EQ rotary knob question

It entirely depends on the design of the tone stage. There is no genetal rule of thumb.

For example, James tone circuits such as what Ampeg uses are flat at noon. They have controls that do the cut and boost about a center position. Fender and Marshall style tone stages, flat is around Bass 2, Mid 10, Treble 2. Vox has a cut control which reduces high frequencies as you turn the knob up.

 

The best thing you can do is track down the original manual and start reading. If the manual is not helpful, Google is your friend. Type in your amp head name and add "talkbass". You will get every talkbass thread the amp is mentioned in and from there you can learn much more. I have learned how a lot of gear ACTUALLY works on talkbass. I have also learned how to decipher manuals on talkbass. It took a while, but it was worth it.

 

Guess it's time to get a new rig. Only way to know for sure.

 

Even with modern amps where straight up is 0, there is no guarantee that all controls set to 0 is flat. Also even if your amp is set flat, it's unlikely your speaker is flat. The best strategy is to just fiddle with the knobs till it sounds good.

For the record, I learned to play on a blackface Fender Twin and I liked 4,4,2. That's a long way from 2,10,2 which is what is claimed to be flat.

 

There's a lot of cut only circuits, anything below full tilt is cut.

 

Not necessarily. Your assuming every amp has a flat frequency response to begin with, which is not guaranteed. The only thing you need to do to get a mid range boost from an amp with a Fender tone stack is build in some mid range preemphasis somewhere in the signal path.

 

Your right. I should have said cut from the baked in eq curve of the amp.