Trouble with high gain sounds

    Quote from DonPetersen

    also, 'fizzy' is one of those buzzwords that I have really grown to dislike, since it doesn't mean anything.

    Doesn't mean anything? Ok... I just don't know the technical term for the sharp spikes in the hard clipping wave form.

    Quote from DonPetersen

    we have so many great high gain players and producers that love and use the Profiler everyday that it's safe to say that there is nothing wrong with the Profiler when it comes to HiGain.

    I know. I've seen all the videos and heard far too many fantastic clips. So I know the potential of the KPA.
    I need to learn it better.


    I did just make some headway going back to guitar cab/speakers tonight. I re-profiled an amp and made some changes like, turning down the amps Pres. Treb. and Gain a bit more. The distortion texture/character came out much more clearer with less 'hash' and sharp edges, but still has plenty of bit.


    Baby steps.


    PS I like all of your profiles that came preloaded. Some of the best in there.

    Quote from wakjob

    No.


    I was only using traditional guitar cabs & speakers with my PowerHead ( cab sim 'off' ) up until this morning.


    This is the first time I tried using the Main Outputs to the ADAM monitors... with cab sims 'on'.
    Not so hot sounding. Workable, but not great.



    You are not used to listen to an amp through linear speakers.
    But that's how amps sound on recordings and in big live venues. Get used to it!

    VESMedic is spot on - you're going to get a cocked wah sound if you have modern-sounding pickups and the Definition parameter is at 10. This has nothing to do with POST EQ - it is all about PRE EQ; a wah pedal is just pre-eq'ing your signal with a band-pass filter that has a variable peak.


    Move Definition off of 10. I have two guitars, both with fairly bright Dimarzios (CrunchLab in one, D-Activator 8 in the other). A lot of profiles people praise highly I think sound terrible. Lead playing is especially bad - not only thin and harsh but the actual signal is rough/scratchy, not smooth/liquid.


    If you are losing too much pick attack, make up the ground with pre-EQ. Just throw a Studio EQ in Stomp C or D, give it only a +3-5 db boost in Mids 1 or 2, set Q lower (about 9 - 11 o'clock), then sweep the frequency until you find a sweet spot where you get more attack but it's not harsh/thin like a cocked wah. Once there, try tweaking a bit more on that parametric band (more/less gain/Q). And you can also get the other controls to help a little, such as using the other parametric band to reduce some bass and tighten the tone a bit, or reducing some lower mids to get more crunch.


    POST EQ can help mask PRE EQ issues or even make you think you've resolved them, but nope, you're just putting a new paint job on a lemon.

    I don't have a problem with terms like "fizzy", but people need to remember they're abstract and can mean different things to different people. To me, fizzy means two different things, but it always deals with the high-end of the frequency spectrum for guitar: around 3+ kHZ.


    For the Pod and similar digital devices, it often means a lack of high-frequency definition. The highs are there, but they are noise, not overtones of the fundamental(s). High gain distortion will produce noise, so it's possible for an analog amp to be a little fizzy, but there's a pretty big leap from analog to Pod in terms of what people call fizz. Particularly older generation Pods: many of the amp and cab models produce almost complete noise in that frequency range. It's no different than saying "ssshhhhhhhhhh".


    For more high-fidelity devices, fizz is often just abundant high freqencies. Most people don't put their ears directly on axis with the speakers in their dedicated guitar cab. But that's what close-mic'ing the cab will sound like, even if you are positioning the mic off center and off axis (it's a far cry from far-mic'ing). FRFR monitors generally have a much wider dispersion angle before high frequencies are attenuated. Hence going from real cabs to FRFR tends to sound "fizzy".