Now I will attempt to explain how to use the file which will show my lack of knowledge of GIMP. Just for reference I am using GIMP version 2.6.6 under Ubuntu Jaunty 9.0.4 with the Linux Kernel 2.6.28-13-generic. The purpose of this file is to be able to turn the knobs and then save the image to share on the web or just to be able to remember your favorite settings. With the file loaded in GIMP you can rotate the knobs to reflect your settings. Once you have the file loading in GIMP click on the layer for the knob you want to rotate. With that layer selected go to the “Toolbox” window and select the “Fuzzy Select Tool”, hint: it looks like a magic wand. Now use the “Fuzzy Select Tool” to select an area that is not the knob. Now right click and choose go to “select” and then select the “invert” option. Doing this should roughly select the knob. Now go to the “Toolbox” window again and select the “Rotate Tool”. After the “Rotate Tool” is selected, left click on the center of the knob you are working with. Do this will pop up a window that has a slider on it. Grab the slider and move in until the knob reflects the setting you want. Click “Rotate” in the pop up window. Repeat all the steps for the other knobs. Note: You can only rotate the knob when the knob’s layer is selected which was the first step. Below you will find the GIMP project file as well as a video showing how to use the file. Comments and suggestions welcome.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Now that me and my wife have settled into our new house I’ve finally got around to thumbing through all of my old gear. In the back of my closet sat the old amp I was so disappointed with all those years ago. I dusted it off and plugged it in. I let the tubes warm up and tried all my guitars through it and I still got that awful sound I remembered. I began to mess with the knobs setting the amps eq to a flat setting. In case you’re wondering, a flat setting is bass at 0, middle at 10 and treble at 0. At the flat eq setting I was surprised that it didn’t sound too bad. It started looking like the “less is more” rule should be applied with this amp. With that in mind I put the slowly started working the eq and got a fairly good sound with the following settings. Bass at 3, middle at 4 and treble at 3. With that giving me a great clean sound with all of my guitars so I moved on to getting a good distortion tone.

For distortion I’ve tried many pedals but I always went back to the Grunge pedal. I prefer the sound of the Digitech model over the Dod. There is an amp emulated output on the Digitech which the Dod doesn’t have, but that’s irrelevant in this situation. I used the “less is more” approach to the pedal settings and ended with the following settings which worked well for me. Loud at 1, Low at 9, High at 7 and Grunge at 5. Those settings are assuming the first notch is 0 and the last notch is 10, see image at the bottom of the post. The only problem was the distorted tone was a little bit nasally and I couldn’t get rid of the tone with any settings on the pedal. Going back to the amp I backed the middle eq back to 5 and this gave the the tone I was looking for.