[high gain] Profiles have way too much bass

  • Hi all,


    I have a little problem I can't figure out for a long time and it feels like it's high time to try and ask the community 8o


    Most of the professional profiles I buy (I'd say 70-80%, SinMix, Reampzone, STL, Tonecrate sounds the best but still not great) sound way too bassy with my guitars. I used to play a lot through my studio monitors (Yamaha HS80M) and recently mostly plug my headphones straight into Kemper. I very rarely find a profile which sounds decent with my guitars without tones of tweaking (I mainly play Ibanez Prestige, Emg 707 and 81/85), I always have to tweak them a lot and it's mainly about bass. I've recently started playing with the output EQ and I've noticed that when I reduce the amount of bass the sound starts breathing (with original settings for profiles it usually sounds like suffocation :D I reduced the bass by 5dB which is a maximum value for the EQ but I feel that it needs to be reduced even more. I also add a studio EQ pre amp to send less bass but as you can see it needs a lot of bass reduction.


    I know that what sounds good is good but I'm wondering if this is normal, why would so many profiles have the same problem? I have a feeling that it's something on my side that I do wrong but can't figure out what it might be, so I'd appreciate your help.


    I performed Init Globals reset and have a feeling that it helped a bit but the sound is still bass-heavy.


    I'd appreciate your help / suggestions.


    Thanks,

    W

  • It depends on your pickups and guitar. That’s the reality and a lot of profiles are based on Mesa cabs which have a good low end thump. They work great with my Fishman pickups but those have less bass than emgs. Just my two cents.

  • I have the same studio monitors and also mainly use high-gain profiles from the producers you mentioned.

    One of the standard things I do to most profiles is add a low-pass filter b/w 70-110Hz depending on the cab, a notch filter to taste to mute some of the droning bass frequencies that make the profiles a bit muddier than I would like, and set the amps compressor around 5.

    If its a very bassy profile, I'll play around with the high/low shift cab settings.

    I need to setup the same profile specifically to each of my guitars to get the ideal tone out of each, so I am assuming I will need to do that for each set of studio monitors and also volume levels; I noticed that bassy profiles don't sound as bassy once I raise the volume.

  • Thank you all, I appreciate your answers.


    It might be something to do with my guitars / pickups. I compared a guitar with EMG 707 with the one with 81s and the 707 sounds much more bassy (even though it's the same tuning). Unfortunately, I can't lower the 707 more (it's currently around 3mm from the bottom of the strings).


    DonPetersen thanks, yes, it does change the sound a lot, that's how I actually deal with the whole issue. I use Studio EQ in the pre section, Low Freq around 80Hz and Low Gain -12dB

  • You can lower the pickups farther to get the sound you need, as long as the screws are long enough. If they aren't long enough, you can get longer screws.

    Thanks, I didn't know that. I can't move the screw more than it is now, I'll try to get longer screws and will see if it helps. Thanks again :thumbup:

  • Rather than mucking with the output EQ, have you tried putting a studio EQ in the post amp effects chain? Recorded guitars are almost universally high and low passed, and I apply a high and low pass to most profiles. Try applying a high pass around 80-100Hz and a low pass ~7-10kHz.

  • Beside the (useful) suggestions mentioned above:


    I think it has a lot to do with the settings of the profiled amp during the profiling process...


    My personal taste is not very "mainstream friendly" because I tend to turn the Bass knobs

    on my amps way (!) down. (not above 9 or 10 o'clock...)


    But a lot of the people out there seem to follow the (unwritten) "all knobs at 12 o'clock" rule...

    maybe they think this way: If all knobs are in the middle, I have a "balanced sound" with no frequency too low and no frequency too much...


    But in my humble opinion (almost) no amp sounds good this way.


    When it comes to commercial profiles, the providers try to fit the taste of the mainstream community because they want

    to make money.... nothing wrong with that, as far as your taste is not extraordinary !


    Especially high gain sounds tend to overemphasize the low frequency if the bass knob is not turned down...


    Sometimes I think that most guitar players try to undercut the frequency of the bass player because they are dreaming of being so "mighty"...

    (but maybe that's just layman psychology...) ;)

  • When playing live, most metal players I know like a bass heavy output. Sometimes it seems like the actual bass player is redundant ;)


    I also think that many of us (even non metal players) like to feel that chest thump from a good palm muted high gain wack on the strings :).


    I would go with the HP and LP myself. You can easily turn these on and off for differing output environments (head phones, monitor speakers, FRFR PA speaker, full PA, etc).

  • Most profiles I have bought just have way too much bottom end for recording. I am shelving most stuff below 105-120 and still having to take a little bass out of the profiles. Makes you wonder what people are monitoring on when profiling. No mix engineer would use any of these without cutting everything below 120hz. A lot have too much energy in the 290-310hz area too.
    it’s something I am always careful of when profiling my own amps.

  • Most profiles I have bought just have way too much bottom end for recording. I am shelving most stuff below 105-120 and still having to take a little bass out of the profiles. Makes you wonder what people are monitoring on when profiling. No mix engineer would use any of these without cutting everything below 120hz. A lot have too much energy in the 290-310hz area too.
    it’s something I am always careful of when profiling my own amps.

    I think it is part of the "sounds good by itself" thing. In a recording, I think the eq is set way different in a mix than what would "sound good" plunking without context. Live is another complete issue. depending on the frequency response of what is being played through, this may also have way more bass in the KPA output.

  • Don't worry, you're not alone. I have the exact same problem. I use a swamp ash superstrat with bkp blackhawks so my guitar is bright and tight, yet a lot if not most profiles have way too much bass. Like others have suggested, i put a studio eq in the X slot and high pass anywhere from 90hz to 120hz. I do wish profiles had less bass from the get go. Another problem I find is that most profiles also have way too much gain. I'm cutting gain and bass on every profile i come across.

  • Don't worry, you're not alone. I have the exact same problem. I use a swamp ash superstrat with bkp blackhawks so my guitar is bright and tight, yet a lot if not most profiles have way too much bass. Like others have suggested, i put a studio eq in the X slot and high pass anywhere from 90hz to 120hz. I do wish profiles had less bass from the get go. Another problem I find is that most profiles also have way too much gain. I'm cutting gain and bass on every profile i come across.

    if you find that all gainy Profiles are distorting too much, you can turn down Distortion Sense, instead of editing every single one of them.


    also depending on your monitoring setup and acoustics, the low end region you mention is a pretty common area of frequency build-up due to room nodes.

    and/or rear-ported monitors must have a certain distance from the wall behind and should not be places in/near corners - both instances will result in an increased low end perception.

  • Agree turn down the dist sense. With many high gain profiles I need to turn down dist sense all the way. In recording situation I use multiband compression to get rid of too much bass when chugging on the low E and of course hp-filter and lp-filter if it's needed. I don't find that all or nearly all high gain profiles have way too much bass. If you want profiles that have less bass buy Tills Chimera that offers three different per profile from more bass, less and even less bass on that pack.

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