its a popular trick... metal guys are also known to sue the HM2 the same way... hair abnds liked the SD1... they're all doing a simialr thing with the gian down but with different midrange emphasis from the rest of the circuit. You can do it with a frickin' dynacomp with the compression set all the way down or close to it.... I always liked that the dyncaomp does the bass tighten thing, gives comrpession, sends a low imepdance AND it doesn't add any non amp dirt. I sued to use a dynacomp a lot as a toenshaper and buffer in front of gunned up amps when recording, a litle comrpession and boost for elads, no comrepssion for rhythm, set the output to be about at unity when you disengage. Bang. Works really well with vitnage amps but I've used it on other guys when recording bands who were on the more metal end of the spectrum. Damn, I gave away my secret studio pedal. THe klon with the gian at zero is another variation on this theme, tis your true bypass tone with a little less thump and a low output impedance. I feelc ertain I read an article with bill Finnegan where he said the whole design was based around trying to perfect that 'tubescremer with the gain down' trick as well as provide a distortion thatw as 'your sound only more of it'.... he nailed part1. So a soul food is another good, cheap option for this since it will have zero dirt at zero gain but it gives you the other parts of the equation, a healthy amount of boost if you want to hit the amp hard and some decent overdrive to boot
On the toehr hand live I don't want anything coloring my signal if the amp is providing sufficient tone and dirt, although i've experimented with a lot I always come back to getting the sound form the amp, whether its a amster volume design or soemthing vintage. But in tehs tudio you might need a mroe subtle bass tightening into your dirt then the onboard EQ can provide because of where its places in teh circuit and how the bass control may be centered, doing it afterwards with high pass on the mic or desk isn't going to sound the same, although I always try that first... the ultimate extension of this trick is the eric valentine method of using a graphic EQ to hit a high gain amp in a very specific way frequency-wise.... I've read that van halen used this to mellow the top end of what he was giving his amrhsalls so that he could run the rpesence and treble all the way up for max gain and distortion without worrying about it getting brittle and ahrsh. In my oppinion no one makes a good soundinggraphic eq pedal anymore though. They're msotly noisy ith allt eh wrong center frequencies for the bands... not guitar-flattering to my ears. A good alternative is an old boss half rack, the elss bands the better, they come in 2 sizes... big graphics designed for PA sue are a no go, too much shit to mess with, tooe asy to induce phase problems in your output signal... a cool thing to do ina studio with an API desk or some API pres and graphics is to go into the DI input of the preamp and then engage a 560 graphic and shape your sound then instead of 'reamp boxing' the signal to raise the impedance back up just send a low impedance signal from an FX send (or the output of the API lunchbox) right into the guitar amp.You may need to fiddle with cable adapters or a ground lift since studio gear sends a balanced signal, but hey, this has worked for me. Even a 550 semi aprametric is good here, though tis more of a post-recording EQ and a great one too...
anyway, I still have no idea what song we're talking about LOL, don't need to know, there's only handful of secrets to this stuff...
