Quilter 101 Mini Reverb User Manual - page 6
INPUT: Accepts standard guitar or any other signal. An extra high input
impedance optimizes the sound of your guitar pickups.
GAIN: Determines how hard the amp “pushes” into overdrive. Depending
on the volume of your guitar pickups and playing attack, the sound should
remain clean from 0 to 3, and breakup should begin to set in between 3
and 5. Settings above 7 should result in increasing amounts of overdrive
and sustain.
LIMITER: This technology was originally developed to prevent radio
stations and recordings from being over-modulated by loud peaks, which
causes overdrive distortion. The limiter is a “phantom hand” on the gain
control that monitors output level and reduces the gain just enough to
prevent overdrive, and then restores gain as the note dies away. This pre-
serves the sustain you get with high Gain settings while reducing the usual
breakup. The LIMITER knob sets the threshold for this action. On zero,
nothing stops normal breakup. At about 3, the limiting threshold is above
the breakup threshold, so you can moderate overdrive to a “rolling boil”.
From 5 to 10, the threshold progressively moves below the breakup limit,
and you will increasingly feel the gain “pulling back” before it hits distor-
tion. The limiter still has some “give” to preserve musical dynamics, so it
can still be overdriven with enough Gain, but you will sense a much wider
“sweet spot” of sustain.
THREE-BAND EQ SECTION: The BASS and TREBLE controls use clas-
sic “tone stack” circuitry which has become strongly associated with the
“sound” of the electric guitar. The
MID control uses active cut-boost circuit-
ry for much greater range than the traditional “tone stack” Mid control.
• Begin with the EQ controls on “5” to produce a comfortable starting point
that suits most instruments quite well.
• The BASS control adds low frequencies from 0 to 8, and then subtracts
some midrange from 8 to 10 to create more contrast between high and low
frequencies.
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