What's the next big thing for the amp world?

[El Dunco]

How about a three band EQ before the gain stage (like the early Mesas) to make it as tight or loose as I want as well as a normal tone stack? Or have the lows gently roll off as you increase the gain so it’s not anemic set semi-clean?

[Chistopher]

AI would be a useful tool for setting up musical tones, but to some people it could also be a crutch. To me I say, anything that stops me from fiddling with knobs and parameters for any longer than I have to is a big plus

[donaldr]

How about a three band EQ before the gain stage (like the early Mesas) to make it as tight or loose as I want as well as a normal tone stack? Or have the lows gently roll off as you increase the gain so it’s not anemic set semi-clean?

Two things I'm doing with my Rocktron Voodu Valve:

1. I always make sure I address the lows and the mids before gain stage, then I play with the 4-band parametric eq. Working way better than just playing with the tone stack. I'm doing the same things with my guitar modelers. Pre-eq all the way for me.
2. I have a patch where the expression pedal is controlling many parameters at once. It starts with full gain, expression at toe. When the expression is going to heel for cleaner sound, the gain and the mids are going down, the volume and the lows and the reverb are going up. Very powerful patch.

[Chistopher]

Or have the lows gently roll off as you increase the gain so it’s not anemic set semi-clean?

Most modern distortion pedals handle this in some way or another, all the way back to the DS-1. I would not be suprised if this isn't something you could easily tweak yourself on most amps

[zionstrat]

AI would be a useful tool for setting up musical tones, but to some people it could also be a crutch. To me I say, anything that stops me from fiddling with knobs and parameters for any longer than I have to is a big plus

Yeah I agree 100%, we do need to dial in our sound but it's all a trade off...

In a really small venue, it's reasonable to walk out and hear yourself in the mix...

But it's easy to get caught up in stage sound in larger venues and end up with sloppy spillover that garbles the sound for the audience. Algorithmic mixing can fix this and you would get similar results if all the sound producing gear had similar intelligence.

Unfortunately, it really isn't possible to go to the next stage... One of the reasons front of house engineers get the big bucks. when a pro puts the mix together they build what is called a mixed pyramid.. getting the bottom and in rhythm section in place before adding everything else on top.

Most important, they assign spaces for individual instruments... So they may slash the top end of electric guitar in favor of cymbols and they may roll off the bottom end of guitar if it is conflicting with the upper end of bass.

If you're ever in a pro event during sound check, ask them to solo the guitar channel in the headphones... Depending on the genre and facility, you might hear a very thin tone, as described above, but the sound is perfect in the mix

[El Dunco]

Two things I'm doing with my Rocktron Voodu Valve:

1. I always make sure I address the lows and the mids before gain stage, then I play with the 4-band parametric eq. Working way better than just playing with the tone stack. I'm doing the same things with my guitar modelers. Pre-eq all the way for me.
2. I have a patch where the expression pedal is controlling many parameters at once. It starts with full gain, expression at toe. When the expression is going to heel for cleaner sound, the gain and the mids are going down, the volume and the lows and the reverb are going up. Very powerful patch.

I knew I wasn’t alone in understanding how important pre-EQ is for the voicing of a drive sound.

Most modern distortion pedals handle this in some way or another, all the way back to the DS-1. I would not be suprised if this isn't something you could easily tweak yourself on most amps

That makes a lot of sense.

[80's_Thrash_Metal]

Give me a 120w JVM that fits on a pedal board, and a 4x12 speaker cabinet that only weighs 40lbs... And still sounds like I want it to.

[El Dunco]

Give me a 120w JVM that fits on a pedal board, and a 4x12 speaker cabinet that only weighs 40lbs... And still sounds like I want it to.

Getting a sound profile of your JVM into a PowerStage is probably the closest you can get but I’m not positive it will be 1:1 and whatever your presence and resonance settings were at the time of profile will be baked in. I’ve heard profiles start to go a little bit of course when you start changing the EQ.

[donaldr]

Have a look at Baroni amps. Doug Aldrich was using one of them when he toured in Europe: https://www.foxgeardistribution.com/...ich-signature/