how to eq

[alex1fly]

I am looking to get over the beginner learning curve with my Roadster, and I was wondering if there are any threads or online resources on "learning how to EQ a Mesa amp." I would like to learn quickly and effectively how to bring out upper mids, lower mids, etc. I have spent some time with the amp but my ear is still learning exactly what it is that I am hearing.

I read a tip that said something like "mids are well defined until the treble is turned up to 11 oclock, at which point the mids begin to mush." Are there any other tips like this, threads with these tips, or other online resources about EQing a Mesa?

 

[Barry]

Get your gain and master the way you like it then with the treble, presence,mid & bass all turned to 0 . While plucking an open string start with your treble and get it where it sounds good to you, then the presence, then the mid and finally the bass . After that you can do some very fine tuning . remember you dont have to turn these controls very far to find new territory . Hope this helps, let me know .

 

[Platypus]

There are lots of schools of thought on this, none are wrong.. here's how I EQ a recto:

Start with your 3 main EQ knobs at noon.. get your volume/gain set to taste then start with the treble knob. The treble knob is the most important control of the 3 and it affects te other 2 such that the more you dial in with treble, the mid and bass will be less potent respectively. After you have treble where you like it, dial in the mid and finally the bass.

Your last control is presence.. dial it to taste.

Suggestions:

Don't get the mids below 10 o clock.. you won't cut through the mix
The treble control acts like a second gain knob the higher you set it
Don't put your gain above 2 o clock to start with

 

[shredtheater]

+1 on that.

Also, personally, i found it takes awhile to get a grasp of mesa amps and how to get the best out of em. I certainly dont have the same eq etc as i did the day i bought my amp so dont be afraid to experiment or worry if you havent got a great tone just yet...it will come im sure. Make sure you have all the right switches pressed in if you have that option spongy/bold and vacuum/silicon diodes etc

Finally i think the secret with boogies is to not do things to extreme. My recto for instance has alot of bass without me even turning the dial on it so i only have it on 1 or 2. Most of the good sounds are all coming in that 10 to 2 oclock region imo. however dont be afraid to dial out certain things, Petrucci for instance doesnt use any presence at all for some of his tones on certain amps.

Finally yeah, as Platypus said, make sure u get your treble right, it all revolves around that treble!

 

[alex1fly]

great tips everyone, thanks alot! I'll be trying them after I get back from a music festival this weekend

Also I was wondering about the relationship between the master and output levels... how high the master and output knobs need to be to overdrive the amp, the effects of overdriving one versus the other, and how you generally mix the two.

thanks again, i'm excited to start mastering this amp!

 

[Elpelotero]

for a good (loud) saturated tone, I like putting channel master at 9-10 oclock and the loop master at 12. Some people do the same thing backwards. The bottom line is you need a healthy volume to get power tube saturation. you can't get around physics!

 

[123thefirst]

Also don't get stuck on just one setting. Make sure you write down settings you start to like, then maybe change them radically while you have the previous sound in your head. There are often at least 2 different ways to get to an interesting similar tone. Try getting close to a tone you like from a different mode and appreciate the differences you hear after you're reasonable close in tone and then work to refine the new tone in the new mode.

For instance, as the manual says, there is plenty of overlap between the modes that are adjacent to each other in the gain spectrum: Clean & Tweed, Tweed & Raw, Raw & Vintage for instance.

You can also focus on getting a special characteristic like getting as much gain and fatness of the upper strings while getting the least amount of gain effect and fatness on the bottom strings.

And definitely try each sound with an extreme amount of mids. You can almost always make that work because mids contain the real information about the guitar signal. That gives you a new perspective on the tone you're working with.

 

[Goldwing]

I have my time trying to achieve a good EQ setting with my F50 and Fender strat. Seems that a lot of people using Mesa amps are using it with humbuckers, and I think that the EQ settings would be very different for a guitar with singlecoils.

In my case I'm setting the mids at 3 o'clock and the treble and bass below noon. In the ch 2 I set the bass more lower than in the ch 1 also.

cheers!

 

[alex1fly]

does anyone ever try putting the output level pretty high to get power tube saturation, say around 3 or 4 oclock, and then adjusting the master level to taste?

also, i was wondering if people had different eq/level-setting techniques for high output vs low output pickups... if certain settings worked well or not for either one.

i hope more people chime in and give their $.02 on anything addressed in this thread or ask more questions, i think we could make it into a good resource for all mesa users!