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I haven't tried the presonus unit, their compressers are cool I hear though. But, it seems that most of the new parametrics out, even expensive ones, seem to not sound so great with guitars sometimes. I'll gather that like anything for guitars, a particular unit may or may not work well with a particular rig well. Some are magic, some are tone killers...
While looking for a TC, I was excited with a Behringer and its shiny look and many knobs till I plugged in at home and found that it just destroyed my tone. It was so bad, even Bill noticed that it was a tone coffin... So, I'm leary of anything really till I try them with my stuff.
I'm wondering if some of the new parametrics are just so good, that they sterilize the sound somehow and take the life out of it. I'd lend to the very likely possibility of a tone trap of sorts in the newer AD/DA conversion stuff. I think I like a true analog path myself, like the older, cheaper (and well noisier) units like the Furmans and TC's. I find new noise reduction units that are digital do the same thing somewhat. May be a correlation somewhere there.
As far as 3-4-5 bands, I'm anal and was ok with my PQ-3. Between the tone controls and the EQs three bands I was good. My TC has 4 bands, and I often leave one or maybe even two flat depending on what I'm doing at the time.
Four bands is certainly enough rope to hang yourself nicely, and well five, even moreso. Parametrics can truly be the source of some serious headaches (literally) when you get lost in tweakland. You can get so lost in them that you forget which way is up and what sounds good after a point and its best to leave it alone and come back later with fresh ears. Usually, you'll find you were all out of sorts tonally and say WTF was I doing here with "that" setting? But, after a while of using them, it will be simple to dial in a good tone you like pretty quickly.
Sometime 5 bands can be useful, but, I'd see them as more useful with a PA when taming a wild room or a drumset/cymbals etc.
I mostly do a low boost, maybe a slight mid scoop, (not much though as that kills your tone a lot), and a slight boost for edge/crunch up high. I can however see the fourth band as useful sometimes for freqs above expected guitar range that actually do have effect on overall sound. Every rig and guitar combo has its different G spot freq in each of the low/mid/high/really high bands, and it's hard to give you a good exact freq to tweak. I just fixate on low chug and tweak the lows for chug and the highs for edge till I feel what I want, usually not even looking too much at the dials positions, just go by what I feel. Same with mids with chord and mid range area one note noodling, I tweak the notch till I feel the sound "open" up or come to life a bit, and not feel too scooped or nasal. I try not to think freqs, bandwidth or boost/notch level too much , I just go by ear.
" It was so bad, even Bill noticed that it was a tone coffin... "
haha, I thought that was a smartass thing to say! Well done. Anyway I really dug my PQ3 when I had it, so I'd recommend it too. I had the blackface one, from the 80s...I saw that James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett used to use them in the MoP days and it was $30 at the store so I had to pick it up! It was a rad unit once I got it figured out, but I sold it with most of the rest of my rack stuff over the summer. My only complaint was that it was a bit noisy, but I didn't really have the best noise gate then either. Check one out if you can!
Yeah, I don't want a tone killer. It would be one of those, "the guitar tone was SO bad, even the singer noticed" [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] I think I'll do some research on the Furman PQ4. It sounds like it's up my alley.
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