Up front, right after the volume pedal. You could try it in the effects loop as well easily enough.

 

Only 2 amps have an FX loop, and those are the ones with either an EQ built in (London Reverb) or B/M/T settings. 2 have only tone control. I don't have a volume pedal, so I was going to use the volume on the EQ pedal itself as a volume control before the amp. I plan on getting an EB Jr volume pedal at some point.

 

Which EQ pedal are you getting? Just curious.

 

GEB-7. I know it's a bass related EQ pedal, but it's something to try out. It's better than NOT having one I figure. Getting a good trade, so not being overly concerned about it not being the GE-7. Plus, if I ever get a bass, the GEB-7 doesn't pop up a whole lot around here.

 

I'll have to keep it short as it's a busy day here.

Place eq before od, and you control things like flub, / shaping the tonal characteristics of your pickups / the distortion distribution across the frequency spectrum of your od.

Place eq after od, and you control the tone more like you're dealing with a studio mixing board, or the tone controls on your amp - eg, you can add more bass to the tone without affecting flub etc.

Try:
With a clean amp, place the eq first, crank the bass on the EQ.

Now compare that to - bypass the eq, and crank the bass on your amp.

You'll hear the difference immediately.
Try same again with the treble.

 

you can put it before or after. Depends on what you want to do with it. do you want it to color the pedal or the amp? Makes a huge difference. Put it before your pedal and crank the volume to make it a clean boost. Or color the boost with the sliders. Put it after the pedal and it will change the tone of the amp.... If you know what you are doing and put it after the pedal chain you can make your Fender sound like a vox. Or make amp A sound like amp B. (or get it really close)

I hope this is the right video...

 

EQ can go anywhere - depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Out front is best for subtractive EQ - especially removing excessive low end, and boosting treble (before that range gets all noised up by your gain/dirt pedals). At the very end is best for removing top end and noise. For general tone shaping just about anywhere in your chain depending on what your pedals are and what they do. Like most dirt pedals filter out some extreme low end at least, cocked wah/most filters are very midrangey, and then there's various treble boosters or octaves (up and down).

It's like the Audio engineers perennial argument - EQ before or after compression. Depends; sometimes both.

Anyway, if this is to try to dial in yer amps due to lack of fully featured tone controls, then I'd first try it last or in the loop, because that's the closest thing to it. But also try it out front, especially if you end up doing a lot of cutting vs boosting of freqs. And subtractive is better than boost - instead of boosting bass, cut everything else. That doesn't always work unless the EQ is a graphic or really fully featured parametric. A basic T M B with fixed bandwidths won't be so good for that. The GEB-7 is a graph so you're fine. And because it IS a bass pedal it will work great out front (that lowest band - 50Hz - cut that bitch all the bloody way - it's just rumble and noise sucking your clean headroom - open low E is 80-some-odd Hz so you're not going to be losing any fundamental).

 

EQ can go anywhere - depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Out front is best for subtractive EQ - especially removing excessive low end, and boosting treble (before that range gets all noised up by your gain/dirt pedals). At the very end is best for removing top end and noise. For general tone shaping just about anywhere in your chain depending on what your pedals are and what they do. Like most dirt pedals filter out some extreme low end at least, cocked wah/most filters are very midrangey, and then there's various treble boosters or octaves (up and down).

It's like the Audio engineers perennial argument - EQ before or after compression. Depends; sometimes both.

Anyway, if this is to try to dial in yer amps due to lack of fully featured tone controls, then I'd first try it last or in the loop, because that's the closest thing to it. But also try it out front, especially if you end up doing a lot of cutting vs boosting of freqs. And subtractive is better than boost - instead of boosting bass, cut everything else. That doesn't always work unless the EQ is a graphic or really fully featured parametric. A basic T M B with fixed bandwidths won't be so good for that. The GEB-7 is a graph so you're fine. And because it IS a bass pedal it will work great out front (that lowest band - 50Hz - cut that bitch all the boody way - it's just rumble and noise sucking your clean headroom - open low E is 80-some-odd Hz so you're not going to be loosing any fundamental).

Took the words out of my mouth.
In an ideal world, EVERY pedal has enough EQ-ing to tailor its output (or response to input) optimally. But since they generally don't have that, it means there are many locations in one's pedal chain where an EQ pedal can be productively inserted. Experiment.

 

I am so glad I asked now. I have already learned more about EQing than I even though the EQ would do. I'd say that thickening my knock off dirt pedals is on my list of reasons for the EQ pedal, but to take sort of flat and dull speaker tone and try and brighten it up........shape it more is also high on the list. My pedals are Mosky Klon silver horse, Mosky distortion and a Joyo TS clone. That's pretty much it for the board. All those pedals have only a tone adjustment as well, no fine low/high pots. Does this sound like a before/after scenario? I assume this is one very echoed idea when it comes to EQ in the chain.

 

It's hard to answer that because we don't know your goals and tastes. Those are all dirt however, and each of them does some sub-low (at least) cut and things to the midrange/top end (especially if you rock those tone controls). I would start with after, just before the amp in this case just because of all that and because that's what you know. But then do try it out front as well (see below about that).

In either case keep that 50Hz all the way down - it won't give you anything useful to boost it or even leave neutral.

A side question. Should I put all my amp EQ settings at mid and EQ from there, or just go ahead and use the pedal straight away as each amp is already set? I noticed in the video Knight posted that his are all hovering around noonish. Personal taste, or suggested?

Again, hard to answer, but it isn't a bad idea to try that. Also note that not all amps have middle as flat; probably most actually. Guitar amps aren't designed to be reference like hifi; they are designed to impart a sound.

If you use multi amps then eventually what you want is to set the tone controls in such a way as to compensate or compliment what makes that amp different from the others - either you want something samey no matter what amp you're using, or you use different amps to get different tones.

As always, the godfather of EQ/distortion combinations. Six bands before clipping and 6 bands after.

A banger for sure. I agree that EQ before (and after) clipping is very useful, but I also find that a single semi parametric (frequency adjustable from upper bass to upper mids) med-wide Q control does the trick there with less complexity (cheap graphics can have a lot of phase issues, noise, gain suck etc). That allows you to select the colour of your dirt/taylor it to the response of yer instrument by boosting a band before clipping, or remove mud or excessive crispyness by cutting. The one pedal I know of that has that is the Pearl (yes the drum maker, they launched a series of actually rather cool/unique guitar pedals in the 80s.... and nobody bought them because not a guitar company) OD-05. Smaller footprint is nice too. Still a bit of a sleeper, though people are starting to get curious.

 

@knight_yyz That was a great video. So straight forward and understandable. I can't wait to get this pedal now.



A side question. Should I put all my amp EQ settings at mid and EQ from there, or just go ahead and use the pedal straight away as each amp is already set? I noticed in the video Knight posted that his are all hovering around noonish. Personal taste, or suggested?

 

It would seem that just one EQ pedal is insufficient - you probably need 2 or 3. 😁

 

As always, the godfather of EQ/distortion combinations. Six bands before clipping and 6 bands after.

 

WOW!!!! I got the pedal and fiddled with it now for about an hour. I'm sure more fiddling will be done, or even required, but HOLY CRAP!!! Suddenly my sound is three dimensional. I swear it fills the room even more. I had to move the tone controls on the TM36 around to keep up with the pedal since I am working on getting the amps that only have one tone control. Still, how can a Strat sound even more like a Strat?!? Just wow. Why have I not gotten an EQ pedal by now?!?! God only knows. Now I will never go without one. At least one!!

 

Sometimes I mess with my eq and get it sounding perfect. Then the next day I play it and it sounds off- boxy or something else. GLWTEQ.

 

Congrats!

There is NEVER any guarantee that the pickups or speakers one uses will emphasize the resonances you hear in your head. Sometimes you get lucky and everything aligns, but many other times the rig needs a little help lining up, and a nudge this way or that...and that's where EQ pedals come in.

 

Depending on what I am after I will sometimes place an EQ at the end of the chain or directly after a Dist/OD box. My logic in that is that sometimes another pedal provides something I want but it comes bundled with an inherent EQ slope that is not what I want so I place an EQ after, to compensate for it. Dist/OD units are the most common reason for me. I might like the creaminess or the hairiness or the edginess or whatever of a pedal but it's too mid-pushed or too weak on the bottom or whatever the case may be so I fix it with an EQ pedal. I have the Source Audio programmable EQ that comes with 4 user definable EQ profiles. It lets me make compensations for 4 different kinds of issues. I have also heard of people using it for switching between Strats and Les Pauls. They can set it to provide more grunt on the low end and an overall volume increase when switch from a Les Paul to a Strat. Keeps them from needing to tweak a bunch of other settings on the amp or on pedals when switching guitars.

 

Have you used the midi plug to switch between presets on the source audio?

 

It was the One Control Crocodile Tail Loop.

 

Can it change the pedal order when making a preset?

 

Some might say I am "wasting" my EQ.

I have it right after my dirt pedals. I use it as a boost. I may (or may not) change the "colour" a bit if I'm boosting a single coil or humbucker, but it is basically just a jump in volume.

 

Well my initial reply never posted. Enjoy the experiment!