F-50 with a singing strat

Hi all!
I picked up an F-50 used, I'm really digging it. I owned a Trem-o-Verb about 10 years ago, but I was doing covers 2-3 times a week, and the load-ins were no fun. I've spent my time since then on Tech21 stuff, which I still love and use, but I had to step up my game for my current gig, which is still covers, but requires a bit more oomph and "tone".

In any case, I've had alot of fun learning, listening, and tweaking the amp. My main guitar is an American Lonestar Strat, or a Fat Strat Texas Special (depending on who you ask...I don't personally know for sure), and that guitar is very "warm" sounding, and dialing in the tone for that axe was pretty straight forward. But I also have a regular American Standard Strat. And that guitar REALLY cuts though in the treble zone. It's mainly my back up guitar, and whenever I've had to use it with the Tech21 stuff, the difference is noticeable, but the fix was always a treble knob tweak away. If I switch guitars with the F-50....man, it really pierces the ears. VERY trebley.

Here's the problem. After dialing in the tone for the brighter strat, I'm really liking the singing quality of it, compared to the beefier Lonestar Strat. I just feel like I'm not quite there with what I want, tone wise. I'm at about 1:00 on the gain, 9:00 on the Treble, 1:00 on the Mid, and 9:00 on the Bass, and about 12:00 on the Master. From the manual, around here and other forums, the Treble knob is really where things happen. But for this guitar, I have to keep it low. The Mids sound good anywhere from 11:00 to 1:00, and the Bass can't go much past 9:00 without some farting creeping in. But in order to get any volume, the gain and/or Master have to be past 12:00, and I loose a bit of that clean "sing", and start to move into some break up.

I usually use pedals for different colors/levels of OD/Distortion, since I have to cover alot of different stuff, so my clean channel is really important to me, especially for the funk and disco(ugh) stuff. I'd like to give the bright strat a chance to move up to axe #1.

Anybody have any suggestions on how to pump up the beef and/or volume without having to move that Treble knob much more? Or should I try to dial the "sing" into the Lonestar Strat? Hmmm...

Thanks!

Eric.

Forgot to mention...It's the F-50 1x12 Combo.

You should try using the pull bright feature on the treble control in the clean channel when you use the darker sounding strat. Should get you close to where you want to be - this feature is great for switching between those two pickup configurations. The "pull bright" feature is one a lot of folks foget about. Worth a try, right?

plumptone said:

You should try using the pull bright feature on the treble control in the clean channel when you use the darker sounding strat. Should get you close to where you want to be - this feature is great for switching between those two pickup configurations. The "pull bright" feature is one a lot of folks foget about. Worth a try, right?

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think the F-50 has the pull bright feature....unless I'm missing something.

Mine does.

plumptone said:

Mine does.

Click to expand...

Lo and behold! It's there! I went to the studio today, and it's on the gain knob, but it's there. I looked for mention of it in the manual before I actually had a chance to physically take a look at the amp, and I didn't see any mention of the switch. Thanks plumptone! I worked with it today, both having it PULLED with the Fat Strat, and PUSHED with the bright Strat. While it's not the perfect solution for switching between guitars, it will DEFINITELY work if I have to switch guitars on the quick during a gig. Any other little secrets I need to know about?

Thanks again!

I was looking at mine this weekend and realized it's on the gain knob, not the treble knob. But I'm glad you found it. I realize it's not the perfect solution, but I know from experience that it's a good work-around in a live situation. It's funny how people often miss this little feature.

No other secrets I'm aware of. I've been tweaking mine a lot lately, and have come to really appreciate how the mid control can impact the clean channel. I run the gain at about 1:30, set my treble at just above noon, and run the mids pretty high - about 2:30. This definitely stiffens the sound up, but I've found that if I also use compression, you really can accentuate the "quacky" in-between setting on your strat by running the mids a little higher.

The F-50 is an interesting amp, and it's taken me some time to get my settings dialled in, but once you get it set up right, it's a great little unit.

An EQ pedal would do the trick.

By the way, I swapped out the original speaker for a CL80 in my F-50 combo and like it A LOT better. Tighter & crunchier. Less piercing highs & boomy buzzy lows.

Here's a poor quality demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE8fbcQ9MWs

Hobo said:

An EQ pedal would do the trick.

By the way, I swapped out the original speaker for a CL80 in my F-50 combo and like it A LOT better. Tighter & crunchier. Less piercing highs & boomy buzzy lows.

Here's a poor quality demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE8fbcQ9MWs

Click to expand...

I've thought about the EQ pedal, and that might be a the best solution for me. But I've just gone from a full pedalbaord, the a Line6 M13. So I just go to gigs with the amp, M13, and a wah. I'll keep it in mind though. Nice clip btw. It's hard to tell with the youtube quality, but it sounds good. Thanks!

I don't have the Line 6 M13, so I'm just brainstorming here......what if you dialed your amp to the brighter strat like you said, and then create a preset on the Line 6 to get the lonestar strat sounding better. I dunno, maybe try the most transparent OD model w/ gain on 0 so it's still clean, a little less mids, and more highs so it's coming through sounding closer to the bright strat.

Just throwing that out there! Good luck.

What I always did with my Strats was to wire the rear tone knob as a master tone switch for the guitar, and rolled it back to 6 or 7. I found this worked better than constantly fussing with the amp during a show (Which I did a lot). That way you could set your amp for the Lonestar Strat, and roll back the Treble on the other one when you switch.

Fitting your darker strat with 500K pots will give you more top end, these are used for humbuckers and fat single coils to allow more top end.

Use the guitar tone to cut the treble because the amp tones are volumes which I thin k is stupid because when you want the mid off for a blaackface sound, all your volume goes, with most amps turning all the tones off doesn't cut the volume off but with the F50 and express, you get no volume at all with the tones off, so try cutting the tone of the bright strat on the guitar, and keep the treble up on the amp maybe?