectifier setting. That will probably be a BIG help. After that, you're pretty much down to changing some tubes. The Stilettos are very responsive to tube changing, so this may be the "secret" for you. TungSols really worked well for me, but other folks have used JJ's, WingedC's, etc. to get what they need. Experimenting is part of the fun I guess. There's lots of info here on the board too....Good Luck! :mrgreen:

 

[thorny]

Thanks everyone for the replies to my post. I have done some serious tone searching with this amp in the last week.
This is what I have come up with. I went back and read the manual again. The first thing I did was to switch the amp over to tube rectifier tracking which helped alot with the in your face single notes. Then I decided to try a different approach with this amp. I am in an 80's hairmetal tribute band, so I need a high gain Marshally tone. I decided to stop trying to use the dirty channel on this amp. I came up with a great clean setting on the fat clean voicing. Then I dug out my old Boss Metal Zone pedal just to try it on the clean channel. This pedal has an eq on it. I put it in the signal chain and was amazed first at how clean my amp could be and how Nasty it could get with this pedal. So I dialed the eq in on the pedal and basically set it up the way the Boss instructions tell you to for a metal tone. But I added a little more bottom end to it. Holy cow what a difference. Then I messed with the eq on the amp a little more, basically Output at 12 noon, Master around 10 oclock, presence@ 10, bass @ 2, mids straight up, treb at 1 oclock and gain at 1 oclock, once again this is on channel 1 fat clean, 100 watt, Bold, tube rectifier. Killer rhythm tone and lead tone. The in your face spike is practically gone and when I kicked off the Metal Zone and actually switched over to channel 2, I couldnt believe how much better the sound was on channel 1 with the Boss pedal. Way more bottom, way thicker, just a killer metal tone, which is what I want!! Kick off the Boss, beautiful clean tone! So now I'm digging it. I then put my g major in the loop. Turned the effects knob on the back of the amp on full and then turned up the input setting on the g major till I was hitting -3 db when I would hit a clean chord real hard. Found a preset called "Straight Slap Delay" which is number 21 on the presets by the way. I tweaked that setting a little bit. I set the delay at 400 ms. I switched the reverb to "Plate" . All I can say is that a week ago I was very frustrated and now I am stoked with my tone. If anyone out there is looking for a great heavy rock sound, this kills. I will add that some of the stuff my band does calls for a less gainy tone, ex. AC/DC, Aerosmith etc.. So I put my Fulltone OCD in the chain in front of the metal zone for those types of tunes. Now when I turn my amp on, I am in the zone!

 

[Daion_Power]

Put a square of duct tape in fron of each of your speaker cones. Works great for me

Hi

Not needed since the Stiletto already have a built in beam blocker.

/Stefan

 

[Daion_Power]

.

 

[Herbvis]

Put a square of duct tape in fron of each of your speaker cones. Works great for me

Hi

Not needed since the Stiletto already have a built in beam blocker.

/Stefan

I have a marshall 4x12. Is that the stiletto cabs that have a built in beam blocker? Thats pretty cool. How does a stiletto cab differ in tone?

 

[KH Guitar Freak]

No offense to other owners, especially those that can only own one amp at a time, but I feel that making the Stiletto quite a bit smoother kinda defeats the purpose of the amp in the first place... :?