dmcguitar said:
I have found that the Lead sound for many soloists like Eric and (i think) andy timmons.. is to have the bass and mids way up and the treble way down. it makes it very thick. of course each amp responds differently but in general thats how you achieve the "EJ" tone
i have to +1 this
i had trouble getting the tones i wanted from the stiletto deuce for so long. the other night i was messing around on the fluid drive channel and put the mids and bass up to 4:00, with presence and treble around 0, gain at about 10:00 - 11:00, volume just above 9:00. i boost with a ts9, gain down, volume up, eq neutral. i use a JS-1000 (satriani) guitar, (recto 212 cab w v30's) ,and once i dialed in these settings, the amp just came alive. i was nailing satch tones from the denver g3 (the one with vai and malmsteen, youtube it) dvd. also sounded like satch from anaheim 2005 live podcast (google)
i always kept everything around 10:00 with the treble and presence down lower, and adding more bass always made it too muddy. it wasn't until i tried turning the mids up all the way just as an experiment that i realized that all i was missing was bass, and turned that up too. these are the last settings i thought i'd ever use but it sounds great.
i leave it on tube rectifier i think, and go back and forth between bold and spongy. i like spongy better for lead tones. spongy on lead tones with the neck pickup makes it kinda melt together and gets liquidy and smooth. switching onto bold seems to add more attack in the upper mids, a more immediate attack, and sounds great for palm muted rhythm stuff. spongy sounds good on palm muted riffing too, it just has a bit more sag, not as much as recto but its noticeable. palm muted stuff on bold tightens up kind of like a mark iv.
i just wanted to throw this out there because i was about to sell this amp until i stumbled upon these settings. definitely a keeper now.