Hmm.
To answer your first question: "what is an equaliser used for".
I guess some of us here are pretty particular about our tone and some of us aren't that anal about it.
For me.. I'm pretty anal about how my tone sits within a band situation.
As I'm sure you migh have seen before, loads of amplifiers out there have their own on-board EQ. However, more often than not, this EQ is limited to a "high", "mid / contour" and "low".. each paying attention to the treble, midrange and bass frequencies which come from your guitar and out through the speakers.
Normally, loads of guys think that a 'scooped' setting (whereby the mid-range of the tonal spectrum is turned down to 2-3 and the bass and treble is around 7-8?) is great. However, with my own personal experience such settings do not enable guitarists to hear themselves because when the whole band kicks in the sound of the guitar is swallowed up by the surrounding frequencies.
So the ideal siutation is to have a proper tonal balance on the amps.
Here's where the equaliser comes into play: you can use the 6-7 band EQ sliders on any given EQ pedal to sculpt your own tone irregardless of the amp's settings. So you could have a really 'scooped' tone coming from the amps, but if you can't seem to get it out of that 'metal' mode (due to some hidden scoop contour button somewhere) you can use the EQ pedal to compensate.
I normall put all of the amps' EQ settings of bass, mids and trebles on 6.5 before kicking in my EQ pedal for some bottom-end boost and a slight cut in mid-range for clarity. My OD pedal has a higher mid-range bump to it so that the switch between clean and OD is ok (since clean sounds are generally better with less mid-range).
Hope this helps. And I understand that what I have mentioned above might vary according to different users due to individual taste.
Some of you prefer less mids, less treble or whatever. Share your experiences perhaps?
