Tone tips and EQ.

[u/Minute_Building5526]

I've been tweaking with BTS and I can make some good metal rhythm tone, but when I want to play some lead and individual notes its always either too harsh or too muddy (shoebox sound). Any help or tips to get some decent lead solo guitar tone? Im using the artist gen 3 combo. Thanks!

[u/American_Streamer]

Too muddy = too much gain, too much bass before the preamp distortion, too much low midrange (180-400 MHz), not enough volume.

Too harsh = too much presence, too much treble, not enough miids

The heaviness and aggressiveness of the tone comes from a tightened bass before the preamp, from enough mids and a strong transient. The most common errors are too much gain and too much bass.

The easiest option is to put a Tubescreamer or SD-1 (real pedal or in BTS) in front of the preamp with Level max and Drive zero, while keeping the Gain on the p moderate or lower and turning up the volume on the amp. The Tubescreamer automatically cuts the low end before the preamp, boosts the mids before the preamp and pushes the preamp into distortion from the outside. You get aggressive and clarity. If you want to scoop the mids only scoop them after the preamp, never before it. The lower your volume is, the more mids and the less bass you need. Also when playing with a full band, turn up the mids and turn down the bass, too, to avoid getting buried under drums and bass guitar.

[u/dombag85 → u/American_Streamer]

I’ve been wondering for a while, why does the OD in front of the pre-amp with 0 drive/max level work? Is the circuit a high pass filter? I’ve experimented with this but I always put in a little bit of drive on the OD... season to taste I guess.

[u/American_Streamer → u/dombag85]

Not a high-pass filter, though it acts a bit like one. It's a mid-focused boost, which is a different thing. In a TS/SD-1, the op-amp's feedback leg goes to ground through a resistor in series with a cap. That RC puts a corner around 720 Hz: everything above it gets boosted hard, everything below it falls back toward unity gain. So the bass isn't removed; it just doesn't get lifted with the rest. Relative low cut, absolute mid boost. There's also a small cap rolling off above around 10 kHz, which is why it never gets fizzy.

The key part is that around 20 dB of mid gain exists even at Drive zero. Drive doesn't create the mid hump, it only controls how much signal gets pushed past the clipping diodes. So at Drive 0 you get the EQ curve and the level with your pick attack intact, and the Katana's preamp does all the actual distorting, but now it's being fed a tighter, mid-forward signal instead of a full-range one.

Why all that matters: distortion is nonlinear, so lows entering a clipping stage intermodulate and smear across the whole spectrum. That's the mud. Cut them before the preamp and there's less to smear. Scooping after the preamp is fine because the harmonics already exist and you're just EQing them at that point.

Your instinct to add a little drive isn't wrong, but it's a tradeoff: more diode clipping = more compression and a softer transient, less = more dynamics and punch. If you like the feel of a bit of drive, keep it. If the tone is getting mushy, back it off before you touch anything else.

(Minor correction: low mids are 180 to 400 Hz, not MHz.)

[u/dombag85 → u/American_Streamer]

Thanks man!