Big improvement adding cab high cuts. Also tried pad and impedance

[marmatkat]

Hi Everyone. I finally got serious about exploring setting cabinet high cuts in my four working presets (I'm starting simple), along with trying input pad on, and non-auto "Guitar-Z" impedance settings. With my '93 Hamer Special with Lollar P90s going into my Helix LT and then into a QSC K10, and the The Amp-Cabs I use (US Double Vib, US Deluxe Vib, WhoWatt 100, Matchstick Ch2) I found:

 

- Adding 3-3.5kHz high cuts to the default cabs made a big improvement in the sound of all amps, mainly resulting in less harsh ("ice pick") highs - much more natural sounding. I experimented with 9kHz on down (I've seen recommendations on this forum from 9.5 all the way down to 3). I adjusted by ear.

- Turning on the input pad didn't make the guitar sound much different to my ears, other than the expected ~6dB gain drop. I decided to leave it off.

- Using a non-Auto setting for input impedance definitely changed the guitar's tone and gain, with 90k ohm sounding nice to me - it cut the harsh highs. I played with different combinations of cab high cut and impedance and decided to leave the latter on auto. (Changing from auto felt like a big step so decided to defer messing with it until later :-)

 

I also tried replacing the input block's noise gate (those P90s!) with the noise gate block, which did add a tiny bit of gain (to my ears). I decided to keep the input block one.

 

I tried out these changes at a gig this weekend, and I was really pleased with the results. Thankfully, I did not experience the http://line6.com/support/topic/28659-terrible-squeal-feedback-through-frfr/ I encountered before.

 

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks -- matt

[ADBrown]

Guitar speakers/cabinets typically have a frequency range around 80Hz-5kHz. I usually start with my cuts in the ballpark of those numbers and adjust by ear as well.

[DunedinDragon]

Don't get too locked in on high cuts as they are really affected quite a bit by other cabinet parameters such as mic, distance, and early reflections.  Also if you choose to use dual cabinets there are often cases you may find you really don't need any cuts depending on the mics, distance, early reflections and how you mix the dual cabinets.  And then you have IRs which is a whole different animal.  Also bear in mind that often what you hear when close up to your monitors is quite a bit different than what you (and your audience hears) when positioned a bit further away.  I keep about 6 feet of distance from my speakers when dialing in patches.  I can't tell you the number of times before I started doing that when I got into the live situation my sound was very dull with no articulation or clarity.  That's why you don't see PA speakers positioned right in front of people. They're all pretty harsh until you give them some space.