Guitar Equalizers: Ins and Outs


For a good even tone no matter what the setting or amp or guitar, you always need a good quality EQ from your guitar to the rest of your effects chain.  For any type of clean playing, it’s necessary in order to smooth out the frequencies of your guitar and amp type.  No one wants to hear a guitar with a loud chime every time one of the higher strings are played, the same as tho you wouldn’t want to have the bass note drown out the rest of the notes in a chord.

The Danelectro Fish n ChipsThe Danelectro Fish n Chips

A good EQ is used to help cut back on the frequencies of your guitar. I like playing thru heavy bodied guitars with humbucker pickups that give off an extreme amount of low-end bass when I play, so I use my Danelectro Fish n Chips EQ to round off the bottom end to give room for the Bass player and bring up my Mids so that it gives me alot more room and clarity without overworking my amp and increasing feedback.

Boss's EQ-7Boss’s EQ-7

Here are some good settings for your EQ pedal to give you a different sound or just to smoothen out what you already got. These should all be run BEFORE your distortion.

Guitar PedalBoardGuitar PedalBoard
Preset 100 200 400 800 16k 32k 64k Level
Acoustic 7 -10 -15 -10 5 10 5 0
Clean Smooth 5 -5 0 2 5 2 5 0
Lead Boost 0 5 10 5 5 5 0 5
Rhythm -5 0 2 5 2 0 -3 0
Metal EQ 5 -5 5 10 12 10 5 3
Stevie Ray Vaughn-ish 10 -5 0 5 10 5 10 5
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