I will explain. On a N400 each tone control has no affect on the tone of the amp, WHEN in the center position. IE, when at 12 o'clock, they are affectively OUT of the circuit. When you go left the center frequency is attenuated, when you go right the center frequency is amplified.

NOT so on any Fender "stacked tone" control circuitry. To add further, Leo Fender was very preferential in HOW controls "felt". Remember, he was probably one of the most incredible marketing geniouses the musical world has ever known.

He litterally catered to how the player's minds worked. So just about everything Fender came out with, many many many players simply equated with. And of course would pay any price to have one.

So he had his engineers design each control so MOST of the change occurred during the first few degrees of the knob. Thus, why a Fender volume contol does little after about 3 on the knob. Same for the bass, treble and mid controls. This instant "gratification" was the secret that other manufacturers never understood.

This caused players to perceive that Fenders were more powerful because Gibsons, Ampegs, etc had to have their controls set on 7 or 8 (typ.) to sound as loud. Even though at 10, both amps (equal rated power) was the same.

I said all the above to say that the center frequency of Fender tone controls are really nebulous with respect to say a Peavey amp, because there is NOTHING similar in the way they are designed; or work.

Some facts:

1. Humans perceive level changes logarithmically.

2. Humans perceive tonal changes linearly (unless the level is real low).

3. The human ear was designed to listen to sound at average levels of 1/8 of a watt at 1KHZ.

4. It takes 10 times a level change for most humans to perceive the level has doubled (or halved).

5. If you wish your tone control to give a "boowah" affect, change the normal linear tone pot to a log taper pot using the same value.

6. Leo Fender had his engineers design their amps so the amp would produce the same level of output at a volume setting of 3 as other amps (with the same wattage rating) at a setting of 9.

7. If you connect the same make and type speaker (but of different impedances 4, 8 or 16 ohms) to an amp with am 8 ohm output, most players can only tell a small difference (if at all) in sound level.

8. The tone cutout switch inherrent on most all Emmons' PSG's, does not give the guitar more power (when off) as has been repeatedly stated. It simply sends more of the highest of the highs to the amp when the tone control is at maximum treble.

9. In double blind tests, players fail the test every time of a volume pedal "changing tone" as it changes level. Incidently, an inactive pot pedal DOES attenuate the highs to a very infinitessimal degree when it is not at maximum, but players in the above "tests" cannot prove it. Their answers vary all over the place including saying opposite things with the same pedal.

10. Many players (AND technicians) confuse gain for power. They are two distinctly different attributes of any amplifier. They have nothing to do with each other. A 10 watt amplifier can have a gain of 60DB while a 500 watt amplifier can have a gain of 55DB, etc.

11. 100% of all the great musicians used as "testers" during the early stages in the development of musical instrument amplifiers, felt that an amplifier with 100% flat frequency response did Not sound as good as one where the frequencies around 800HZ were attenuated. To date this remains a mystery, nevertheless very true.

12. Impedance has nothing to do with resistance, yet BOTH are expressed in ohms.

13. A straight length of wire has NO impedance (at audio frequencies). Yet if you form that wire in to coil loops, it does have an impedance at any given audio frequency.

14. Yet in 12 and 13, the resistance measures the same!

15. Audio power and impedance is always measured at 1KHZ unless otherwise specified. Therefore a microphone with a rated impedance of 600 ohms, may measure 2000 ohms at 10KHZ!

16. The only power that is considered 100% true according to most audo engineers is "True RMS power". IE, the continuous power output of a given amp driven to its maximum level using the amps OWN power supply at 1KHZ.

Ironically this almost always comes out to be the lowest power rating of the many ways a manufacturer can determine power.

In other words, manufacturers can take a 50 watt true RMS amplifier and claim it as putting out 550 Watts "peak to peak" music power!

It is NO wonder the US Gov't made them stop this utter chacanary! Yet before they did this, the entire audo industry was guilty of out and out fraud! NOT one was stating power using true RMS power measuring.

(there were some that did use Peak power. But none used true RMS)

With that I am going to bed. May Jesus bless you all,

"11. 100% of all the great musicians used as "testers" during the early stages in the development of musical instrument amplifiers, felt that an amplifier with 100% flat frequency response did Not sound as good as one where the frequencies around 800HZ were attenuated. To date this remains a mystery, nevertheless very true."

I'd like to offer a suggestion as to why this is true. One time at the ISGC I got to meet Bill Lawrence. He, being an expert in magnetics and magnetic field theory, gave me a very long dissertation on why pickups have certain tonal characteristics. After a lot of trig and calculus, he finally came to a simple graph that was a line showing the typical frequency response of a magnetic guitar pickup. Whether it was a 12string steel pickup or a 6-string guitar pickup, there were some commonalities. The main two factors were that there is almost always a high power range that averaged around 710Hz based on his math. There is another resonant peak up around 2.5kHz. I believe that this large hotspot around 710Hz is the main reason that guitar amps over the years have been designed with a "voicing" or a midrange dip in this region. A Webb or Fender will have a dip around 500-550Hz. A Sho-Bud amp will tend to dip up closer to 1000Hz. Most Peavey steel amp users tend to dip at around 800Hz. I think that this EQ dipping is actually so that the pickups response can be made smoother, flatter, bringing out the full range of the music in a more balanced way. Often times an amp's treble control will address the higher peak at 2.5kHz. I think our ear wants to hear a balanced sound so if the pickup is hot at 800Hz, then it only follows that we'd like our amp to dip at 800Hz to compensate.

Just a theory,

That is a very interesting theory - I wish I had a better sense of the physics (electro-magnetism) that makes that so. I've always been intrigued by the fact that in "blind tests" where I dial out the most disturbing frequency on my steel amp - that it is always within a few Hz of 800 Hz - and the fact that 99% of PSG'ers dial out 800 Hz, too. There has to be something more to it than arbitrary "personal preference".