EVH Iconic head... Advice needed.

[Brett]

I just remembered something I used when I had a Peavey 5150 that I felt improved my sound dramatically. I put a BBE Sonic Stomp in the effects loop, and used that to manipulate my tone. It worked fantastically. Don't know if it will translate the same on the Iconic, but it did make it sound great.

Yeah, I have a BBE Sonic Maximizer 264 that I run in the effects loop that makes the 5150 sound so much tighter and better. I’ve never run it without it ever.

[nobozos]

You know, now that I think about it, I did use a Decimator pedal in the effects loop to try to tame the hiss. I ultimately ended up abandoning it, because I didn't care for how it impacted the tone and sustain, but I did try a noise gate for a while.

I also started playing with less gain, which helped a lot. I was actually surprised how little gain I needed. I cut it in half from what I normally had dialed in, and I felt it still had plenty of gain and actually sounded better.