EQ Question

Hi all,

Can anyone give me advice.

How do you deal with EQ when there are similar controls on three - or more devices in a chain.

So, for example, My amp has EQ controls, my LR Baggs has EQ controls and my guitar has a Baggs pickup with EQ controls.

Do you use a combination of all three to tweak or do you run flat EQ on some devices and not on the others.

It kind of baffles me.

[joeguam]

The rule I was taught is that a bad signal only gets harder to resolve farther down the signal chain. I usually start with all EQ flat, adjust the first in the chain, then make adjustments as necessary at each step. I usually find that I only need it at the first EQ point in the chain.

[pieterh]

My way of doing it when using my Taylor (no eq on the Guild) is this:

I start with the controls on the guitar flat, so the bass and treble (and mid if there is one) are neither cut nor boosted. I do the same on the mixer - or in your case, the amp. Then I dial in the best sound I can on the preamp (in my case a Tonebone Pz-pre).

Once I am happy with the sound from the guitar through the floor preamp I then tweak the eq on the amp or mixer to adjust for where we are playing and for the mix of instruments, if any. I am usually wary of having two units working against each other - I don't really want to cut a frequency on my preamp and then boost it at the amp or desk!

Finally I use the guitar's on-board eq and volume for small changes between songs - I might bring up the bass a little on a fingerstyle piece, the reverse when strumming hard and when a bass player etc is part of the overall sound.

Others may chime in here and start at the guitar, but on the whole I find I can get better fine control from a separate preamp and use the guitar for individual song changes.

And remember - it's almost always better to cut over represented frequencies than to boost weak ones. Boosting frequencies eats into amp power and headroom whereas the reverse can help give you a little extra reserve volume if and when needed.

[pieterh]

Joe does have a point in that anything further down the chain shouldn't have to fix a bad sound from the beginning. The trick is in knowing what you are eq'ing for: in my case I am pretty happy with the Taylor's flat sound (I wasn't but the body sensor had stopped working for some reason, now it's ok), so I use the preamp to dial out the infamous neck pickup mid and cut under 80hz (unless you are deliberately thumping the guitar those frequencies aren't needed). I use the guitar's controls to make changes between songs, though on the whole I tend to leave it alone.

And of course, it's worthwhile remembering that just because you have 3 sets of eq in your signal chain doesn't mean you have to use them all!

Thank you for the replies - both make sense so I can experiment.

Because what has been baffling me, and this ties into my original question, are the actual frequences as well. I understand that acoustic guitars operate within certain frequences but from what I can tell from videos - but not fully understand - is that there seems to be certain 'trouble frequences' particularly mids that are best cut or boosted.

Does anyone have any good sources for me to understand this aspect.

[joeguam]

Washy, unfortunately there is no one correct suggestion to your question. The frequencies will change, mostly with each pickup type. For example, the K&K pure mini is inherently bass and low-mid heavy, so most people find their tone when cutting frequencies between 500-800Hz. Problem is, this frequency range can vary with each guitar, venue or signal chain.

The best thing to do is to spend 1-2 hours playing around with the EQ capabilities that you have to see what works and what doesn't. If you have any parametric EQ features, here's a great video posted by another forum member, Dakedi, of how to easily find the offending frequencies, then cut them out.

EDIT: This video was posted by AGF Member "Dakedi" in another thread, just reposting it here where I think it's applicable.

Thank you for that video - very informative.

[simondylan]

Originally Posted by joeguam

Washy, unfortunately there is no one correct suggestion to your question. The frequencies will change, mostly with each pickup type. For example, the K&K pure mini is inherently bass and low-mid heavy, so most people find their tone when cutting frequencies between 500-800Hz. Problem is, this frequency range can vary with each guitar, venue or signal chain.

The best thing to do is to spend 1-2 hours playing around with the EQ capabilities that you have to see what works and what doesn't. If you have any parametric EQ features, here's a great video posted by another forum member, Dakedi, of how to easily find the offending frequencies, then cut them out.

Great post and great video! I just want to agree with joeguam and say also from my experience that the frequency range does vary greatly between different types of pickups and different guitars. Learning to listen for what you need to cut or boost is the key, and what this video shows so well! I'd say though one thing to be mindful of is that it's easy, once you get into this, to over cut offending notes until your signal is so polite that is has no character or life anymore. Some of those overtones are actually needed so you just want to remove enough to be able to play with no feedback and sound good. Great job on the video though joeguam! I think you should re-share it all over the AGF.

[joeguam]

Originally Posted by simondylan

Great post and great video! I just want to agree with joeguam and say also from my experience that the frequency range does vary greatly between different types of pickups and different guitars. Learning to listen for what you need to cut or boost is the key, and what this video shows so well! I'd say though one thing to be mindful of is that it's easy, once you get into this, to over cut offending notes until your signal is so polite that is has no character or life anymore. Some of those overtones are actually needed so you just want to remove enough to be able to play with no feedback and sound good. Great job on the video though joeguam! I think you should re-share it all over the AGF.

Whoa...I definitely want to be sure to give credit where credit is due: that video is Dakedi's and not mine. I'll be editing my original post to make it more clear. I'm also grateful to Dakedi for making his video!

[janmulder]

*lol* while we're not taking credit ... I can't take credit for the technique ... I think it's probably as old as parametric eq's

Jan

[sdelsolray]

Originally Posted by washy21

Hi all,

Can anyone give me advice.

How do you deal with EQ when there are similar controls on three - or more devices in a chain.

So, for example, My amp has EQ controls, my LR Baggs has EQ controls and my guitar has a Baggs pickup with EQ controls.

Do you use a combination of all three to tweak or do you run flat EQ on some devices and not on the others.

It kind of baffles me.

Here's a post I made in another thread about this same question:

The first thing to do is to inventory all of the eq filters you have available in your signal chain by gathering the following data for each:

• Type of filter (e.g., shelf, bell, bandpass);
• Corner frequency (if shelf or bandpass) and center frequency (if bell);
------If a particular filter has a variable corner or center frequency, notate that too.
• Q range (for certain bell filters only) and slope (for all self or bandpass filters whether adjustable or not); and
• Gain range avaialabe (from -dB to +dB, e.g., -12 dB to +12 dB).

From this chart you can see whether you have duplicative eq filters, partially different eq filters or quite different eq filters. For example, say the "bass" filter on the guitar is a shelving filter with +-6dB slope per octave with a corner frequency of 100 Hz. If the "bass" filter on your mixer has the exact same specs, then you have a duplicative filter. On the other hand, say the "bass" filter on the guitar is a shelving filter with +-6dB slope per octave with a corner frequency of 100 Hz, but the "bass" filter on the mixer is also shelving filter with +-12dB slope per octave and/or has a corner frequency of 80 Hz. Those two filters are different.

Once inventoried, you can experiment with all of the filters (keeping gain staging structure in mind) to determine how all of these filters may help, hinder or be of little effect. Do the hard work to understand your system.

Using the guitar's eq filters first, or the mixer's eq filters first, is not necessarily a wise way to approach things.

[janmulder]

One important caveat is "the less the better"

You can very easily squeeze all the life out of your sound with too much EQ.