Table of Contents
Advertisement
Section 14
Preamps
Clean Preamp Summary
In summary, the best way to use the preamps are as a base
for a patch, providing the patch with the basic tone
characteristics, and then use other effects to colour and
shape as necessary. Always remember that the EQ is there
to alter the colouring. Examining the presets has shown us
how effective this can be.
The Master Volume control is in all cases a flat response
control that provides a good way of managing the output
level of the preamp without changing the colour of the
sound.
Looking at our three pre-amps we can see that the JC-120
gives a fairly well balanced sound, warmer than
nothing/[GT-3]AC.Guitar. The Clean Twin with its boosted
bass, and treble gives very a rich warm sound, and would be
very well suited as a basis for some pretty heavy patches
especially with a good dosing of distortion. Which preamp
you choose will greatly affect the underlying sound of the
patch. Thus, to help you choose there is a file in the 'set-
up....' folder called 'GTx-PRE-Compare.jpg'. This image
will give you a handy reference to choosing a clean preamp.
In
practice,
Bass
=
Treble/Presence/Bright = Jangle/Sparkle. For versatility I
love the Clean TWIN. It seems to have more dynamic
control and range than the other preamps. It's very much my
favourite. It's 'In your face', 'Bright' and yet full of warmth
and oompf. It definitely tops the lot of them in my book!
Using the Preamps for
Overdrive/Distortion
As we have said before, all three clean preamps will
produce overdriven sounds, but they are best suited to
clean.
Here
the
preamps
overdriven/distorted sounds. Some of them will give
acceptable clean results but they are probably best used in
their distortion modes, as it would be pretty hard for any of
these to beat Clean TWIN (IMHO).
Well, you may now be thinking that I'm going to give the
other preamps a good going over as well. I'm afraid that I
am likely to disappoint here. I feel that having looked at the
clean preamps you should, by now, have a good feel for
how the amps shape up with regard to altering settings. So
what I have done is broken them down into four groups, and
provided four images in the files area so you can contrast
the basic tone characteristics.
One thing you will find is that none of the preamps
presented here have a tonal variation as extreme as the
Clean TWIN. All these preamps are more modest in their
tone.
© Copyright 2000-2002 Barry S. Pearce et al.
Warmth,
Middle
=
are
best
suited
The groups are (along with a short summary of the tonal
characteristics):
[GTx-PRE-CrMaVx.jpg]
Crunch
MATCH Drive
Body,
VOXY Drive
to
[GTx-PRE-BlBG.jpg]
Blues
All these three are very similar. All have a
slight, and I mean slight mid scoop, in the
100Hz-2kHz region and a slight boost to
the treble end of things from 2kHz up. All
the bass frequencies are dropped off via a
high pass filter from about 70Hz down.
Of these three, this preamp has the most
bass boost in the 40-300Hz area, however
it has the smallest treble boost which only
covers 2-7kHz. Above 7kHz is a low pass
filter dropping off the frequencies down
to 22kHz. In practice this preamp gives
light->heavy overdriven type sounds.
This amp has the least bass of the group.
However it has an enhanced treble
compared with the Crunch, but nothing
like the VOXY. The Treble here extends
from 2-13kHz before dropping off via a
low pass filter. The treble boost is at a
similar level to the Crunch. The mids
have the lowest scoop but only by virtue
of the fact that the bass has been cut
slightly. Again this preamp can give quite
a heavy overdriven sound.
This is the amp with the most treble, with
the boost starting at 1.5kHz, boosting the
treble well above the others before
starting to drop off at 10kHz but not
dropping off sharply until about 15kHz.
Bass wise the VOXY is very much middle
of the road. In practice this preamp
appears to give a very muddy overdrive,
very similar to the MATCH Drive but
with more bass.
These two preamps show more character
than the (I think) wishy-washy first three.
Here the mid scoops are deeper, but the
bass and treble are balanced.
Basic well balanced preamp which has a
quite deep but broad mid scoop from
90Hz-2.5kHz.
The
bass is boosted
slightly in the 50-90Hz region, and the
treble above 2.5kHz is boosted, but drops
off quickly after 9kHz reaching the same
level as the GT-3/5 reference, and the BG
Lead by 10kHz, and continues to drop
these frequencies off more quickly than
72
Advertisement
Table of Contents
