Tonefiend Forum

good question. I know exactly what you're talking about, but I don't have a clear answer. 🙂 There's a few possible causes for it though.

1. if it's a new amp and cab, then the speakers may still be stiff and unresponsive to the full range, or they may be a poor fit - too narrow a frequency response or impedance imbalance, or the current drive isn't optimal
2. the tube/rectifier compliment is over-compressing the signal. For reference, check out pedals like the Fetto Deluxe with it's 'core' sweep or other pedals that have a wide voltage adjust. As you increase voltage, you add headroom which lets the distortion spike and bloom naturally. As you decrease voltage, the sound becomes very compressed and distant. I think since more and more amp's are being targeted towards recording over gig playing, they're balancing the power more towards the compressed side to give it an arena compressed sound at lower levels. Or perhaps they're just lowering the headroom out of poor design, but I think that's the general cause.. at least that's what the EVH sounds like to me. It would probably sound great for recording, but sucks for live.

So I suspect that the cause lies somewhere in between those two areas... too much internal compression and a stiff speaker. But that's just a guess. To avoid that, look for amps which have more power and headroom on tap and good distortion at the preamp stage. That should give you the best raw presence coming out of the speaker. I don't have any specific suggestions though as I don't really follow that part of the market much.

Things that limit an amp's presence: reverb, dipped mids, too much compression, too much preamp gain. On the last point, I gather that the trend among metal players is to use an overdrive pedal like a Tube Screamer in front of a high gain amp with maybe less preamp gain than would otherwise be used--splitting the gain load keeps the preamp tighter and more controlled, I guess.

Rebalancing preamp gain and master volume so the power tubes are cooking more and there's less preamp distortion is usually a good thing. More grunt, more dynamic feel, and less distortion tend to be good things, and I say this as a fuzz fiend.