Re: Buddy Guy's amp settings
You know how sometimes these types of threads digress to "his tone is in his fingers" etc? I'm all about using different gear for different sounds. I'm also never the guy to make the "tone in the fingers" comment in a thread. If anything I'm on the opposite end, realizing that a 5150 won't sound like a Bassman, and a Crate S.S. won't sound like a Recto. But in this particular case, I suggest not trying to get his tone from gear alone. He's one of my favorites of ALL TIME. ANY half-grit Fender style overdriven preamp will get you where you need to be, and the hands/guitar will take you the rest of the way.
He's played and recorded through so many different setups over the years, that I don't see his "tone" as one you'd try to replicate. I see it more as a "feel" that you'd want to channel into whatever decent tube pre you're working with. I've gotten his sound from Boogies, Hughes & Kettners, even a Crate Tube Preamp that I worked on. The clean channel in the old Crate TDP breaks up like a Fender, and it's great. Although somewhat dry and processed, the older solid state Roland "Blues Cubes" did a pretty smart job of getting his type of overdrive. Mainly if you have enough top end going into the preamp to generate a harsh square wave crackle on your pick attack, you're half way there. But if you don't have the dynamic attack on the strings, you can't get it with any gear. At the right times he's really snapping the pick off the strings to an almost pitch altering degree. That's also affecting the warble over the strat's pole pieces.
So if you have a decent Bassman, the settings are almost irrelevant. You can push the tone stack here and there, and you'll have various sounds Buddy has gotten over the years. There's no magic setting, even if you had one of his Bassmans. Especially because the tone stack on a Bassman is less responsive than an active shelving circuit on a more modern amp.