I am looking for my tone and I can't shape the low end right. I want tight and punchy tube like, rock low end. How should I set eq,...? my gear: Fender J -> VT bass -> Hartke HA5500 -> Hartke 4.5xl
I cut the lowest freq just a bit and start the upward curve after that. Have pretty good presence in the low-mid section cut some of the mid-highs and have the highest freqs slide no higher than your highest lows. I like to keep the tube pre at about 8 and the SS pre at about 4 and I set the low pass to about 3 and cut the high pass just a tad, less than three. Try playing without the compressor. If you still cant find a tone you like, set everything off or flat and just twiddle from there. Also, not sure if you can turn the tweeter off in your cab, but try that. Hope that helps...
If I were you, I'd try one or several of the following with the EQ otherwise flat: cut at 30hz, boost at 125 hz, boost at 250 hz, cut 5 khz and above. That's a cut on the very low end, low mid boost, and a reduced high end around where paper cone speaker cabs without tweeters usually roll off. I tend to run a clean signal parallel to a touch sensitive tube overdrive on my Bassman 300 or my ShuttleMax to top it off. These are pretty close to my settings off of my own amps. My EQ sliders usually look like the following car's front fender.