In this installment of Eddie’s Corner, electric guitar specialist Eddie Berman shares some tips on using a graphic equalizer after your overdrive pedal to adjust your guitar sound.
To demonstrate the changes you can make using a graphic EQ pedal, Eddie used an Xact Tone Solutions Midrange Graphic Equalizer (a modded Boss GE-7) and a Xact Tone Solutions Precision Multi-Drive pedal.
Eddie first starts by playing the guitar clean on the bridge pickup. He then put on the overdrive pedal, with its gain set at 2 o’clock, tone straight up, and volume a quarter of the way up. Then Eddie put on the graphic EQ, bumping it up from flat without changing frequencies and bringing up the output a hair.
After doing this, you can hear much more sustain and a volume jump, though not too much. By doing this, you could use your normal overdrive pedal for fills and the melody line, but still have somewhere to go with the equalizer. Or, the normal overdrive pedal could be your dirty rhythm sound and you can cut on the EQ for solos.
Eddie then went in and adjusted the EQ itself. He boosted the 1.6k and 1.2k just a little over flat, but didn’t change the output. This makes the guitar sound a little fatter.
He then left the EQ pedal set the way it was, but bumped the output. This again made the guitar sound slightly bigger. Eddie said that this is a good way to trick your sound guy; you can get louder without touching your amp.
You can also go in and completely change your guitar’s sound by adjusting the settings of your EQ pedal.
Eddie pulled out the mids, and boosted highs and upper mids. He also boosted the volume up a little bit over flat. This caused his sound to become more aggressive.
By incorporating a graphic equalizer into your setup, you can get a broader palette of overdrive tones without touching your overdrive pedal.
We hope this video was informative, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact an electric guitar specialist!