Gaz wrote:You're making a generalization based on tweaking your specific amp, but that doesn't mean it's true for all high gain amps. Engls don't have any peakers and they are heavy as hell. Orange's Rockerverb is another example. Just sayin.
True, but note that the amp in question has thru the years gone thru so many incarnations it's been many amps, literally. But the thing i find is a LOT of production amps and even boutique amps have some or a lot of woolliness in the lows and it took me years to get rid of that in mine without upsetting other tonal details. And peakers were the one thing that no matter what i did had to be there or the low end would never be what it is today, which IMO is better than most amps i have ever played that have as much preamp gain and good balance of all tonal details that we all strive for. Granted, you can't just throw peakers in at random. They have to be in the right place, the right number of them, and the right values. Mine are 500pf like marshall, but they sit atop 220k resistors instead of 470k. That make a huge difference. Placement took me forever to figure out and that made a huge difference.
I WILL grant you ENGL does the low end tightness amazingly well for an amp with no peakers, which i didn't know till your post. I will have to look at thier schematics if i can find them and see how they accomplish that. But i also felt the ones i played were very metalish sounding while mine is purely vintage marshall sounding. And i haven't played many amps with that type of sound that don't have a somewhat to very wooly low end. You may be right to a degree, but i feel my amp is one of the best if not the best cascaded OD style amps i have heard to my ears at least, and w/o peakers there thing isn't. No matter what i've tried in the past, peakers in the RIGHT values, the RIGHT amount, and the RIGHT location have been 100% necassary to get this amp to where it is. Yes, i AM citing this in respect to a particular amp. But it is one that as i said has been many amps including several different trannys both power and OT, many PSU schemes, tried many tubes, you name it. The peakers have always been necassary or i absolutely could not get the quality of tone it has today.
I think the point is there are a bunch of ways to skin a cat, and even more ways to season it to taste.