HX Effects + Katana Set-Up

I bought an HX Effects at the end of March, from those nice people at GuitarGuitar Camden, where you can buy any guitar you like as long as it’s a Strat and costs £2,000+ (I am exaggerating only slightly. It is cheaper than Denmark Street where the prices start at £2,000 and ascend very quickly.) Since then I haven’t written anything about my endless Tone Journey.

Imagine being dropped in a guitar shop, given the keys to the pedal cabinet and told to play around all your like. That’s what getting an HX Effects is.

I’m playing it through the Katana, (edit: 17/5) using the Power Amp In, which cuts out the pre-amp and effects modules, with the output  of the HX Effects set to Line rather than Instrument. The power amp is set at “0.5W” (/edit) and I control the output with the Master volume.

I’m playing mostly between 65-75 dBA, and have made the following very important adjustment to the amp positioning.

I sit on a barstool about two metres away, on a chair about a meter away, depending on whether I’m using the HX Edit program.

Brief acoustics digression. When the wavelength of a note is less than the diameter of the speaker, that note and those above it will start to “beam” out of the speaker. For a 12” speaker, that frequency is around 1100 Hz, which is about the highest note on the guitar. BUT, guitar strings produce a lot of overtones - fifths and octaves - which are not a lot quieter than the fundamental tone - so that playing A440 produces second harmonics of 1,760 Hz, which will go out like a lightbeam from a big speaker (okay, there are lobes to the side, but only if you’re doing a science degree). Stand to one side or above the speaker and those higher harmonics will pass you right by: the sound will be smoother and lack bite. What I heard over at my friend’s place, where we sit with our heads at speaker level, were all those higher harmonics, which gave the impression of bite and air. This is why mic-ing speakers is more of an art than it should be: where you put the mic affects what exact mix of overtones and bass notes you get.

Chasing tone is to acoustics what cooking is to chemistry: there’s a science underneath it, but mostly it’s applied magic.

The towel under the front of the speaker means I get the overtones beamed at me, so I hear a sound with more air and snap than I would if the speaker was pointing parallel to the floor. This makes a BIG difference to my appreciation of the “tones” I’m setting up on the HX Effects.

I have one Preset with nothing in it, to send the guitar output unchanged to the amp, but despite that the sound through the HX Effects sounds a little tighter and snappier. I’m assuming that the ADC-in / DAC-out conversion, plus any other system circuitry in this “empty path” through the HX Effects, creates some compression. I’m not complaining. It has given me back the neck pickup, which sounded too snarly and nasal through the Katana.

Okay… set-up over. Actual tone-chasing next.