senanimach9

Keep the channel volume as low as possible, I guess..

I'm finding that bad very few people do read these. And even less contribute, a bit of a bummer :-(

I've recently been trying to dial in a solid high gain "tremonti" tone but can't quite reach it. What Im experimenting with now is Metal red with medium gain + a stomp effect to boost. I'd like to stick with the screamer because a green screamer boosting a metal amp at medium gain is a combination I'm very familiar with BUT it's just not boosting the gain enough without needing to turn up the screamers drive, which kind of defeats the purpose. If I crank the amps gain, I get the fizz. If I drop the highs, I get mud. Not only that but it's way to middy. I like mids, but this stomp effect seems to be all mids or none. Does anyone have any advice or experience in this type of tone setup?

I love the tube gain effect and the screamer and the fuzz! Honestly all of the stomp box distortion fx have something to offer but no matter how I adjust through gain/drive, master/channel volume, the gain fx always have a drop in volume when switched on, compared to the clean tone. I've tried setting them to Post instead of pre and that certainly boosts the volume quite a bit but it sounds awful, pre sounds great. I love being able to switch between clean and dirt as if using an actual pedal but that drop in volume... Anybody else run into this? Have any suggestions? It's pretty consistent throughout all the amp models but I generally use the clean red with tube gain effect, gain 100% drive somewhere between 50 and 85%.

I've taken people's advice on this and let the master volume do most of the work. I set all of my channels volumes to 50% or less and then adjust the master as needed. I'm my opinion there is a balance between that you need to find. If master and channel are both cranked, you'll get noise, if channel is cranked be and master isn't it sounds overpushed or forced and messy. If channel is too low and master is cranked, it sounds choked and weird. 40 -50% channel seems to be the best for me. It let's the amp channel breath and sound how it should without making master too touchy to adjust. Don't know if any of this helps or if I'm just repeating what others have said but there's been my two cents.

So I got a crazy idea just now.... Has anyone connected a multi fx unit like the Boss GTs or Digitech Rps into the front of their spider iv amp? My idea was to use the unit for "pre" effects and use the amp for "post" (honestly the only 'pre' I use on the IV is the tube screamer) it'd be cool to have some pre delays, mods and of course distortion layered with the post reverts, delays, mods and eq or comps. This would probably work best with cleaner amp models, and with more high gain models a comp or different effect could be used instead of the multi units distortion. Thoughts? Does the IV 150 handle pedals in the front very well?

I realized something the other day.. the outlet that my amp is plugged into will not power my laptops ac adapter, weird huh? I also read about power fluctuations in wall sockets causing spider ivs to reboot if they're connected to the shortboard. So I cleaned any and all electrical connection on the amp just for the heck of it, along with the wall socket and got a decent surge protector to go between the wall and the amp. So far no reboots and it's been a few days now. In my case I honestly think the issue was the faulty wiring in my old old house.

Ffbrgst, I'm personally curious how you don't immediately see the appeal of controlling two amps at once. Let me break it down.. 1. It'd be awesome. 2. It'd be really cool. 3. It would be super awesome.

Would a rj45 splitter do the trick? I'm guessing it might be more complicated than that lol

Any solution yet?

I'm experiencing the same problem with my 150. Sounds great but it keeps rebooting...I don't know what to do :(

I just noticed what you said about your power socket...mine is pretty loose and seems to want to come out of the amp if I were to tug on the cord at all, is that what yours does? I'm wondering if that's a Line 6 thing or if my amp is defective.

Does anyone use extended range guitars with their Spider IV? 7 Strings + ? Any favorite settings?

Yeah, I'm already starting to notice that. Thanks!

I just tried playing with my master up around 25% and adjusted my channel volume accordingly rather than channel at 100% and adjusting master which I always did with my Spider II back in the day. Did I just stumble on something? Is there a trick to the ratio between master and channel?