Dial it in

I get countless questions via email and in the forum on this site as well about amp settings and how do I dial in the V.H. brown sound or a good this or that. On this page I'm going to share with you the process I go through when I'm trying to dial in a sound. Now I'm in no way claiming I'm the god of all sound dialing. But, I get asked to do it enough in person and from this site that I figure I must be doing something right. lol

The process on this page works for me, it may not work for you but just the same every time I give advice via email to someone it seems to help so, hopefully it will help you too. Or it may confuse you in which case I apologize in advance if that happens. Its really a very logical process though so I can't image it could be that confusing.

This process works for any sound you are trying to dial in and for any amp you might be using. I sometimes end up using an amp that's there at what ever studio I may be working at and sometimes the last guy who used that amp has the EQ set as though he was a deaf man. I say that jokingly of course but a lot of players (including myself at one point) don't know how knobs like bass and Treble relate to each other.

I have tried to keep the process general. I say that because sometimes people take what I say too literally. This is the general process so please apply it to your own amp and setup based on your specific needs. I too would adapt a bit if I were faced with an amp that had some weird knob I've never heard of. My Crate GFX that I love so much which as of late has retired my Marshall JCM 800 to my hall closet has a knob on it called Shape. The first time I saw that knob I was like, what the heck is this? After some tinkering for a minute or two I figured out what it did and which EQ knob it played off of. Turns out it plays off of the Bass EQ more than any other. Point is if your amp has a weird knob it may not appear in my general flow chart here but the weird knobs usually tie in with one of the standard EQ knobs anyway.

Process step	Step description
Step 1: Listen to the sound you want	I know this sounds silly but you really need to open your ears and listen to it. Let's say since this is jfrocks.com its V.H.'s sound you want. Well he has many variations on his sound but all have similar root properties. So to start with pick one. The easiest one is one from the early days. Women and Children or V.H. 1. You get the idea. But listen to it. Get it printed in your brain. When I say listen to it I mean don't just listen to the song. You've heard the song before probably. Listen to the guitar and remember something small like one chord hit for example.

Step 2: Set the volume on your amp	Gain and sound in general is affected by volume. The higher your amp is the more you may need to turn up the gain or the lower it is the more you may need to reduce it etc etc. Its best when trying to dial in a sound to find a moderate volume level. Something down the middle. The rule I like to use is to set the volume to the level I will be playing at 80% of the time minimum. And once you set the volume to this level. Don't touch it while you are dialing in the rest of the stuff. Leave the volume where it is. So be happy with where it is for the moment.

Step 3: Set the Gain a.k.a. overdrive	This step ties in with step 1 a little. While you are listening to the sound you are trying to dial in. There are things you should be listening for and we'll cover those as we go along. One of those things is the level of what I call crunch that the sound has. You need to not worry about the EQ and all that for now and get the amp to produce a certain level of crunch. For those of you that use a pedal for this fine, dial in the proper crunch level on your pedal. It can always be edited later. But for now we need a good close baseline to work with. If you use the amps built in gain, what you set it to may vary. On my amp all I need is it on 2.5 or 3 to do the V.H. stuff. Maybe on your amp you need it on 8 or 10. Point is it doesn't matter, what does matter is you need to find that crunch level to move forward from here. Some amps have several knobs for this or Master Volume is tied in with all of this etc. However many knobs you have at this point it is a good idea to get the General crunch level nailed it can always be tweaked a little later in the final stage but try to get it close.

Step 4: Turn off any Reverb	This step may sound odd to some of you but before we move onto the EQ settings you need to kill the reverb. Even if the song or sound you are dialing in has a ton of reverb on it turn yours off at this point. This is because when dialing in the EQ reverb will mess with your ear and throw it off. As a side note when figuring out songs from a CD on your own its a good idea to do it with no reverb as well. Anyway, just a tip but I strongly suggest dialing in the EQ with no reverb. You can turn it back on later when you've nailed the tone. But for now its just going to get in your way so kill it.

Step 5: Cue up the CD	Whether the sound you want is on Blizzard of Oz or 1984 cue up the CD. Find a song on the CD that has a guitar intro by itself if possible. For 1984 I like to use the first 3 chord hits in panama. For V.H 1 I like to use You really got me or the intro riff to feel your love tonight. Again these are just examples of what I mean but you're going to use this to find the EQ settings. Its like learning a riff but in this case we are learning a sound. We've already used the CD to find our gain setting. Now just cue up what I talked about above. Lets say its the first 3 chord hits in Panama. Well, let V.H play them. Then stop the CD and you play them. If yours sound like his we're done here. lol. If they don't see step 6. Again Panama is just an example. Dial in what you want.

Step 6: Treble EQ	Treble EQ is about the least important of your knobs. I'm sure I'll catch flak for that in some forum somewhere because some dude takes me too literally. I'm going to say it anyway because its true. I don't mean to say its set to zero here you have to use your head a little bit. You need it, but its something you get out of the way fast. Generally you want to start by putting it somewhere logical like on 8. Don't put it on 10 that might be too high. 8 will do and you can raise it later. I personally always start with the treble on 8.

Step 7: Mid EQ if you have one	The mid EQ knob is the most misunderstood knob on the amplifier. I've actually been in music stores and the guy behind the counter has told some dude to just turn the mid all the way up that's what its designed for. I stood there gasping for air while he said this. Whether you scoop your mids or not you still need to understand the affect the mid knob has on your sound. If your sound is fairly thin and high range like a Randy Rhoads sound for example its a good idea to crank the mid up a bit. If the sound you want is fat and warm like V.H.'s I don't suggest turning the mid past 3. Too much mid range will suck the warmth right out of your sound. So be careful. This is why step 1 is important. Listen to the sound, is it rich and warm or is it kind of thin or is it like a chain saw. Chain saw is easy. Just crank the mids. The grunge guys did that all through the 90's they didn't dial anything in they just turned everything all the way up. LOL So the people that tell you to crank everything are probably throw backs to the Nirvana era.

Step 8: Bass EQ.	The bass EQ knob is super important. Its tied with the mids in importance in my book. On my CD ROMs or on my site when I change sounds from one V.H CD's tone to another. The primary knob I'm moving is the bass EQ, and the gain to some extent. This step ties in with step 1. You have to listen to the sound you are trying to dial in and get a good idea of the level of bass in the guitar sound. However the catch is you really can only do this off a section of song where the bass and drums are not going. You need to just hear the guitar. To set bass EQ level find a riff or something that's in either E or A ideally. Lightly palm mute the open 6th or open 5th string depending on the note. When I say lightly palm mute I mean lightly. It should not be deadened just slightly muted. And what you want to do is lightly pick this open string that is slightly muted and see if your level of bass or thump as I like to call it matches the CDs. I will sometimes do this clean without gain. But on some amps this is a bad idea and I don't suggest it. Clean only works on Fender amps. lol. I don't know why but that's just what I've found. So unless you have a fender amp ignore the clean suggestion. What you want to do here is come close to the level of low end that the guitar on the CD is getting. In other words a song like Panama has very little low end on the guitar. So when I dial in Panama I just keep doing this little trick until the Bass EQ is low enough that it matches Ed's E. Which in most cases on my crate is pretty near zero. lol

Step 9: Odd ball knobs	Some amps have odd balls. I can't foresee all of them here that would be impossible. Some Marshall amps for example have a knob called Presence, pardon any spelling errors. lol This knob ties in with treble in the sense that its a high end thing and I've always found in most applications its best to keep it low or down the middle somewhere. Some guys put it on 10. It depends on the Marshall amp and the cab you are using really. I used to use a KMD amp that had one of these knobs and I kept it on 10 but the knob on my Marshall needed to be on 6, 10 was too much. You'll have to tinker with it but for dialing in purposes don't turn it up too high. Other odd balls are shape and contour. These are knobs that generally are a cross between compression and a mid knob. I can't predict what you will need to do with yours. All I can tell you is for my Crate the Shape knob is usually on 6. 7 or 7.5for some songs. (except for Sabbath where its on 9) Shape and contour affect the sound, the end result if you will. You don't need to fuss with them while you are dialing in the EQ and gain levels. Although generally they tie in with the Bass EQ. So if you raise the bass EQ these contour or shape knobs need to be lowered. Unless you are going for a Black Sabbath sound then turn these shape and contour knobs almost all the way up and adjust your bass EQ accordingly to get the proper low end. You see dialing in something is a process. Don't worry about the end result until you get the baseline setup properly. And the basic EQ settings are your baseline. The root gain level is your baseline. From here we go into step 10.

Step 10: Tinker Tinker Tinker	For some of you who were blessed with a good ear for sound this step is easy. You've gone through all the other steps and now its just a fine tune issue. This is the part that goes the quickest for me. If you don't have a good ear for sound this part can take awhile but its part of the process and must be done. Once the baselines are setup as described above. Now you need to for example play the CD and let V.H. do the first 3 chord hits in Panama. Then you do it. And if it doesn't match you need to tinker. Now remember what I said in the beginning. Leave your treble knob at baseline. Leave the mid where you set it as well. Tinker with the bass EQ a bit. Try dropping it or raising it. Until you're absolutely happy with the level of bass EQ. Then play the CD again, then you play the chords again and see if matches. If not then check the mid EQ and try lowering it or raising it, until you're happy with where its set. Then play the CD again etc etc etc. The problem most people run into is when they tinker is they tinker with 3 knobs at one time. When in reality you should only focus on one knob at a time. Because each knob does a job. The bass EQ handles one frequency range and the mid another and the treble another etc etc. You can't turn them all at once and just go nuts turning knobs. You need to listen and dial them in one at a time. But the baseline settings I gave above in steps 2 through 8 are essential to you having a good ground floor to work from. But this whole thing is a process and you can only do one thing at a time. So order of importance is key here. Its really scary, but advice that's often given at music stores and I've heard it a million times is to just turn everything all the way up and work backward. That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. And that very advice is 9 times out of 10 why my ask Jeff Email gets flooded on a weekly basis with "Help my amp sounds like crap" questions. You need to work from a logical standpoint. A good solid baseline setting. Oh and of course keep some post it notes handy to write down these settings once you find them. Because if you're like me you'll say to yourself, "Oh I'll remember that my treble is on 9 and my bass is on 4." No you won't!! Because you're probably going to have 5 or 6 different EQ settings for 5 or 6 different sounds. So please write them down as you nail them.

My process above isn't fool proof but it works for me. Its really a very logical approach. Even the tone deaf can do this method, it just might take them a little longer. This is what I do on every amp I'm faced with.

Remember not to take what I say too literally. Meaning when I say things like the treble is the least important knob. I'm not trying to offend any treble fanatics out there. What I mean by something like that is that the treble knob generally is set from 7 to 10 on just about every amp I've ever played on in the 30+ years I've been playing guitar. lol. So you don't need to spend too much time on it.

Also please try to get your head around the idea that your settings and my settings may and will differ. Just like your settings and Eddie V.H.'s setting may and will differ. Too many people with V.H. especially are worried about how Ed sets his amp. Even if you had his exact settings odds are it would do you no good what so ever. Just dial in your amp based on your findings. In the end you may find your amp finally has that brown sound you've been searching for for years. Don't worry about what the artist did to dial in their amp, you need to find what works for you to get the sound in your practice room or basement or where ever you play. My little process is a way to start from ground zero and dial in a good sound. Whatever sound you're looking for. You're making your own baseline and working backward from it eventually you'll hit it. It again is a step by step process using the knobs in their order of importance.

The key elements are that you need to understand that you have to listen to the sound you are trying to dial in then understand that you need to set a fundamental baseline to work from so when you get to the tinkering stage in step 10 you're not futzing around and you're actually getting things done quickly. A key thing to remember again with all of this is that each knob on your amp does something unique. So don't try to set all of them at once. Set them one at a time. And I strongly suggest doing that in the order of importance that I give here. I can only vouch for myself and my sound and tell you that it works for me.

Obviously I'm always available to help with your sound or whatever you need through the ask Jeff button on the site or in the forum on the site. But hopefully this page was a help to you. Its just a very logical approach. As I like to say, very straight forward kind of thing. I can't possibly cover every variable. The generals I've given here are common to all amps currently on the market.

A final note on external Equalizers. If you are one of those who has an EQ that you use as a rack unit or pedal. Disconnect it for this process. The BIGGEST mistake people with EQ's make is to not dial in their amp first before hooking up the EQ. The amp itself needs to have a base setting that is half way decent before you start moving your 7 or 10++ bands of EQ. Frankly, I don't use an EQ and never have. Too much to futz with. I've never in my 30 years playing guitar met an amp I couldn't dial in. Some take days and some take minutes to dial in. But, I've never found the need for 10 bands of EQ on a guitar amp. Sorry but that's silly. The best sounds, the ones we all love are very simple and pure and raw. Funny thing is in the circles I'm known in, one of the things I'm known for is having a great sound. More guys have thrown away their 10 band EQ's because of my suggestion to them when we meet than I can count off the top of my head.

I'm not saying to throw away your EQ. I am saying to dial in your amp with a decent setting first. EQ's play a roll but their roll generally is to tweak an existing sound. Without dialing in the amp first you don't have an existing anything.

Every amp has a good setting. There are varying levels of what the definition of good actually is. But, in the end every amp has a good setting. The trick is to find it. And if you can't find it with 2 or 3 bands of EQ you sure as h e double L aren't going to find it with 10 bands of EQ either. You will raise the stock value of Advil quite a bit though. That much I can promise you. lol At the very least if you are a Devout external EQ user fine. To each his own and I respect that. But please before you start futzing with all those levers you do really need to dial in the amp first. At least at the baseline.

And of course none of this does any good if you're guitar is a piece of crap so please remember, the guitar plays a huge role in the sound you get as well. But we've talked that to death in my forum and on the brown sound page on the site as well.