Smoothing out guitar tones - school me in cabs, mics and EQ - please!

    Hi All,


    I'm finally making progress with my tones - getting creative and being able to play with feel again. For a long time I've been hiding behind a large amount of distortion, different tunings and playing without paying attention to myself. Now, I've lowered the gain, dropped the pu height and getting back to basics.


    One thing I LOVE is a smooth high gain tone. So, I've been using some different cabs (blackstar 2x12) with profiles. This sounds smoother, and gives a bit more 'amp in the room' feel. But I'd love some pre/post eq tips, other cab recommendations and good mics to look at for a smooth, off-axis tone. Warm, with just a bit of bite.


    Not owning any amps, I've been trying lots of combinations - so if any other users know of any golden tips - please share!


    Thanks,


    -Tonerider

    I'm a bit confused about the "not owning any cabs" comment :) Are you asking about what kind of profiles to look for, or are you looking for e.g. mics to mic up a real amp, or possibly profile one??


    Anyway, with regards to EQing to get a smoother sound. slap on the "studio EQ" after the stack section of the profiler, and then take one of the bands in there, boost it a bunch, and sweep through the whole frequency spectrum slowly, while playing. Make note of the frequencies at which the part of the tone you DON'T like is boosted. Then go back and pull one or two of the worst ones out. More often than not here, less is more. Sometimes -3db does it, and sometimes a bit more is needed.


    Don't pull EVERYTHING out - using this technique, it's easy to trick oneself into believeing there are a lot of bad frequencies, and often this is not the case. When boosting ANY frequency range a lot, it tends to sound bad. That's why I say you gotta sweep the WHOLE range before you do any cuts, and just choose the worst ones. And pull them down slightly. Also, the best way to do it is if you can kind of hear BEFOREHAND what you don't like - sort of "i don't like that whistling/fizz/fuzz/hum/whatever - and then go find the offending frequencies. I.e. having a goal in mind.


    Does this help?



    Also, EQ BEFORE the stack shapes your distortion. If you boost the bass a lot, then that is what drives the amp to distortion, etc. So a different way of doing it, with a different result. Sometimes you can get a great effect by boosting a frequency range before the amp, and then pulling it out again a bit after the amp - or vice versa.



    Often, especially after the stack, cutting rather than boosting works best. As in, don't boost what you like, pull out what you DON'T like instead. Just a rule of thumb, which sometimes has to be broken.

    Thanks Michael - that boosting to find the 'fizz' and then cutting sounds pretty useful!


    Sorry if post was not clear, I meant I don't own any amps to profile with my main guitar - so I'm asking about profiles to try / cabs to save and any mic combinations to look for. I do like a royer 121 mic, but they can be very dark - which does not always go to well with my LTC EC-1000 with alnico II pu's.

    One of the great things I found in the Kemper is the Clarity knob. I use a lot of gain but by adding Clarity I keep my notes from getting lost in a mess of distortion. Same tone, same rigs, the audience just gets to hear everything I'm doing.