Why You Need an EQ Pedal

EQ is not exactly fun it's not flashy and if it goes to a party it's probably standing in the corner being ignored but little does everyone know that one day EQ will be the most important part of any good Guitar Rig as it is today that was a metaphor and on today's episode I'm gonna explain it by showing you how I like to use EQ I got some new stuff in the mail I'm really excited to show you it is from massive effects pedals the first one is the Dallas Devils play which is a really nice Rangemaster type circuit and if you know me by now you know I love Rangemaster but I'm gonna play the Gio AF it is the golden order of The Alchemist fuzz but I have a speculation I think it actually stands for greatest of all fuzz you be the judge it's an octave fuzz it's really killer and I think I'm in love you know and I like these graphics this is a little horrifying but that's okay because I like papers you [Music] before we get started I want to lay out a few things the first point is that you won't see me shredding or trying to accomplish any great guitar feats today I'm just gonna hit any cue pedal strum some chords maybe play a riff here and there and the point of this entire episode is for you to hear the dynamic differences that EQ can make in your rig I'm playing a clean amp I'm gonna stick with the same guitar and I'm gonna use a boss ge7 why well because it's simple you can visualize it and it's a fantastic EQ I have a lot of other eq's here I'll show you some of them later and just because I'm using this doesn't mean I don't love some of the features on other ones also if you want to argue about the best EQ and which one sounds better you might need another hobby but this the point of an EQ pedal is not that it should sound good but that it should do exactly what you tell the knobs to do an EQ is in all intents and purposes transparent until you move the sliders or the knobs with that said I think we just get started the first application for EQ that I want to show you is to use it as a simple clean boost set all the EQ flat and put the volume control wherever you want it I have this 40 watt tube amp so I'm gonna put it right in there and it's actually gonna break it up and push it into overdrive so even though it's a clean boost it might actually cause overdrive or distortion if your hand can't handle it in this case I really like it and I think it's great another awesome use of this task is if you have a single coil guitar and a humbucker guitar so you're playing your Les Paul you switch to a strat mid set and you lose some volume just have an EQ on your board leave it alone or slightly tweak it to taste and boost a strat kind of the same volume level but you get the strat sound the Les Paul volume and your sound guys really [Music] [Applause] [Music] the second way to use an EQ is to use it as a magical device before your favorite overdrive in this case I haven't set up with a big mid boost going on and a little bit of volume gain and I'm using the Westwood by Earthquaker this is a phenomenal Drive and it's pretty transparent it doesn't have a mid hump it's kind of low medium gain as its power Ally and so when I slam this on in front of it it brings the mids up and turns it into a totally different overdrive so so really great use if you have a go-to drive that you love you want to keep your board simple just use an EQ and kind of turn your drive into anything you want to sell [Music] next up is to use an EQ pedal as kind of a secret weapon overdrive device for your aunt so in my case I have a cleanest 40 watt fender thing here and I want to find the points of EQ that are gonna break that amp up naturally every amp is different depending on the speaker the type of tubes and how loud you have it so I turned my amp on I engage the EQ and I start maxing out different levels of EQ until I find some really cool points where I hear overdrive happening because this is overwhelming your amp it's literally over driving it and these frequencies can be really powerful as you pull a band up and down you're pulling the volume of that band up and down so you might have your volume over here set at zero but you're still boosting frequencies which is really cool and it's very different than the flat EQ the flat EQ is here's more volume this is saying here's more frequency and every amp and every rig will respond differently to this and it's a fantastic trick to get a brandy [Music] there have actually been pedals made and sold for lots of money to make your guitar sound lo-fi like an AM radio or FM depending on the reception and they're really cool but the truth is they're all just EQ pedals kind of set to a standard frequency so take your EQ pedal and basically boost mids cut out the lows add weird high range every amp will be a little different you'll see my settings and you have the AM gold setting I like to call it it's lo-fi it's really weird and it's so crappy that it sounds good sometimes guitar needs to sound happy [Music] last but not least is to use your EQ pedal to give you two channels on your one channel amplifier I know what you're thinking because I read thoughts and your thoughts are this guy's crazy he's out of his mind that's physically impossible well you are correct but you're also incorrect because if you put your EQ pedal at the end of your board you can emulate another amp sound with my Fender amp I'm gonna pull out some lows I'm gonna boost certain mids and highs and create a fake Kasey 15 kind of sound all my pedals will hit it all my delays all my verbs and it's really really fantastic you can also have an always-on setting that sets in the effects loop of your amp or on your board you can transform an amp with an EQ it's that simple so why can't you turn that on and off and have two amps I think you can [Music] I'm gonna wrap this up and show you some of the EQs I have in front of you and why I think they're cool and maybe answer a few questions that are stirring in your brain first up is the old blood noise endeavours EQ buffer this is really really useful it's always on so it's really great for effects loops or at the end of your board there are basic use so you saw me use the GE seven there's also a GE seven B for base and it just has slightly different frequency ranges because a bass guitar has heavier strings and it's on the basin of frequency can you use a basic you for guitar absolutely can you use a guitar EQ for bass absolutely so yeah just know that you might still be confused but I really can't help you best that they're all usable there are some budget-friendly e cues like the newer six band I think it's twenty eight cents on Amazon so it's a real still deficient chips it's a seven band EQ this is really affordable really nice bérenger EQ 700 yeah we got weird polish stuff by XR we have Yamaha graphic EQ the tin series by avenues has a graphic EQ basically there are tons of EQ pedals here's an Ariane and they're all doing this an EQ is an Inc you to some extent but there are some feature heavy eq's that are really cool one of those is the EQ 20 now this is serious this is for the person and you're out there you're watching it's not me I'm not this player but I know who you are you're saying I need presets on my eq's and I need a big EQ I need a digital screen I need to know that I can tweak these EQ parameters to a place that is almost impossible this is the one for you this has some features and I really like it has four presets it's the free the tone PA Tingy guitar EQ I've actually had this on a board and might put it back on my new board that I'm gonna build because it's really cool to put this in front of a drive and have different presets to hit it in different ways and then there's a lot of vintage stuff some of my favorite are the old Guyot own this some these are from the same line so this is always on because why would you ever turn it off and then this is like the jumbo version so maybe this was like standard and deluxe but I don't really know it was the 70s it was in Japan it's a big world out there and there's this stuff I don't understand and then you have parametric EQ so what is parametric EQ it is usually just knobs so sometimes the knob will have its slider parametric focuses in on one of the bands like from the GE 7 like let's pick a band it focuses in but it lets you slide it left and right a little bit so it kind of gives you this ability to hone in on one of these slide it exactly where you want it and boost it so it's not as powerful in the sense that you don't have all the bands but it is a little more powerful because you get to focus in on one thing and really adjust the one frequency so they're pretty much both extremely useful I've just always been a bigger fan of this and then you know if you're in Russia in a pawn shop in a forest somewhere there's this kind of EQ I can't actually read it I think it's an EQ because it has sliders I think it's a parametric I don't know I don't know but I love Russian pedals and I can't read this one it makes me sad so the point is all e cues are good I'm gonna say that so I mean you guys are gonna argue with me but I believe it also I can just use preamps like the clover of mine and there's all kinds of other preamps out there they're just not as powerful in the EQ Department today's record time is brought to you by mandolin orange such Jubilee I first heard this band three or four years ago I bought up several of the albums and absolutely loved all of them so it has some pretty serious bluegrass roots and I really like that about it I'm a big fan of mandolins I'm a big fan of the harmonies that kind of go back with original bluegrass music and I love how they record the guitars on this his acoustic sound massive the songs are just really great as well so I want you to listen to this and I also want in the comments to tell me about some music that you like that goes back to these same kind of roots true Americana real bluegrass acoustic instruments good songs I want to hear about it and this is a must so listen to this and let me know what you think that's all for this episode I hope you enjoyed it there are a ton of uses for EQ and there's so many things that I didn't get to cover and one day I will things like putting it before and after your fuzz pedal to transform it putting it in the loops of reverbs and delays that allow and on and on there's so many great uses you need to get out there and explore EQ in your own way and it's really important to get a grasp on EQ and the format of it in a pedal because as you're moving the sliders up you're teaching yourself what you're wanting to hear in your guitar rig and what you don't want to hear so many times we have a hard time getting the language out trying to explain what we want to buy or what we need help with and an EQ pedal is the easiest way to find exactly what you do and do not like if you liked this episode on the other hand hit the like button subscribe to the channel and there's a bell icon click that and you'll get notifications of every episode we ever air until the end of the world it's awesome and you need to do that have a wonderful day

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 456,569

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, Guitar, Guitar Pedals, Electric Guitar, Guitar Effects, Guitar Player, Guitar Playing, Pedal Demo, Guitar Demo, New Pedals, New Guitar Pedals, Josh Scott, Guitar Gear, Music Gear, Guitar Tones, Pedal Tones, Good Guitar Tone, Best Guitar Tone, Best Electric Guitar Tone, Analog Guitar Tone, Guitar Sounds, JHS Guitar Pedals, JHS VLOG, JHS Videos, Eq Pedals, Pedal Tips, Guitar Tricks, Guitar Pedal Tips, Pedal Tricks

Id: foK6OfdEve0

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019