I plugged into the Bright channel yesterday...

[Ghost Hip]

And it was everything I was looking for.

I had my Fuck going into my newly acquired TAFM and for some reason my mids and low end were... blending together... rather flat. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it was just... NOT POPPIN'. There was no razz-ma-tazz. Just flat and loud "yep that's a fuzzy guitar alright" tone. So I had a wild idea... I took my cable out of my normal input and stuck it into the bright input of my Classic 50. And by golly, my low end tightened up, my mids were sexy, and my high end was where I wanted it. All I had to do wa push the volume up a bit more than usual and crank the lows on the amp/English Muff'n and I was fuzz rockin in no time!

But... the thing is...

I once swore to never use the bright channel. I shunned it, crossed out it's label with a paint pen and thought "nobody gonna take away my low end, no sir!" But here I am sticking my swollen red coily cable into it's tight chrome input jack and loving every minute of it. Another lesson learned in the gear of life; taste changes. I know there are dangers to the bright channel, but I solemnly swear to never crank my trebles so much that it hurts everyone's ears in the audience. I vow to keep my low end nice and thick, so that even when I use my bridge pick up I don't shatter the eyes and ears of my band mates. I will not abuse the power of the bright channel, I shall only harness it and use it for the good of fuzz lovers everywhere.

So yeah... I just wanted to post that.

[Fuzz_Pi]

Get a Y spliter and play thru both at the same time

[bronzetalon]

I agreed I love having plenty of treble at my disposal and dialing it back to sound good...fender twin here with the bright switch always on.

[Ghost Hip]

Get a Y spliter and play thru both at the same time

I wish, the Classic 50 is wired so if you plug into both of them one input dominates the other.

[wsas3]

Stack them fuzzes and forget about it

[dubkitty]

it's amazing what you can get from an amp by using the functions in ways other than they were intended, isn't it? i've found that the cleans i get using the Drive switch on my Laney VC30 with the gain turned down are prettier than with the Drive off and also quieter. and a Bright channel/switch can compensate for a multitude of sins in the tone stack/signal chain, especially if your tone controls are interactive...you can use the Bright switch with the tone stack as a primitive tone boost to fill out the spectrum and work around it to some extent with the tone knobs. it's particularly nice for pushing humbucker guitars into single-coil territory...some Nashville guys in the 80s used to like to play 335s or Les Pauls through Twin Reverb-type amps with the Bright switch on so they could switch between Tele-esque and Gibson sounds.

[Gone Fission]

You can get some really useful tonal variation by adjusting frequency response at different places in the signal path, even if "correcting" for that change elsewhere in the chain. Especially when there's lots of gain and dirt. It gets way beyond frequency response and into things like dynamic feel, harmonic spectra, and different frequency bands compressing differently. You can rediscover your gear messing with this stuff.

[Gearmond]

yeah, i used to be all about the neck pickup on my guitar, but i've really been loving the sound of the two mixed. because apparently gold foils sound SUPER different from bridge to neck, and the mix is this really weird spanky-but-not-really sound that just sounds round tight and bouncy and unique. also been experimenting with bridge + boosted trebz for them twinkletoanz

bass-wise i was all about either full on dub neck, or jaco-with-tone-rolled-off bridge wiht a touch of neck. now its more or less 50/50.

EQ hasn't changed though. mids dimed, and bass/treble boosted a scooch depending on bass (bass boost) or guit (trebz boost)

also sorta seconding dubby's sentiments. my favorite bass tone is when i have the gain dimed and the master volume just a smidge up.

[dubkitty]

when i was younger i was a 90% bridge PU guy on the guitar...nowadays i play on the neck pickup more and go to the bridge when i want to really rip. i've also gone to a fatter, less toppy sound on the amplifier, with the bass whacked right up, the treble around 6 or 7, and the mids balanced somewhere in between; back in the day i played Fender amps with the treble dimed, mids on 6, and bass on 4 or 5 and the Bright switch on. watch out for your spectacles, girls, and don't be drinking from crystal goblets! i like to use the #2 (bass + middle) position on my Strats, and i've become rather fond of the middle position on the Gretsch Pro Jet i put DynaSonics in, but mostly i prefer bass or treble. i'm a pen-and-ink guy, not a pastels guy.

on bass, i'm still pretty much a neck PU player, though nowadays i'll add more bridge PU in for breath than i used to and give it more like 4 or 5 on the tone control instead of the 2 setting i used to prefer. i can't really say definitively what my bass EQ is because i don't play through bass amps much, but i tend to treble cut and leave the mids flat...one of my bass playing mottos is "they call it BASS."

[dubkitty]

but when i first got the Laney i was diming all the tone controls, because that was the only sound i found at first that i liked. when i found my current settings it totally changed the way the amp performs and the way i relate to the amp. it gave us a whole different shared voice.

[goroth]

Laney VC30 is a seriously nice amp.

I just changed over to the bright channel on my Lab Series two nights ago (coincidence - woah) and I dig that sound a lot, which surprised me as I thought I hated bright channels.

[smile_man]

dude, i feel you, i actually use bridge pickups now.