Tightening up the bass response. It sounds so mushy!

I can’t seem to get a good bass response form this thing. I feel like I end up turning the bass knob almost all the way down on my amps, but then the highs just get out of control. Then if I turn the bass up, it just gets flubby and mushy. No matter what I do, I cant seem to tame the EQ on this thing

I am currently using the Lonestar, and use a lot of the Fender and Vox amps too. I just can’t dial in a good sound.

Im using the QC interface direct into Logic, and then into two Yamaha HS5s

Have you tried an EQ before the amp, cutting lows around the 100-180Hz area?

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A lot of Fender-style amps have way too much bass. This demos well, but doesn’t work well in a mix and can get pretty flubby with too much bass into distortion. As @xush says, cutting bass before distortion can really help. This isn’t a problem with QC, its the way these amps work.

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Just add an EQ at the end pf your chain. just use the low cut / high pass filter and set around 100-200hz to taste. That should clean up any mud/ low rumbling from your sound. AllOld recording/mix trick.

I use FRFRs but honestly, when you use an FRFR type monitor you are usually signing up for more work dialing in your tone and you will frequently, as already posted here, find yourself having to cut both the low (and high) end of the frequency spectrum. That work is done for you already by the inherent limited range and response of, for example, a combo amp with a speaker specifically made for guitar, or you would have to do the same there.

Particularly with an FRFR such as your Yamaha HS5s, depending on the preset, you may find yourself essentially emulating the physical characteristics of a guitar speaker, which tends to start cutting rather dramatically around 100hz and 5khz. The EQ blocks, are helpful here as well as the additional controls available in various other blocks, e.g. the tone stack in the amps (particularly ‘Bass’ & ‘Presence’), and the ‘Tone’ controls in the overdrives.

Using FRFRs can give you a sound that is closer to the authentic sound of the model but as you have observed requires more effort to dial in the high and low ends, as well as sometimes other spots in the frequency spectrum. Obvious I know, but worth pointing out, it is not only the frequency range that is different in an FRFR, but it is also the frequency response.

So, it often requires a combination of factors that have been listed here. Low cuts, cutting bass in the amp model, and cutting bass before and/or within certain FX blocks. A parametric EQ can also be helpful to pinpoint and cut the unwanted low/high frequencies.

Putting in a LPF/high-cut, and/or a HPF/low-cut, can also change your perception of the entire tone more than you might have anticipated, by placing more energy in the areas of the frequency spectrum you have NOT cut.

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