How To Set Your Amp For Pedals [Gain, EQ, Volume & FX Loops]

how do you set your amp up no how do you set your app up [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] [Applause] very nice very nice hey everyone welcome to that pedal show dan here mick here hello lovely yeah that had very little to do with what the video is about yeah it's fun but it's nice to make some noise indeed tell you what that skylar sounds nice yeah very nice very nice uh some quick housekeeping thank you very much for watching please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed uh also any confusion of the t-shirts that we're wearing in case you're watching this in march next year um get in early your holiday shirts will be available for christmas 2022 uh but hopefully if you're watching on the friday that this goes out there's still time to bag one for the holiday season 2021 indeed it's like a reindeer and a pedalboard no it doesn't work rainbow rainbot pedal deer i prefer pedal pedal yes pedal very good are you still playing with your pedals dear yeah so available from that pedal shop no that pedal show store.com photoshop that polish showstore.com um okay let's get into it yeah uh how to set your amp up in brackets for pedals yeah we get asked this a lot a lot yeah it's a fundamental thing right because if the app isn't set up properly if you're not getting the best from your amplifier this is sort of loot you know i like that yeah i liked it i've been looking for a spot for weeks to get that in so what we've got is we're going to do three amps and we're going to whip through them we've got a fender hot or deluxe the reason for having three apps is we want a clean amp so we're going to do a clean what you might refer to as a pedal platform we're going to do an amp on the verge of breakup if that's how you like to set your amps vox ac 15 and then we'll swap those out in a minute and we'll bring in the victory vc35 the copper and we'll run that pretty gamey so you've got a clean amp and on the air jam and again your amp depending on where you like to start and we'll go through some of the reasons why you might want to start in either of those places we've got a board really nice board actually lovely lovely board um with a selection of stuff so very deliberately chosen we have a high headroom capable preampy boosty type thing in the benson it will do gain as well but it does a high headroom boost quite nicely we've got a mid gained overdrive the nobles odr one much loved by many people and we've got a high gain uh overdrive distortion the filaments by keeley again just to get all those bases covered yes so dan yes mate we're going to start with the hot rod deluxe okay i'm gonna put all the pedal all the knobs at zero okay amp cam like it mobile light that's really cool ready yeah ah you've you've either bought your hot rod deluxe or you've arrived at a gig and there's a supplied back line and you've got hot or deluxe yes i'm going to hit record it will autofocus i think okay it just might take a minute so everything's where here's our hot rod deluxe sorry about the shaky cam but you know that's just the nature of things so as you can see we're all at zero all at zero um dan what are you looking for if you just turn up the volume without touching any of the eq at the moment yeah i'm assuming we're not going to get anything or very little [Music] so the eq is really interesting eq is a whole bunch of filters and as you turn up the you know the base the middle the treble it lets those frequencies go through from the preamp into the power amp section so you know it's really important to understand that uh the eq is part of the gain stage it's you know the more that we open up those filters the more signal we're letting go through to the power stage so with everything at zero um let's have a listen so let's have a look at the treble frequencies and just nudge those up a bit [Music] that's not bad so at the moment it's just a bit of trouble then everything else is on zero yeah right um okay i'll do the i'll do the base in the middle do the base in the middle so yeah i'll just i'll tell you what i'll do is i'll put everything on five and we'll go from there okay all right [Music] already feeling more alive yeah [Music] do [Music] so where are we uh we're currently everything on fire i'm just going to turn everything up to 10 so you can hear okay yep very good [Music] oh how is our let me just see how our preamps are doing [Music] what's interesting about that is that apart from any eq characteristic got more gain yeah and that is because because we're driving more signal through from the preamp to the power amp and it's too much i don't want that so what do you want so what i want you to do now let's go back to zero all right and i want you one at a time to turn up the each eq until you get to the point of most change okay all right i can't really hear that so you'll have to tell me [Music] so [Music] so a really important thing when you're dialing in the eq so it's really hard for me to do this for me to play and for me to be doing this you know trying to give him signals where i want them really important thing is a little bit goes a long way yeah so a really great way to start is looking for that point of most change where we're letting enough of that signal through that um we're getting those frequencies through from the eq section um but you know we're not not all of them we're not letting a whole you know the whole of that preamp signal through cool i need to just put the camera down because i can't can't do the knobs and hold the camera okay so i'll look at you all right and you tell me and we'll show you what they end up at okay all right [Music] dial in the bottom end until you you feel that change [Music] so [Music] so i can dig in there and it's you know the base is there but it's not destroying everything let's do the mids then all right [Music] so [Music] i don't want that vocal format type yeah what we know about the hot rod deluxe is it does have a pretty killer mid-range yeah which is really great in a bad environment but can sound a bit nasally on its own sure and don't forget that the eq controls are all interactive exactly so one will affect the other so it might be that you go through a process of tweaking them each individually and then adjusting to taste but what dan said about that point of most change is a fairly open place to set the amp if that's what you want yep if that's what you if that's what you're looking for and that's what we're looking for when we look at pedals so where the hot deluxe ended up was treble five base five middle three and a half okay so quite low eq settings can we get a shot of that um i don't need to i'll put it on the screen okay um it's really hard to hold the camera if i'm honest um and the volume is on two right there so obviously this is slightly loud enough change from volume as well yeah but yeah it is plenty loud enough you just play down we'll see where we're peeking on the db meter okay [Music] and [Music] pretty flat aggressive girl straight in your face clean pedal platform now obviously when you change guitars that all changes hopefully when you set your amp up doing that that point of most change on each of the eq pots bearing in mind we don't we're not talking about overdrive because it's just a clean channel it only has master volume in that clean channel this guitar should sound relatively balanced and like a 335 yeah that's the that's the hope yeah we'll see [Music] [Music] so switching between italian 335 i've got no worries with those eq sounds it's not over bassy yeah we haven't dialed that bass in so that it sounds really big and fat for the telly when you plug the 335 in it's going to sound woofy and difficult and probably feed back a lot so actually that's a pretty open place yeah it's nice really nice and i can tell you that if i plug the strat in this it would be the same result um although we might want to turn it up a bit for the stretch because it's a bit quieter so we're happy with that very happy there's one thing one additional thing i need to do is dial in some flipping reverb dan because okay um actually i'll tell you what we haven't done is the presence control at all right okay so it's a presence on zero it's currently on zero well okay yeah interesting this will change everything again [Music] do feet [Music] is that actually doing anything [Music] yeah that's interesting where do you like it yeah right in the middle actually [Music] so there we go that's how we've ended up volume on two treble on five bass on five middle on three and a half the master's not in because it doesn't work on the cling channel right reverb and presence that's our bass tone really sorry for the shaky cam so with the amp set like this right we have maximum headroom so as i'm digging in the amp isn't breaking up right it's just clean what's um there's a couple of ways you can go about it but a really good approach is to set this up um as a sound that you're happy with with no pedals so that you've got a clean sound to go to that will work yeah right why uh a really massive headroom sound is is cool is because this is the sound that you'll use when you want to hear the most detail from the pedals all right so for example um you know if you're into sort of atmospheric type sounds you want to do those sort of big pad type things using big reverbs and delays this sort of sound is a great way to get that you know to get that set up it's a good start because you'll hear all the reflections in the reverbs yeah and also the amp isn't over driving at all so nothing gets mushy or nasty edges on it which is what happens if you put delay in reverb before overdrive yeah yeah can do so if we put on a um one of these shimmer [Music] [Music] ah yeah obviously if you're going into an overdriving app which we will get to you wouldn't be hearing all that lovely lush yeah exactly yeah and that setting up the amp in the way that we've done enables that maximum amount of headroom the problem that most of us run into however is overdrive yeah so let's say you do i'd we'll do this as a sort of slight adjunct to the to the to the narrative here if you've turned up and you normally use a slightly crunchy amp and you're faced with something like a hot rod deluxe horse more likely a black panel fender type amp that doesn't have an overdrive channel and it's too loud and too clean for you one thing you can do is set your one of your overdrive pedals as an always-on so it's kind of acting like a preamp so let's say that straight in hot rod deluxe sound is just too spiky clean for you [Music] loads of dynamic and when you're digging it's like oh man there's like a punch in the face it is and it's just very direct so you you're you're only option really at this point and unless you can turn it up to get the amp which you may not be able to do because you're in a lower volume environment or you're at home or whatever i'm going to use the benson for this we're going to set the benson up um just with a little bit of gain on it yeah and we can use that to take some volume out of the amp as well [Music] i've been deliberately subtle yeah on the overdrive so that it's not too gainy it's just putting a bit edge it's also cutting a bit of bass i've had to put the bass up quite a bit there sure changes the mid-range character a bit but as a sort of a feel under the fingers for that core thing i've got a bit more sponge there got i've got a bit more feel the other thing is changing the dynamics yeah so that when you dig in what you're hearing is break up as opposed to ah yeah it's great so it doesn't just it doesn't just punch you punch you and that's a you know that's everything we're talking about here is about gain staging it's about where does it overdrive at what level and at what frequency yeah and just by setting the your cleanest overdrive pedal up as just an always-on might give you a bit more latitude and a bit more dynamic so if if you are faced with a clean amp and it's too clean and it's too spiky and you've got no way of getting it to really work a boost or an overdrive set in that way can give you a bit more absolutely that's a great way to do it yeah um so then i guess we we come on to heavier again if you if you indeed you use it i mean most of us use light to emit overdrive for some stuff but then heavy again too and you know if you're a heavy rock player you might turn up see hot or deluxe and go oh no oh no heavens but hopefully as we're going to prove it doesn't have to be doesn't have to be the way the thing you might want to watch some of our older um videos on how to use overdrive pedals yeah to really to put more detail on this but what we've got with a clean headroom amplifier is the dynamics loads and loads of dynamics so when we step on any one of those overdrive pedals and their volumes are up we're going to get a massive kick in volume because the amp is clean and it's got plenty of room to take all the extra volume for the pedal yeah which is what we'll find doesn't happen when we turn the ac 15 on very soon indeed so um dad if you you've got your low gain you've got your medium and you've got your high gain how would you approach that well into a high head remap the choice of pedal into a high hedge map is so much more uh i don't say important but you know if if i want to use that as a clean tone because i'm going to hear all the detail then it's and i want if i want a heavy uh sounding pedal it's it's not like having an uh amp game and then sticking a tube screamer into it and boosting it yeah all of the sound is going to be coming from the pedal yeah the pedal is really shaping the whole sound absolutely so it's you know the choice here is critical i really like the filaments we first heard this is the proper keeley when we were in germany and i was like yeah man it's killer so uh the great thing about the filaments is the tone shaping capabilities on it so if you're using a high headroom amplifier and you want um loads of gain in the pedal eq is super important yeah we're looking for more than just a distortion pedal with a tone control um you know certainly yeah internet was such clean headroom yeah um yeah so here we go let's give this a whirl then say telly clean [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] so as you can see we've got an absolutely colossal amount of eq shaping yeah on i just felt as we had it set we needed that extra presence high end so i turned on the uh bright switch surprisingly enough well got to be done isn't it here's here's some vintage humbuckers with the kiwi filaments [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes sorry that's the one i was eventually looking for um if you had a a more modern guitar you've got hot deluxe you've got filaments i think you've got pretty convincing heavy rocks on there totally where have we got the gain yeah 11 o'clock 11 o'clock so there's plenty more there if you want it yeah so again when we don't have the game cranked you know we're really careful about putting that game where it's still dynamic yeah but the the eq shaping and that in your heavy rock thing is absolutely key to making it work with a really high headroom app what i mean what i was looking for just twiddling it there was lots of definition in the high end yeah and pick attack not too much bass that it got mushy and not too much gain then it got mushy yeah they're all you know they're your choices that you you tweak to taste yeah but that works totally mid-range overdrive um we chosen the odr one deliberately because it just seems to work with everything it's got a really nice eq it's not a massive game changer in terms of fundamental different shape in the eq like something like a tube screamer would be and i guess you know again this is to taste what you'll have is an enormous amount of volume boost potential yeah on tap because the amp's got so much headroom so if we start down if you play i'll just start with low drive and we'll go from a sort of cleaner boostier sound to a heavier okay overdrive from the nobles [Music] [Applause] do [Music] good [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] baby [Music] hmm [Music] great nothing wrong with that no i mean easy quick almost the same method that we use with the amp just setting that tone pot to the point of most change and it works really well stacking wise the reason we put the overdrive pedals in this order highest gain first medium gain second lowest gain last in the way we have the pedal set is that then we've got a boost option in the benson if we want to we do we do the other interesting thing though if if uh the bench and the weight set at the moment we can actually stack those pedals in and using the benson like like a an under drive yeah right so you know if the amp is um loud to the point where it's really uncomfortable and we keep the banson on to bring everything under control then we can still have that in place and stick the higher game pedals into it so if you just play for me for a minute [Music] um [Music] [Applause] so [Music] hmm [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what you get then have mercy what what you get then if you you can use the benson as an always-on thing yeah and then take the benson off the solos yeah it's a great way to do it under drive it's a really yeah it's a nice thing to do in an amp that's got plenty of headroom yeah yeah continually stacking on top of that headroom just means volume volume volume unpleasant kicked out of the band yeah sure can do [Music] yeah okay look so what we've done there is we've gone clean amp let's get it balanced let's get it to its most open and sort of expressive if you like yeah so that whatever we give it it's just gonna reproduce without too much fuss we've proven you know two very different guitars yep both sit fine in it and actually that sounds like italian this sounds like a 335 it sure does nice open place the problem starts to happen when we then go okay we're not going to have a loud clean platform we're going to have an app that's got a bit of crunch in it and now things start to change indeed so let's move to the ac 15. indeed [Music] so even set like that it's already compressing yeah you know i'm already hitting that ceiling you know whereas with the um the hot one deluxe if i was digging in like that just take your head off so now what we've got is a master volume and a gain control right and i'll show you what happens [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so again with the massive apologies for the shaky cam we've got to find a better solution for this okay um what you heard there is the amp can be really overdriven or really quite clean and headroomy question is where do you want it dan yeah so we're talking about an on the edge amp setup here yeah so let's get the volume to a point where it feels nice [Music] so i'm feeling a little bit of love from the app there so let's get the preamp now to a point where just starting to feel a bit of crunch when i dig in [Music] so there it is right [Music] [Music] i think we'd call that on the edge wouldn't we on the edge so what i'm looking for is a sound that cleans up when i pick lighter but as i dig in it breaks up and what that gives me as opposed to the hot rod deluxe where we had it right if i it's clean all the time when i dig in it just gets louder um this gives me a dynamic where i can play a clean section but if i dig in it's not going to get that much louder it'll just get more overdriven right and limits and a lot of people you know us included love amp set like this because it gives you a really expressive control over how you play so yeah just going from clean to overdriven based on the way that you pick [Music] what i think we're also getting there is very much the character of what we would consider to be a classic vox sound there you go the the chime the the word is chime that's used and it's all about those treble frequencies yeah so there's two ways we can attenuate or boost those um actually you can only attenuate them uh in the ac30 there uh 15 the ac 15 there's a treble control and i'll just turn that down and up and then we'll get it into a place where dan likes it sure and then we'll use the master tone cut and as far as eq goes in the way that we did with the hot rod deluxe we start with the preampy eq stuff bass middle and treble and usually you work along the panel until you get to the master section and there there may be another tone control such as a presence control or a master tone cut and we'd always say go in that order sure so get your basic eq set and then set the last thing as a sort of to taste yeah totally let's get this treble where you like it okay oh wow [Music] so what i'm after i i still want the chime but when i dig in i don't want it to take people's heads off and how is that for you that's not bad it could even be just a tad warmer just a tad actually actually no i'm gonna do that with the tone cut okay so the tone cut is a master control which is the more you turn it clockwise uh the more it rolls off high frequency right okay so i'll demonstrate that we'll go from zero all the way up to woolie [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so that feels really nice right because i've got enough there's enough top end and presence and sizzle in there that it still sounds like you know your vox [Music] all those frequencies are accounted for i do think it's been a hard day's night so those frequencies are so important for that sound yeah right but it's so easy to overdo them yeah right so yeah getting that set at that point so i can dig in still sounds like a fox but it's not gonna rip your head off so we ended up pretty much where we were base at two o'clock right treble at eleven o'clock uh the tone cut at two o'clock right and the master at two o'clock and the gain at eleven o'clock right there we go pretty much yeah and funnily enough it always does seem to me that that's where the where they're set two o'clock or eleven o'clock anyway uh so let's see so we know that that's working great for the telly it sounds like a telly it sounds like a box what happens when we plug 335 in [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] sorry horrific tuning problem it sounds great i take some bass out yeah yeah but it still sounds great it still sounds like the 335 what is really interesting here because we've got the amp set up to be crunchy the whereas with the hot one deluxe we had uh forever headphone for endlessly forever honestly forever headroom right but we don't have that with the 330 with the ac 15. yeah so the amount of signal that we're pushing into the input of the amplifier via these signal generators is hugely important so i've just grabbed this because this will have a bit more output and you'll hear the difference when i was digging in with a telly just breaking up it was clean when i was a bit softer with it but with this [Music] so even when i'm trying to play softer it's still getting a lot of input what happens when you knock the master back a little bit [Music] it sounds great but i would still set it up differently with this guitar yeah so what you obviously it's gonna sound blinking too obvious to even say it but if you run your amp a bit crunchy the availability of clean possibility is greatly lessened yeah i don't think so we can't the way the amp is set currently we can't really get a clean sound out of it even when we've rolled that volume back with a guitar that's putting out this amount with the humbucker yeah however with the 335 with the you know the lower output finished our pickups and the telly we were fine right i can tell you that this guitar ryan will do a super clean job right probably hmm [Music] so it's so much more important to you know have the the inputs matched if this is the way that you're going to set the amp up right but it sounds fantastic right it does yeah there's a lot of latitude a lot of latitude and it gives you a really lovely dynamic expression when you're playing with an outline this so now we've got the amp set up let's have a think about the way we're going to approach yeah i would say at this point i wouldn't have it that gainey i would definitely knock it back a bit from there sure in order to get a bit more so let's let's see what happens yeah if you go back to the tele for a sec we haven't changed anything on the pedals from where they were let's see what that filaments is doing let's see if there's a hard rock sound available um where we are so kinda so just by adjusting eq we're not going to get there the most important thing with this is gain yeah um it's just it's too much there's too much it's just too much because it doesn't have the headroom of the hot rod deluxe because it's already over driving what's happening is you're getting essentially a very uh disproportionate change in the way that those frequencies are being boosted and where they're overdriving absolutely so what we've got is an amp caving in because we're trying to give it too much i mean you might think it's a really cool sound and it is a pretty cool sound but it's not that kind of tight focused hard rock sound that we had going in the absolutely why because the amp doesn't have enough headroom to reproduce it yeah so the filaments might not work in this situation but if we turn the gain right down and then you go back to tweaking the eq see if you can um he said turn the gain down [Music] so [Music] good [Music] just for a laugh here's what's coming out the hot deluxe at those settings just in case we needed a reminder when people tell you what pedals sound like yeah right they're very different okay so we know that higher gain is always going to be more difficult a higher gain pedal is always going to be more difficult into an amp that's overdriving already exactly so you just got to be very selective about pedal choice depending on the amps you're using depending on the guitars you're using you know it's part of the chain um but the filaments for me is just there's just too much going on there's too much just too much so what we what we're after is boosty type things yeah you know let's set the benson up with a bit of boost yeah and just see see how that goes okay [Music] so [Music] so [Music] it's just pushing the amp yeah this is lovely there's we're not really getting a massive lifting volume we are getting a lifting volume but not a massive lifting volume we've covered that in many overdrive shows in the past so we won't go over why that is the case other than to say if you're running your amp a little gainer like that then then a boosty type thing tends to be a bit better what is what is interesting now the amp is overdriving a bit yeah let's have a listen to our delays and reverbs yes um because what we should hear is a little dirtier sound from the delays and reverbs [Music] so [Music] so here's what's really interesting right i absolutely love that where it's just a bit dirty around where it's just so for me what happens is as opposed to sounding like an effect it integrates into the amplifier so if you're running your app like this you absolutely can run your delays and reverbs in the front yeah you've just got to be sensitive about the effect level yeah but far out man they sound fantastic yeah so the the what you would have noticed hopefully is that the delays and reverbs were a little more prominent in the vox than they were in the fender because we're limiting our dynamic range in the ac in the ac 15. so they're going to appear louder as opposed to the hot rod deluxe we've got loads of dynamics um and they'll be quieter so if that is too much for you if you know if you if you're used to one response and all of a sudden you plug your reverbs and delays and you're like well that's just way too much all you do is this [Music] [Music] so [Music] turn the effect level down and i don't know about you but i quite often find i'm running my effect level at less than nine o'clock on a lot of my wet pedals yeah for that exact reason you think wow i've paid all this money for the pedal i'm only getting eight o'clock out of it you know but as you heard when you turn it down it sits back in the mix fine yeah it doesn't give you that massive wash so that is a really good trick if you're running your amp gainey and you are using wet effects in the front levels down stops it from like stamping over everything you're taking everything away totally and modulation's interesting with an outstanding as well so you know we're basically if we go back to the deluxe for a second and we hear the the astra into the hot deluxe [Music] it's really beautiful but with that going into the ac 15. [Music] as opposed to we got hot rod deluxe with the astra and the odr one so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so it's exactly the same as the delays and reverse because we are essentially putting our modulation into overdrive we get all those you know the edges and stuff are you feel you feel the fuzzy around them which is why i love putting certain modulations before my gain stages yeah um but it's a yeah a fantastic way to do it yeah so the question comes then once you get into your wet effects at what point do you have to have an effects loop because as dan just said you know into a clean amp just run them straight in the front no need to use the effects loop really because they'll sound clean and lovely because the app's got loads of headroom and you know they're not getting overdriven there then comes this really sweet spot which certainly dan and i identify with which is any kind of amp from a slightly overdriving deluxe reverb through a vox ac type amp through even a plexi into yeah a small amount of crunch running especially analog uh effects into the front of that is a very very lovely harmonic place to be even though the over the delays are overdriving a bit and the reverbs might be overdriving a bit but if we if we're sensitive about that and we set the level at the right spot if that can be magic it can still work but where is that line yeah okay so we're going to we're going to cross the line we've we've done to you yeah we've set we've had the vox set relatively crunchy we're now going to bring in a much higher gain amplifier and have a look at why you might want to run your delays and reverbs in the loop and certainly the effect of our overdrive pedals on an amp that's set crunchier three two one emma back in the room as you see the hot rod deluxe has gone away we now have a victory visa c35 the copper that's the ec3 i can't say it either the copper um so we'll just whip through the process of setting up our amp as we did with the ac 15 and with the hot rod deluxe indeed just to get it at a place that we think is nice and open and then we'll make it gainy after that okay okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] it's nice happy yeah yeah love to change anything um [Music] a little bit more bottom end if it's got it it's got loads [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's so interesting that even just adding that tiny little bit of bottom end has changed everything too much gain uh no just if you pull the bottom end back out again [Music] yeah so it's that thing again as soon as it as soon as it's there and prominent anything more than that is is too much yeah it does interestingly when we go again here it does have a base cut switch that's what this does right [Music] so [Music] just going to knock that reverb back a little bit so what i want to do now dan is set it up so that as gainey as you can stand it okay all right yep [Music] [Music] i would find that hard to work with then that's where we'll start because there are plenty of you out there who like to run your amps this gamey right okay yeah yep good go for it [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] okay how are you finding that eq wise uh it's fine it's it's so much dirtier than i'm used to playing with yeah um so that's a learning curve but it's fine it's fine again limiting that bottom end is key yeah so if the base cut is on right with and lower base wow the base is is quite a way down and that's funny because and that's for the telecaster that has no bottom end yeah well it's a 212 cab remember as well yeah of course of course okay we've got a little bit more love happening uh from the cab itself sure so let's just see where we are with uh the 335 given that that's the humbucker guitar we've been using [Music] me [Music] so set like that this guitar is now unusable with that amp because there's just too much gain yeah and i can't get any clean up right nothing's happening there's no dynamic because the humbuckers are just killing it right interesting um i didn't know it was that gainy man the gain's only on two o'clock man wow it's this gainey carry on [Music] so [Music] [Music] that's too much for me baby yeah because there's no way there's nowhere to go there's nowhere to go there's nobody now anyway so let's leave it there i'm going to turn the master up a bit just to get a bit more um just a bit more headroom potential sure so now for those of you like to run your amps gainey now we now we stumble into a couple of problems number one no matter what we step on here it's gonna be an ungodly mess at that level yeah let's do it very difficult very difficult [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] tell you what's quite nice about that is even with the base a long way up on the bench and it's cutting quite a lot the bottom end yeah so it's helping the amp stay a bit more totally so all we're doing is shaping yeah so let's have a listen to the earlier one [Music] so [Music] we started off with the gain in the filaments on zero yeah it's just it just it's a it's cool sound sludgy nasty what is some james price that's large metal slurge mill uh that's terrible sorry uh but in terms of definition and dynamic and all those things that certainly me and dan want when we play the guitar is it's completely gone you know forget a high gain overdrive pedal into a high gain amp yeah if you want to retain picking dynamics and all those things that we that we enjoy totally the benson was actually pretty decent with the gain at zero shaped it quite nicely and actually there were some good tones in the enobles as well yep so in terms of shaping you know you you back to the top of the show how to set your your amp up for using the pedals if you're hit if you're arriving at a really gaining amp there's not much you can do with pedals other than shape yeah totally yeah and obviously we could turn the game down in the victory but we it's up deliberately to illustrate the point the next point is about what happens when you shove nice delays and reverbs into that into the front end yeah yeah okay um so we'll do it both ways yeah right we're gonna hear it in the front yeah and then we'll talk about the effects loop okay okay right let's do it like this okay bit of jiggery pokery just plugging everything in um dan has arranged it so that uh the skylar and the valente can be both or either in front of the amp or in the effects loop we've done the signal routing g3 for that um if you don't have such a thing obviously it's just plugging the cables in in the respective order exactly we'll show you on the screen though the where they are in the signal path so you can see should we start with the valente start with the valente so we've got the uh oh i've turned the game down down that's no good it wasn't two o'clock i believe and therefore it should stay at two o'clock indeed um well let's hear it then in the loop and in the uh in the front okay so uh this is the valente in the front [Music] [Applause] [Music] the issue is that even when it's low it's distorted yeah the delay is distorting it's distorted and the tonal goes away whereas in the loop as you heard it's much cleaner sounding it's much nicer lo and behold if you run your amp scany that's why so many people like to use their effects loop because it places the wet effects after the overdrive which is happening in the preamp section of the amp let's just try that with reverb a sec down okay with the skylar there so in the front of the air [Music] in the loop [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] i just you can't play for nothing there's no there's no definition there's just a wall of noise the important caveat is for the styles of music that dan and i tend to play which is fairly straight down the road rock and roll pop blues and and rock of course really out there prague well when you get into you're really out there prague and certainly dare we say shoegaze yeah and the genre that you know live around it that's exactly what you do becomes really appropriate you put your reverbs and delays before your overdrive so it's about you know the appropriateness of of the music you're playing um or at least the appropriate the appropriate sound for the music you're playing we've kind of stumbled through it today because there's a lot to talk about there is and it's a it is an overview each one of these setups could be a whole hour show on its own yeah um but you know setting up that core tone from the amplifier whether or not you're using fully forever headroom yeah a bit of crunch or you're getting all basically all the gain from the app that's it isn't it so let's let's summarize and say if you're playing an unfamiliar ramp start with that relationship of eq and gain just get the headroom that you like so it's either overdriving a little bit or not at all or a lot get the eq to that point of most change on the on the dials there so the amp is responding in the way you you like it to the guitar yeah and for us you saw us do it at the hot rod at the top of the show it's where the amp is open and the most able to make any of these guitars sound like themselves without being too much the minute you add gain the minute you add overdrive in the app everything changes everything changes you're changing the dynamics the limiting yeah and it really then does become a much more complex infrastructure yeah of your pedals your guitar your playing technique and everything else which of course can lead to a very magic place indeed and it's a place that we love right but having it set up with a little bit of crunch in there it's you know it becomes dynamic and expressive and you know experimenting with that sort of stuff is fantastic yeah interesting i don't know where that leaves you hopefully it gives you a few tools it just might lead you to ask a better question for yourself and for your own rig and not be you know completely spun out when you hit an app that you haven't played before you'll know at least somewhere where to begin indeed indeed um to get it to get it to where you like it yeah that's fantastic all right thank you so much for watching really appreciate it again please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the uk and europe is anderson's music music of guildford i can't get any words out today dan a bit tired anderson's music of guildford in surrey uh and our friends in australia would be paddle empire brisbane queensland uh also uh please click in the description and check out the links below yeah check the links if you click on them and use them dan and i uh earn a bit of money out of that and it helps us fund this show yes a massive thank you to our patrons on patreon as well thank you really appreciate your support um that pedal show store pedestal dot com go there for your seasonal and non-seasonal t-shirts yes and other accoutrements yeah i've stolen your word i like that i like that very good cheers everyone have a fantastic week we will see you on monday for viewers comments and questions we will indeed have a great day see you soon bye [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 101,560

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Id: wdUGAmYqiDc

Length: 78min 55sec (4735 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021