Setting

Had been playing the EVH for the past few days. The settings you see here are fixed regardless of the different guitars that were plugged into it:

• EQ. If you have tried Van Halen's amps in any incarnation, you'd realize that the treble response is excessive. I've totally grounded mine (zero!) as seen above & compensated it through some presence. Even at that much (slightly less than 25%), the amp's still hissing at the top end especially with more volume added in.
• Presence. As mentioned above, it's used to keep track of how much top end ended up in the mix. Unlike the HIGH option, presence here seems to spill over into the other frequencies. It's like a universal control of sorts & possibly the most under-used option in amps together with RESONANCE.
• Gain. I like how the EVH was conceived to be a very angry amp in terms of gain. This way, players are compelled to dial it in to taste, not dime it & think higher gain settings are the best. On that note, I have the tendency to max the gain on amps I use. 😅 But seen here, it's under lots of constraint, just slightly more than 50% to get things through. I'm not saying this is the optimal when EVH is concerned but we should dial it in (for everything in fact, not just gain) on a need basis with careful listening along the way.