Amp Settings & Tone

The studio amp. Where the sweet spot lives, why the vibrato channel isn't actually tremolo, and the rig that Mayer built a career on.

Does the solid-state Tonemaster actually beat the tube original for studio work? We did the A/B.

The chime. Why Cut is backwards (up cuts treble), Top Boost vs Normal channel choice, and the Tom Petty rhythm sound.

A deeper dive on the single most misunderstood knob on the British clean amp.

The transistor amp that actually worked. Chorus settings, why it's Andy Summers's only amp, and how to stop it from sounding sterile.

The 80s metal and hard rock backbone. Why gain at 4 with master cranked sounds different from gain at 8 with master low.

The metal amp. Pre gain vs post gain, why scooping mids in isolation kills you in a mix.

How to get a 120W head to sound right at apartment-friendly volumes. Three use-case settings with knob positions.

What class AB push-pull does to harmonics, where the 'warmth' of a cranked Plexi actually comes from, and why every guitar amp sounds different at volume.

Why the attenuator you pick shapes the tone. How a real speaker cab's impedance curve differs from a dummy load, and what that does to the output transformer.

The hidden costs of running a low-wattage amp through an attenuator. At some point you're better off with the power soak removed.

How to loop your modeler's effects into a real tube amp so your amp's preamp-AND-power-amp stay in the signal path.

The three volume knobs and what each one actually controls — Channel Volume, Master Volume, and Output Volume on modern amps.

Tube vs solid state, class A vs class AB, single-ended vs push-pull. What the labels actually mean and how they shape tone.

Sean Nakamura's top picks for blues tone on the Helix. Underrated amp models and why they work for blues specifically.

Helix has 40+ amp models and most players use the same 5. Here are 10 you should open up today.