Q: I recently saw your “Sweetwater Minute – Vol. 61 demo video of the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III amp with the EVH Wolfgang Special guitar on YouTube.
That is the best overdrive tone that I’ve ever heard out of a Hot Rod Deluxe. My question to you is: Could you please possibly tell me what your settings were on the amp? You do mention that the Drive/Gain level is at “4”. I know that tone is also in the “hands” of the player and that I’ll probably still have to do some tweaking, but I believe that your settings are a great place to start from.
A: We’re glad that you enjoyed that demonstration video. For these sorts of demos, we typically set the tone controls to 12 o’clock. This provides a good basic setting for the amp — a neutral setting, if you will. The idea is that you get an idea of the amp’s tone, and then when you play the amp yourself, you can turn the controls both up and down to customize the sound as you like. We feel that arguably this is better than dialing in a specific tone on the amp by boosting and cutting the tone controls during our demo, as the resulting tone would only be applicable to that guitar and that player. (Opinions vary on this approach, but we have to set the knobs somewhere!)
As for the other controls, we usually set the master volume to a comfortable level and vary the setting of the gain control(s) to provide an overview of the range of gains the amp is capable of producing.
Hope this helps!
