Hoping to find some help…. I am a new QC owner, but I’m not new to the modeling/profiling world having been a Kemper guy for 12 years. I play steel guitar and am trying to create a great direct rig for touring (IEMs, silent stage) and for recording for my steel guitar, but I’m running into a few issues.
First, a steel guitar is a strange animal in that the pickups are hot, (20k ohm) and we run into a 470k pot volume pedal before the amp, so the amp never sees the guitar at 100%volume. Maybe 50% volume with the rest of the volume pedal being used for sustain. We also like really clean amps, most of them solid state.
So my hope was to capture one of my preamps, marry it with a great IR and be set. What I’m finding is that the tones that I am getting are really bright, mid range spikey, and just not good. Overall thin sounding. I have captured the preamp out of my Peavey Nashville 112, which is a go to amp for steel players, and my Mesa Boogie Studio Preamp, which is also another standard for recording steel players.
I have read that gain staging can have an effect in this, so this may be where I’m messing up. During the capture process I have been setting my input gain with my volume pedal all the way down while strumming my strings fairly hard. This is what videos I’ve seen showed to do, and it’s the maximum output, so would set the gain to be the cleanest. However, after doing more research I’ve read that this may actually be causing my input gain to be too low which will cause thin captures? Should I back my volume pedal off to where it is in my normal operating range, then set my input gain?
Can you think of any other tips or tricks that may help?
Thank for the help!