Treble or Presence?

[hbucker]

Do you have a rule of thumb as far as when you should adjust your treble and when you adjust presence on your amp?

I'm well aware of the concept of "whatever sounds good to you, that's what you should do." Fair enough. But is there a school of thought as to when one should be adjusted instead of the other?

Just curious.

 

[blackspy]

Just curious what kind of amp are you inquiring about ??

 

[tommyindelaware]

Do you have a rule of thumb as far as when you should adjust your treble and when you adjust presence on your amp?

I'm well aware of the concept of "whatever sounds good to you, that's what you should do." Fair enough. But is there a school of thought as to when one should be adjusted instead of the other?

Just curious.

presence...affects higher frequencies than treble. if your amp sounds harsh......that would probably call for lowering the treble.
presence affects the higher ....less obvious high freqs.......typically 10k or so.
treble is typically 3 to 5k or so......more in your face kinda treble......

 

[jeffrey]

I agree with Tommy. I tend to leave Treble around 5 or 6 on my Rivera and adjust the rest with Presence. It gives it a bit more bite and attack without being harsh and nasally.

 

[Bowks]

Presence.

Darth Vader never felt anyones treble

 

[blackspy]

Presence.

Darth Vader never felt anyones treble

^^^ LOL!

here's one...

 

[GHWelles]

To expand on Tommy's correct answer:

The presence control gradually removes the amount of high frequencies sent to the negative feedback in the amplifier loop, letting more highs come out in the signal to the speaker. Or you can design a presence control to dial out negative feedback altogether.

The treble control is part of the tone stack that affects the direct signal by rolling off the high frequencies.

Changing the negative feedback loop can affect the entire amp signal. For more on negative feedback: http://www.aikenamps.com/NegativeFeedback.htm

 

[skabassist13]

Holy crap. I barely got through the first paragraph and I was lost. That is some detailed stuff it is.

 

[GHWelles]

I changed the link to a less technical and more helpful one.

 

[blackspy]

I changed the link to a less technical and more helpful one.

That's better ... the one with the equations made me a little jumpy.

 

[FoxMustang]

Can we still have the more technical link?

<--- geek

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

Surely it varies from amp to amp, and from ear to ear too!

 

[GHWelles]

Can we still have the more technical link?

<--- geek

Sure, here it is:

http://www.aikenamps.com/GlobalNegativeFeedback.htm

 

[dan desy]

It also depends on the specidfic amp, how the tone stack is voice, and the effect of the presence control. For instance, on a Recto (such as my Road King) I'm very careful with the presence setting - it can be much too buzzy for me. The Treble control works more musically and has plenty of range. If I need to brighten up my sound, the treble would be my first choice. If I wasnt to affect the gain more, and stick out a little better in the mix overall, I'd use the negative feedbak control

 

[phatduckk]

Can we still have the more technical link?

<--- geek

your avatar looks like the cover of that french movie "Man Bites Dog"

 

[hbucker]

Just curious what kind of amp are you inquiring about ??

I'm inquiring about amps in general as there are 3 different amps in our band right now. They are B-52, PV Classic 100, Fender '59 Bassman Reis.

We're not having problems with the amps. We're just having to employ some strategery with regards to e.q. settings in order to get the amps to cut through the mix. It's an interesting situation that room acoustics play a big roll in. We're having to approach it much like you'd approach a recording situation. Each instrument has to have it's place otherwise everyone is cancelled out and it's just a big blob of noise.

It's not a big deal. These controls may not fix our problem, but the problem did spawn my question.

 

[blackspy]

Ah... age old problem. I've experienced similar issues.

You're on the right track I think, with figuring out where in the sound spectrum everyone needs to be. I was in a dual guitarist band before and found that we had to both lower our volume and gain settings, and trade off a little tonally. Me keeping a more low end sound, and the other guitarist cutting some gain and bass, and adding a little more mid/high end sounds. The gain reduction, and tone changes helped us the most.

 

[FoxMustang]

your avatar looks like the cover of that french movie "Man Bites Dog"

Never heard of it - but now I'll have to check it out That's actually me in the pic, brandishing my Smith & Wesson 500.

 

[hbucker]

Ah... age old problem. I've experienced similar issues.

You're on the right track I think, with figuring out where in the sound spectrum everyone needs to be. I was in a dual guitarist band before and found that we had to both lower our volume and gain settings, and trade off a little tonally. Me keeping a more low end sound, and the other guitarist cutting some gain and bass, and adding a little more mid/high end sounds. The gain reduction, and tone changes helped us the most.

I hear ya. That's the kind of thing we're working with.

The Bassman is clean and cuts through the best. The Classic 100 is pretty straight forward Marshall type tone so I'm pretty sure we'll get that dialed in. The B-52 is real scooped sounding unless you go out of your way to dial it out. Maybe that will be our low, the PV will be high and Bassman will remain the same.

Thanks for you input.

 

[SteveB]

The Peavey JSX head has "presence" and "resonance" dials which control the damping of the speakers.. at higher and lower frequencies, respectively.