EQing order?
 

I have an EQ on my preamp, an EQ pedal, and finally, EQ on my amp,

When setting them all flat, is there a right order to start EQing my tone?
For example, for to cut/boost frequencies on my preamp, and then the pedal and amp?
Or the other way around?

I'm not sure whether there's a "right" way, but the way I've always done it is, guitar preamp first, then EQ pedal, then EQ on the mixer.

Your setup is slightly different since you're using an amp. Perhaps some amp users will chime in with their experience...

If I were using an amp, I think I'd actually pre-set my amp EQ first, then the guitar preamp EQ, and fine tune with the EQ pedal. In my eyes, an amp does more to shape tone than a PA mixer since the amp is specifically designed for a particular instrument/input source.

Im real interested in this. I usually set my guitar and preamp flat, then do all EQing on the mixer or amp. I dont know, I guess I feel the mixer and amp have better quality adjustments. Is there a best practice?

First, you can get rid of the EQ pedal unless it has a feature on it that the amp or onboard preamp does not have that you need/want (like notch or something). After that, it doesn't really matter. Start flat with everything and then pick the one with the greatest amount of flexibility and/or fine tuning to get your best tone and then make minor tweaks on other others to taste or to the room if you play in different venues.

I do have a similar 3 instances of EQ in that my gigging guitars have onboard preamp/EQ's, a mixer with EQ and then my little Bose S1 Pro(s) have a little EQ. For me with everything set flat I first get a great signal with the mixer since that has the greatest amount of flexibility like sweepable mids, gate, notch, compression, etc. The Bose only has bass and treble and there is a 'set position' that it just works well with everything which is about 35% on both. If I need to tweak for the room then I'll tweak one or both of those during setup and sound check.

Last is the onboard preamp. I fine tune there. The reason being is that I need different EQ's (and volumes) depending on the type of playing on each song, ie: strumming, fingerstyle, or a combination of both. Since I need to change that on the fly it's better to have that control at my fingertips so I leave that for the onboard EQ. For instance, strumming with a pick I dial back the volume and the highs. For fingerstyle (no nails for me) I have to dial up the volume and the trebles significantly. The bass stays around flat but gets tweaked up or down depending on the room, song, or need. I also have notch on the guitar as well but rarely need to use that. Mids generally get dialed back a fair amount and rarely get touched.

How to learn how to set up an EQ?

Shove each slider up one at a time until you find the one that makes it sound bad. Drop that slider a little.

Reverse the process, pulling each band out. the one that makes it sound bad, boost that band a little.

Oh both are the same slider? Yeah that happens.

Keep your tweaks small, and remember you’re after “a sound that inspires me,’ not a “perfect sound”

This all makes good sense aside from getting rid of the EQ pedal. At church, my one acoustic-electric guitar was sounding pretty flat to me (running through my electric pedal board which has a 10 band MXR EQ pedal on it). The EQ pedal had been off. I set all the meters to - 0 - and turned on the eq. Instantly, my guitar sounded WAY better. I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but I don't believe EQ pedals are necessarily a redundancy in the signal chain.

Kinda sounds like your EQ is true-bypass and what you actually are benefitting from is the buffer. Is your pickup passive? Perhaps a K&K?

A first step could be inventorying the specs of the many EQ controls you have in your signal chain. You may find that several of them are identical, or close to the same. Conversely, you should find that some are unique from those available. Also, some may be a single control, others may have two and some may have three controls for each band. Finally, determine what sort of curve each control makes when engaged, such as bel, shelving, etc.

Next, using your ear, determine which set of EQ controls (of the three groups) has the most noise when you turn up the individual controls.

Lastly, experiment with the controls, keeping in mind the info you gathered above.

Set everything flat and start with the unit that offers the best EQ.
If this is not sufficient add another EQ.

The only thing that makes sense is to use the low cut first or early in the chain if possible. That helps with distortion or crazy behavior of a compressor.

This is true. Just remember, you get what you pay for.

I agree with everything but the last sentence. This is only true with active electronics in the guitar. A passive piezo pickup into a passive DI will usually not sound great.

I have always found that the less eq'ing I have to do to get a good sound, the better... if I had to eq with the board/amp, the guitar AND an eq pedal, I'd seriously be looking into getting a different pickup system/amp...

You should not need to be messing with all the levels of a bunch of different pieces of gear to get good tone. A tweak here or there to accommodate different rooms, but nothing drastic.

My rig is a Goodall CJC with Dazzo 60's and a Angus 12 string with Dazzo 60's, into a Bose T1 Mixer into a Bose L1 Model II. After setting the input gain, I need no eq'ing on the Bose mixer and I have the guitar run into the overall "Flat" setting...

...and I'm extremely pleased with the sound!

^^^
This!
Get the best pickup you can find. At the end this is also cheaper than adding one piece of outboard gear after the other.
I never managed to have zero EQ with my acoustics but with my Anthems I just apply ‚normal‘ mixing EQ, low cut and maybe 2 bands within a +/- 3 DB range.