Signature 284 User Guide
Getting the Feel of the Signature 284
Front Panel Controls
Like any classic tube amp, distortion is very dynamic in the Signature 284 — The amount of distortion is controlled by your playing style and dynamics. To get a cleaner sound, play a little lighter instead of changing the amp settings. To get more sizzle into a note or phrase, dig in as you pick it.
If you’ve never had the experience of working with a single channel tube amp before, the following may help you to get the hang of it. The basic idea is to use your guitar’s volume control along with changes in your playing style to pull in any tone from clean to mean.
1.Switch to your loudest pickup and turn your guitar volume up to 10.
2.Set the Left and Right Volume controls to "7".
3.Play, and turn up the Gain control until you’ve got the amount of distortion or overdrive that fits your most aggressive style. (Pull out the knob for High Gain if that's your thing.)
4.Now, turn your guitar volume down to about 7 and experiment with varying your touch to get clean chords and lines. You’ll find that you can cover the range of clean to bluesy overdrive just with touch.
5.Use the guitar volume control to “change channels.” Use 7 as a clean/overdrive “rhythm channel” and 10 as an overdrive/distortion “solo channel”.
Soon, you’ll find you can set and forget the amp — and just focus on playing what you feel.
The tone controls on the Signature 284 are very powerful — even small adjustments can make big changes to the sound. There are no wrong settings. Whatever sounds good is right!
Each control covers a different band of frequencies. Bass, Midrange, and Treble are independent — changes made to one will not effect the others. The effect of the Presence setting is dependent upon the amount of Treble. If Treble is set to 0, Presence settings will have no effect. Increasing the Treble setting will increase the amount of Presence. (Note that the opposite is not true — changes to Presence have no effect on Treble.)
Here’s a quick way to hear what each control contributes to the overall tone:
1.Set each of the tone controls to 0 and play. You will hear no sound. Now, turn Bass up and play. You will hear only the frequencies affected by the Bass control.
2.Turn Bass back to 0, turn up Midrange, and play. Now you hear only the frequencies controlled by Midrange. As Midrange controls the “meat” of guitar tones, this control has the most effect on the character of the sound.
3.Now, turn Midrange to 0, turn up Treble, and play to hear the frequencies affected by the Treble control.
4.Turn Treble to 0, turn up Presence and play. You won’t hear anything, because the Presence control is dependent on the Treble control. Turn Treble back up, turn up Presence and play. Now you will hear the glassy top end added by this control.
Tone Controls
(Bass, Midrange, Treble and Presence)
Neutral settings for the tone controls
Bass, Midrange and Treble=5
Presence=0.
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