Yes, You Really Need an EQ

all right so i have to admit something uh today we're talking about eq pedals and for a long time i avoided eq pedals when i was going to the guitar shop to buy a new pedal i was looking at overdrives or fuzzes or delays or reverbs stuff that was way more interesting and entertaining and fun than the humble eq pedal i know that they're not super sexy i know they're not fun and i know it's probably not near the top of your list of pedals to buy but the reality is i really think you should get an eq pedal i really do think that this is one of the few pieces of gear that any and every guitar player should have somewhere in their arsenal no matter what style of music or genre or whatever that you play and the cool thing about eqs is whether you go the super budget option like this or you go a little bit more high end like this they all kind of do the same thing so in today's video we're going to break down eq pedals i'm going to tell you why i think every guitar player should have an eq pedal i'm going to show you what they're useful for what you can do with them and tell you why i'm slightly ashamed to admit that i overlooked these for so long because they are truly secret weapons of a lot of our favorite players out there so that's coming up but before we get into today's video a quick plug for the tone course if you're interested in learning more about guitar tone and the ins and outs of great guitar tone and how gear works together to create great guitar tone i made a whole video course on that called the tone course you can find it linked in the description box down below and if you follow that link down there you'll get 30 off of the tone course and while you're down there you can find my other video courses like the national number system course and fretboard fundamentals as well as links to the gear that we're using in today's video i should point out that today's video is not sponsored by anyone any of the pedal companies that we're going to be featuring today but some of these pedals i did get for free so keep that in mind all right so let's talk about eqs and why they're so great so to talk about eq we need to talk a little bit about human hearing and the physics of sound so the human ear in a perfect world can hear from about 20 hertz or 20 complete cycles of a sound wave per second all the way up to about 20 000 hertz or 20 kilohertz now if you're like me in your early 30s and you've been around really loud guitar amps for the last 20 years you probably can't hear all the way up to 20k you probably top out around 16k or 17k so within that band from 20 to 20 is where the range of human hearing exists everything from the human voice to the music that you listen to all exist between 20 and 20. now when it comes to recording and playing music we need certain tools to shape the sound to do what we want with it and one of the most common and important of these tools is an eq or an equalizer an eq is just an audio filter that has the ability to target certain parts of that frequency spectrum and either boost them or cut them there's several different types of eqs but at the end of the day that's what an eq is it allows you to target a certain part of the sound the low end the mid-range the high end and either boost it or cut it now as guitar players this is really useful in fact in your normal everyday guitar rig without an eq pedal you actually interact with several eqs on a regular basis the first one being on your actual guitar if your guitar has a tone control that is a form of eq you are rolling off high end this is what we would call a low pass filter essentially as you turn the tone control down it's cutting high end from your signal and allowing the low end to pass through hence the name low pass if you have an amplifier that has controls on it like treble middle and bass that is a three band eq three band meaning it's controlling three parts of the frequency spectrum the low end the mid range and the high end and in fact many of the pedals that you probably already have like overdrives for example have eqs on them this overdrive the bb preamp for example has a control for treble and bass that's a two band eq and you can either boost or cut the high end or low end to shape the sound or wah pedals wahs are essentially just eq pedals that allow you to control the sweep and the q of the actual equalizer itself so eqs are super important you interact with them on a daily basis but why do you need an eq pedal we already have one on our guitars and our amps and our pedals why would you add another equalizer in your signal chain okay so one of the first and most common uses you're going to find for any eq pedal on your board is as a general tone shaping tool right here i've got the joyo band controller this is a 10 band graphic eq now when it comes to eq and guitar pedals a lot of times you're going to encounter graphic eqs like this this is a 10 band eq meaning there are 10 individual controls for a set frequency that you can either boost or cut attenuate with this little fader here on each individual band now if you're new to this a graphic eq is a great place to start because it kind of lets you work on rails so to speak you don't have to worry about the super surgical tone shaping tools of a parametric eq for example here you've got the frequencies fixed for each band and you can either choose to boost them or cut them depending on what you want to hear so for this first example i'm going to use my baritone revolta it's a great sounding guitar but depending on the type of tone you have pulled up it can be a little muddy in the low end because it's a baritone so what i'm going to do is use this graphic eq using this setting right here to dial out a lot of that mud and to give me a little bit more definition in the 4 to 8k range to let the guitar cut through the mix a little bit better [Music] [Applause] so now the tone shaping of a graphic eq doesn't just stop with the sound of your guitar going into your amp you can also shape other things like overdrives or fuzz pedals for example let's say there's some sort of fuzz face on your board that might be a little dark where it's not cutting through the mix putting an eq after the fuzz and boosting a little bit of upper mid range the four to eight kilohertz range is going to help that fuzz cut through the mix a little bit or let's say you have an overdrive pedal that's a little too bright or too shrill and you want to tame that top end or get a little smoother overdrive sound something more dumbbell-esque per se then you can cut some of the top end and some of the upper mid-range to get a little darker smoother sound [Music] [Applause] hmm but there's one other really common way to use a graphic eq or any eq pedal on your board and that's as an overdrive itself most eq pedals are going to have some kind of overall level or volume control which allows you to turn it into a boost and if you're using some kind of amp that breaks up on its own you can use it as a normal clean boost just by keeping the eq section completely flat here or you can color the boost by changing the eq settings to a specific taste a specific sound or maybe a certain guitar that you might be playing this is one of the best ways to use an eq on your board you're essentially gaining another boost and possibly even overdrive pedal depending on how hard you hit the front end of your amp [Music] [Applause] uh [Applause] [Music] another really great way to use an eq on your board is as a standalone effect specifically something along the lines of like a half cocked wah kind of sound a wah pedal in its most basic form is sort of an eq it's a mid-range boost that you can control as you sweep the blob back and forth it's sweeping that eq peak across the mid-range giving you that wah-wah sound now over the years a really good use of the huawei pedal has been to just click it on and leave it half cocked so to speak and you could do that with a graphic eq like this by dialing out a lot of the low end dialing out a lot of the high end and boosting certain mid-range frequencies to give you that half-cocked wall kind of sound this is a really unique way to kind of make solos or lead lines or even some rhythm parts really stand out in a mix so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so we've covered some of the basic uses of an eq and why i think you should have one on your board but which one should you buy what's the difference between a budget eq like this versus a more expensive eq like this in terms of sound i mean they're gonna sound essentially the same they're not adding much color to your tone other than what you're dialing in with the eq shaping itself the main difference between a budget eq and a more full-featured eq like this is going to be its feature set and its options this eq 2 from source audio here is a programmable eq so it'll do things like let you save presets it'll let you bank through presets it's also a stereo eq which is kind of a unique thing in the eq world most of the time when you run into graphic eqs like this joyo band controller here or the boss ge7 which is another incredibly popular option this is just going to be mono in and out now the advantage of having programmable eqs like this is you can have the one pedal covering multiple effects your first preset could be a way to shape your tone uh if you're switching guitars in a set let's say you're going from a les paul to a telecaster and you need a little bit of an output boost and a little low-end kick for your tele you could save that as a preset then you could bank to the next preset and have a solo or overdrive sound that's the eq pedal by itself then you could bang to the next preset and have your half cocked wah or telephone kind of effect but if you're just looking for an eq as a general tone shaper or utility pedal i would just go with a simple 10 band graphic eq like this or like the boss ge7 there's plenty of options out there now on top of that there's other pedals that do eq really well as well as a few other things like the jhs colorbox v2 this is a preamp style pedal and i've made a video on preamps and why i think you need one you can check that out here but this has a three-band eq with shifts so you get a little bit more control over which part of the individual frequency band you're controlling so the way this works is for instance your bass control here you can boost your bass frequency but then sweep to find the exact part of the bass frequency spectrum you want to boost or cut this also has a high pass filter built in which is incredibly useful high pass filtering is a type of eq where you're rolling off low end letting the high end pass through hence the name high pass the opposite of that is low pass where you're rolling off high end and letting low end pass through now this pedal is incredibly useful i had the v1 version of this for years that i bought when they first came out it's a mic preamp it's a fuzz pedal it's an eq it's an overdrive it's a tone shaper it's a really really useful utility pedal to have the bottom line is though eq is something that you really don't need to spend a ton of money on if you're just looking for a 10 band graphic eq to use for some general tone shaping tools i would actually recommend going with the budget version over spending more money on the higher end feature set unless you really want the programmable presets and the midi capability of something like this so there you go it's why i think every guitar player should have an eq pedal what'd you think about today's video let me know by leaving a like and a comment down below do you have an eq are you going to go out and get your first eq after checking out this video i'd love to know don't forget you can get 30 off of the tone course via the link in the description box down below and if you haven't done so already be sure to subscribe down there you can also follow me on instagram and tick tock at red shull anyways that's gonna do it for today's video my name is rhett shull thanks for watching and remember there is no plan b

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 78,975

Rating: 4.9400253 out of 5

Keywords: eq pedal, how to use an eq pedal, electric guitar, eq pedals for guitar, eq pedal in effects loop, eq pedal placement, eq pedal tricks, eq pedal shootout, eq pedal bass, eq pedal for acoustic guitar, eq pedal as treble booster, eq pedal settings for guitar, eq pedal for solo boost, eq pedal in signal chain, rhett shull, studio, studio tips, how to use eq

Id: tNjPvAoRtq0

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021