My New EQ Pedals

[rogerbayliss]

Hi all just wanted to let you know about my new EQ pedals and what I think in case it helps anyone making their mind up out there about the sound.

I first bought a Carl Martin Contour and Boost pedal earlier this year which is a Low/High pass pair cross over around 440Hz. You can boost the low and high end individually.

I recently got the Empress ParaEQ parametric to go with this pedal and getting great results with that and the Contour and Boost Pedal. The Empress is a better pedal than some of the others because the frequencies are marked up and the Q switch is about right being wide (around 1.5 - 2 ish I believe). My live sound is much improved and I am experimenting using these in the Send and Return loop of my amp. Not cheap but I believe it is worth it.

Example is Peace Pipe I set Contour and Boost to cut bass/low mids (High Pass) fully up and low pass down about 3.5 notches down from max. Add a boost on the Empress ParaEQ around 2Khz approx. 7db. The Top Boost Channel is set 12 'O' Clock on treble with about 10% bass.

Still experimenting with these pedals and they both have a boost facility and on some tunes that can work well with a slight gain added particulary the ParaEQ. A pad switch is provided as well providing 0db -6db and -12db cutting and -6db and a mix of boost seems a good response.

I believe these two pedals do a better job than just a simple graphic EQ or the bass cut type pedals but of course they are not a cheap option.

[erikMAMS]

Roger - thanks for posting, interesting.

The 2 band boost feature of the CM C&B pedal combined with the variable hi/lo pass seems a bit unusual - but probably quite effective and versatile.
However for Shads/vintage instro music I was wondering if you find the boost function really needed (apart from nice to have)?
In combination with your 3 band paraEQ I would think variable lo/hi pass (without boost) would do - as most anything else needed would be possible from the paraEQ it seems?

Coincidentally I've been considering for some time to build myself a custom filter box along similar lines - with variable low and high pass and 1 or 2 parametric bands. A bit ironical - as for the last few years I've been determined to go back to basics  - guitar, echo, amp. However for replicating the early recordings live it seems a bit of extra tweaking is needed.

Can I ask what amp do you use with the boxes?

Erik

[rogerbayliss]

Hi Erik

I recently sold my Vox AC30 H2L after owning it for 6 years. I wanted something lighter so I have opted for an AC4 C1 TV Ltd for home use and bought a Hayden MOFO 30 head and a mate is building me a custom 1 x 12 cab with Celestion Vintage 30 - 12 " speaker. I have used the Hayden head at the club last two weeks and as it turns out it is a great amp and very versatile. I might try improving the clean headroom with a 5751 JAN in V1 but there is already a decent amount of clean there. The tone stack of course is different to the AC30 Top Boost and with a little effort you can coax a convincing Vox sound from the Hayden. They do smaller models but according to the reviews there is no headroom by the way.

The CM Contour and Boost is the only pedal I could find that had low/high pass filtering. As far as the boost goes it does affect the outputs of the top and bottom end and I find it useful to tweak the sound to what I want. I would say that the boost is needed to get the right outputs from the pedal and you need to do a certain degree of matching where levels are concerned IMHO.

You can get something like using the ParaEQ on it's own , but it is not quite the same ! I tried this. I did think of building my own EQ box but in the end I bought these. I have tried them in the front of the amp and also in the send/return of the Hayden. They both work well bu the the send/return seems slightly better to me.

We used the Hayden and the EQ last night and we all got great sounds at the Hankies club. That was the final test of this gear to satisfy myself I had got it right. Very happy with the results.

Yes amp/guitar and echo is a great sound but add EQ and you will be getting so much closer to the recorded sounds.

[rogerbayliss]

Done a quick demo x 2 in sound files for all

charliehall.proboards.com/thread/18164/wonderful-land-live-gear-test

charliehall.proboards.com/thread/18165/peace-pipe-live-gear-test

[asimmd]

Hi Roger

Very nice sound but I would have liked to hear the tunes without the
pedals first,that would give a better idea of how much the pedals were
contributing to the sound.

Alan

[erikMAMS]

Hi Roger, thanks for the further details - and the demos. Hard to tell the details with the constraints of a camera mic - but I think you are sorted

Erik

[rogerbayliss]

Well sorry I did try ! The pedals change the sound quite a bit from the basic guitar and amp and echo sound.