The Steel Guitar Forum

My Evans has a master and a volume knob. Why? and what is the difference between the two?

To retain your "natural" steel sound,keep your "master",wide open. Then,set your "voume" to a "comfortable" setting. To have a "natural distortion",set your "volume", wide-open,& adjust your "master" accordingly.

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To add to "Smiley's" post, I take into condsideration,the "headroom" of the venue and adjust the two volumne controls accordinly. Sometimes you need less "Master" and more "Volumne" in a small setting,as you want the full rang of the Steel to be heard at a LOW volumne. At a high volumne,all freq's are ampified so we back off the "Volumne" a little and let the "Master" (power-amp) do the work for us.

These gentleman told you there Idea`s on the subject,but didnt really answer your question.
You have a preamp volume that gives you how much sound goes into and through your preamp tone settings etc. and a master volume that runs the power amp stage. From that little diddy comes all of the millions of opiones that steel players have on the subject. I strongly would agree with both of these guys. My father, Charlie Norris would tell you to set both volumes the same, Smiley would really be right if your into a rack system if you turn down the power amp you actually increase the THD distortion, so why would`nt that apply to regular amps I`d like to know? By the way find your owner`s manual on your amp,most of them have there opiones to.
P.S. How do you spell oPIonES!!! da!

Opinions, I think, at least that is my opinion. Hi Chuck!!!
Jerry

I purchased my Evans Custom FET 500 from Derrell Stephens just before the Buffington’s took over (to give you an idea of the year and model) It was one of the last ones he built. The instructions that came with it read as follows:

VOLUME:Sets the input level to the preamp .*NOTE* if distortion occurs in the reverb or effects you may be using, you will want to turn this down a notch. This level is proportional to the amount of Treble you use. A good rule of thumb is to set this control at 7 if the Treble is set at 2 or less, or if the Expand switch is off (down).


MASTER: Used to set the output of the pre-amp. This control doesn't have to be set higher than the volume as a rule. Example settings as follows:

VOLUME-7 TREBLE-1.5 BODY-9 BASS-8
EXPAND-on DEPTH-OFF REVERB-3 MASTER-2

VOLUME-5 TREBLE-3 BODY-6 BASS-8
EXPAND-on DEPTH-on REVERB-3 MASTER-5

This control (Master) may be used for studio quieting; only use as much as is needed to minimize noise to gain ratio. Example settings as follows:

VOLUME-8 TREBLE-1 BODY-9 BASS-7
EXPAND-off DEPTH-off REVERB-2 MASTER-1.5-2