Request: Tweak Graphic EQ to match standard MXR & BOSS pedal EQ's

    This is an easy one. I'd like to replace the MXR 10-band EQ in my pedal chain with the Kemper's Graphic EQ, except the center frequencies & Q's don't match. Another common standard would be the BOSS 7-band EQ. Most guitar pedal EQ's adhere to the layout of one or the other, making the Kemper Graphic EQ a bit of an oddball that doesn't translate well.


    Since the MXR KFK 10-band is the one I use most, I put it on the bench and and measured it last night. A fair approximation would be: (Center Frequency / Filter type / Q)


    31.3Hz Lo Shelf 14.5Q
    60.0 Bell 2.0
    130 Bell 1.0
    250 Bell 1.0
    500 Bell 1.0
    1K Bell 1.2
    2K Bell 1.2
    4K Bell 1.4
    8K Bell 1.4
    16K Hi Shelf 12.0


    The boost/cut is silkscreened to read +/- 12dB, but the max cuts in practice actually vary a bit, from +/- 9.3dB all the way to 14.7dB on my unit.


    Seems like an easy thing to do - it would certainly simply things for people with already dialed-in setups!


    -djh

    Thanks for plotting out the Kemper's graphic EQ, I did the same prior to posting just to see how close it was to the pedals and the answer was... not very. (Full disclosure: I got Q of 2.5 for the 160-5K bands normalized to a max cut of -12.0dB like the MXR pedal.) I do appreciate your effort, though!


    There's really no substitute to having real sliders when dialing in tones for reamping, but it sure would be nice to be able to transfer one's pedal EQ settings into one's profiles for archival purposes once locked in. I've got a library of these settings in my production notes for many different guitars and pickups, so you can imagine the utility.


    The filter math for making a couple of graphic EQ variations that reflected the two most popular real-world EQ pedals would be fairly trivial, I think.I suspect not many people are using the Graphic EQ at the moment and if not, Kemper's rather arbitrary settings might be why.


    -djh

    Quote from dhodgson

    and if not, Kemper's rather arbitrary settings might be why.


    I could swear they've said at some point, much like the other effects, that their choices are based on what sounds good, or is more musical, etc, and in this case I completely agree.


    80Hz is the fundamental of a guitar's low E string.
    160Hz is where all the "boominess" comes from, notably when palm muting.
    320Hz often has a lot mud.
    640Hz is right in that area where you can scoop out some mids without instantly sounding like Pantera.
    etc, etc, etc.


    Whereas on the MXR...


    30Hz, 60Hz? Guitars produce nothing down here. The amp will, a little, but if you turn the amp's Bass knob down to a sensible level there's not much left.
    130Hz is... nothing significant. It's a C, centered below the lowest string of a standard guitar.
    250Hz, sure, some mud.
    500Hz is awkwardly placed, IMO, because it covers both the mids you typically want to cut and the "meat" that you really don't want to.
    and so on...
    4000Hz is a good one, since there's often a bunch of hiss right there, but the Q is too wide to do much without killing all of your presence.
    ...
    16000Hz is well beyond anything useful you're going to get out of a guitar speaker.


    I'm all for customization, but it's important to realize why the existing values were chosen.

    I won't deny it, but the history of guitar electronics is ad-hoc and bespoke. 12" woofers in guitar cabinets? Organ tone circuits as wah pedals? The Profiler is the very definition of a product that is trying to reproduce all this nuttery so if you're going to do it right, you may as well extend that to the pedals as well. We're talking probably a few hours worth of dev time that wouldn't affect the existing graphic EQ in anyway so you can still have it.


    Currently the only way to reproduce an MXR is by string a couple Studio EQ parametrics together... kinda And that takes up two slots.


    I do hope you understand why I brought the subject up. If you're not a guitar pedal EQ user, you have nothing invested in the concept and it won't matter... to you.

    Hi, was going through these threads as I have just bought an mxr 10 band to go at the front of my signal chain to boost the mids of my LP and wondered if you feel that this has advanced any since you posted or if EQ just remains the same


    TIA