So if you increase the contour, you will be decreasing the mid-range frequencies. However, it is actually the opposite way round to what you’d usually expect.

This control is found on most Marshall amps and simply refers to the mids. You should find the sweet spot you’re after if you’re patient with this.Īs a general rule, you’ll want to place more emphasis on the bass if you’re playing rhythm guitar, and more on the treble if you’re playing lead guitar, but that’s a very simplistic overview. So the best advice I can give you, is to start at halfway, and then slowly adjust down, and then slowly adjust back up. It’s really hard to say what your EQ or tone control should be on, because it varies so much between amplifiers. So it’s always best to start with a lower gain setting, and work up to where you need to be. Having too much gain can cause your tone to sound muddy. One thing to point out though, is that often you actually need less gain than you think you will. And there are also cases where you’ll want less gain, or none at all, for example in a lot of country music. Of course, there are cases where you’ll want a lot of gain, for example, if you’re playing heavy metal. So if you turn this up high, it causes the preamp to work harder, resulting in a more distorted tone. When an amplifier processes the signal that comes from your guitar’s pickups, it goes through two stages. Don’t worry, it won’t get too technical, but bear with me. So to properly understand the term gain, you need to know how the amplifier works.

But if you have two, then usually one is to control a clean channel, and the second is to control the distorted channel. If you only have one volume control, it’ll just act as a master volume control. There are usual one or two volume controls on an amplifier.

Setting up bass guitar