Distortion Sense at -10 dB

    Hello!


    Some questions.
    I noticed that when I set the Input Sense Control to -10dB (Gibson with Vintage 57 PUs) I have a clean Signal, rarely hitting the orange LED. Fine.


    With the Distortion Sense Control on 0, it seems like a lot Mid-gain sounds are distorted way to much.
    What's the reason?
    How to find out the ACTUAL Distortion Intensity that was used when a Profile was captured?
    The Profiles are like snapshots, I guess the authencity of a sound is lost, if the gain setting doesn't match with the output of certain PUs.
    With the Humbuckers in my Les Paul, I have to decrease the Distortion Sense to -8 or -10 to get a Distortion Intensity that is adequate to the number of LEDs that light up on the Gain knob.


    If a profile has gain on 10 o'clock I expect the sound to be mid-gain. Crunchy. And not High-Gain.
    How to know the "true" gain that represents the actual profile??


    Anyone else having the Dist Sense on -10??


    Thanks in advance!

    Ahoi, mate!


    I totally agree with you on the point about "snapshot accuracy".
    A profile can of course vary in distortion, when being driven by different guitars/playing techniques.
    One and the same profile could make ONE guy go "wtf! this ain't crunch anymore, it's already high gain",
    while it make the other guy go "wtf! THIS is supposed to be a high gain profile? Sounds way too clean."
    It all depends on how the profiles were made, to bring out the best for the PROFILING person.
    With all the variety in tunings, string gauges, picking techiques, PUs and their adjustments, who can
    expect all profiles to "do their job" perfectly for everyone?


    To answer your question...
    YES, there are peeps who have the DIST Sens lowered.
    I have mine at -12 currently. Which results more out of my personal
    taste, than trying to make the profiles "work more accurate" (based
    on their description and default gain setting).


    So relax, mate. If it sounds good to you, how can it be wrong?

    I don't think that is correct. If I recall, CKemper said the CS is subtracted off of the distortion gain. If I have my math right, subtracting a negative CS is a boost. Another way to think of this is that the CS knob only effects the clean tone, so if you have a hot pickup, and lower the CS, it will lower only the clean tone to a modest level, but the hot pickup will still be overly hot for the distorted tone. So OP, I would guess lowering the DS by the same amount will get you close. I actually like leaving my DS at zero though because it is more realistic that a hot input should cause more distortion, and my Strat with it's lowly single coils should not distort as much. But then again, even my hottest passive hummbucker are not all that hot.

    It doesn't matter how the profile was taken if you don't use the same guitar. If your PUs are much hotter than the "profiler"'s ones, you'll distort more even with DS set to 0. With a CS like the OP set (wich suggests hot PUs) i find quite natural that he has to lower DS in order to not get the dirty rigs "cry" too much.


    :)