Gain vs. Volume

[toprekoms]

Greetings,
What's the correct way to use the gain and volume settings on my Kustom KBA200?
Thanks

 

[bobbybass85]

Gain is the signal level that's being fed to your preamp. Your volume control is for the output of the power section, which determines how loud your speakers will be.

Use the gain to control how much grit (overdrive) you want in your tone. You should also pay attention to the "clip" light on the amp, if it's lighting up then turn your gain down. It's ok for it to clip occasionally but you don't typically want to run an amp so hot it's constantly clipping.

Also, many times dramatic EQ changes can effect the gain level (cause clipping, etc). So keep that in mind.

Here's a good thread. Does that help?

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/gain-control-versus-volume-control-254997/

 

[toprekoms]

Thank you very much. I didn't expect much in the way of responses, but it was a question that I needed to ask. I was aware of the clipping issue.
Peace

 

[mikezimmerman]

Since it was a question that you needed to ask, is there any particular reason you posted the question down here in the Bass Central store forum rather than the Amps forum? I'm always a bit confused when people post questions down here that have nothing to do with Bass Central...

 

[pnkelephant]

Some general info to help(relating to working in Pro Tools). Traditionally, GAIN refers to the input level of your preamp. Then there is "GAIN STAGING" which relates to how you set levels thru several devices(or plugins) in an audio chain(think Preamp>EQ>compressor>amp). Then(where it gets a bit confusing) there is the AudioSuite GAIN plugin. This might have been named better as it changes the LEVEL of the audio file(by a db amount). This is very similar to using the AudioSuite Normalize) plugin(which changes the LEVEL by a percentage amount where 100% is using the full 0dbfs volume(not so intuitive).