Our last post analyzing the top 250 presets on CustomTone covered the broad strokes—the amps that show up most often, what effects people reach for, signal chain patterns. This time I wanted the actual knob positions. What are people dialing in on these amps?
I cracked open all 250 and pulled the amp settings out of each one.
The Cheat Sheet
Before the deep dives, here's the practical version. These ranges cover where 80% of successful presets land (20th to 80th percentile, if you care about that sort of thing):
| Amp | Drive | Bass | Mid | Treble | Presence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PV Panama | 3.1 - 5.3 | 5.9 - 6.8 | 3.5 - 5.5 | 4.8 - 7.5 | 4.6 - 6.9 |
| Jazz Rivet 120 | 2.6 - 3.4 | 4.6 - 6.1 | 2.7 - 3.9 | 4.7 - 5.9 | 4.6 - 5.2 |
| Cali Rectifire | 3.0 - 6.9 | 3.5 - 5.5 | 4.1 - 6.8 | 4.1 - 6.7 | 3.2 - 6.0 |
| Brit 2204 | 3.3 - 6.9 | 3.3 - 4.7 | 4.9 - 6.0 | 6.3 - 7.0 | 3.3 - 7.0 |
| Brit Plexi Brt | 5.5 - 8.0 | 5.0 - 9.9 | 6.3 - 9.0 | 5.5 - 7.1 | 1.7 - 5.7 |
| US Deluxe Nrm | 3.7 - 6.1 | 4.5 - 6.8 | 5.0 - 6.8 | 4.2 - 5.5 | 2.0 - 4.8 |
| Essex A30 | 2.9 - 5.2 | 4.4 - 6.5 | — | 4.9 - 6.0 | — |
| ANGL Meteor | 2.8 - 7.3 | 4.0 - 5.7 | 2.7 - 4.5 | 5.0 - 8.4 | 4.2 - 5.5 |
| US Double Nrm | 4.5 - 6.7 | 5.0 - 7.0 | 5.2 - 6.6 | 5.0 - 6.7 | 1.2 - 4.8 |
One thing worth noting upfront: the Fender-style amps and the Essex almost universally run Master at 9-10. Marshall-types sit around 3-6. There's a reason for that—covered in the takeaways.
The Amp Deep Dives
17 presets. Also 6.8%.
76% of presets keep Drive under 3. Master sits at 10 on 94% of presets—part of the broader pattern with non-master-volume amps where maxing Master fully engages the power amp section (more on that in the takeaways). For a solid-state amp like the JC-120, this is less about power amp coloration and more about getting the full clean signal through without attenuation.
Bass and Treble move together (r=0.44)—a gentle V-curve. Boost the lows, boost the highs, get that shimmer.
Cab: 2x12 Jazz Rivet (59%).
17 presets. 6.8%.
Cali Rectifire: Drive Distribution
The Recto's Drive distribution is all over the place—edge-of-breakup to crushing rhythm—while the Panama clusters below 4. The reason goes back to the actual circuit architectures.
The Recto's preamp is derived from the Soldano SLO and uses a cathode follower-driven tone stack. That cathode follower has a low output impedance (~600 ohms) and acts as a current source, producing a more compressed signal that allows deeper mid scooping without the tone falling apart. The 5150 uses a plate-fed tone stack with much higher output impedance—more open and dynamic, and it naturally preserves midrange. The 5150 also has one more gain stage than the SLO/Recto preamp, and that extra saturation fills in frequency dips, effectively masking whatever mid scoop the tone stack produces. So even if you dial in similar EQ on both, they respond differently.
There's another quirk: the Recto's Mid control is fundamentally an attenuator—there's no setting where mids reach 0dB. Even maxed out, you're scooped relative to bass and treble. The "Modern" voicing actually reduces the scoop by about 2dB between 600-800Hz, which is counterintuitive—"Modern" is less scooped than "Vintage."
The correlations follow from all of this:
- Drive vs Mid (r=-0.42): Higher gain = scooped mids. Opposite of the Panama, and consistent with the cathode follower tone stack being able to handle deeper scoops.
- Drive vs Presence (r=0.64): As drive goes up, presence comes down hard. At higher saturation levels, the additional harmonic content makes high frequencies harsher, so people pull presence back to compensate.
47% of Recto presets are "mid-forward" vs 88% "neutral" on the Panama. The circuit topology drives the difference.
Cab: 4x12 Cali V30 (53%).
15 presets. 6%.
Median Drive is 5.0. Treble runs high (6.3-7.0), Bass stays moderate (3.3-4.7). The 800 is a single-channel amp—no channel switching—so Drive is your only gain staging. The moderate drive + pedal approach makes sense as a versatility play: keep the amp at a manageable crunch and use a boost or OD to push it into higher gain when you need it, rather than committing to a fixed high-gain setting.
13 presets. 5.2%.
Master at 10 on nearly every preset. Drive pushed to 7. Bass cranked to 8. Mids up at 7.5. But presence gets cut hard: 1.7 - 5.7.
The brightness comes from the channel design itself—the bright channel's input capacitor is already shaping the top end before the tone stack. Dime everything, sculpt with presence. That's the whole approach.
13 presets. 5.2%.
Everything moderate. Drive 5, Bass 5.5, Mid 6, Treble 5. Presence cut (2.0-4.8). Master at 10.
13 presets. 5.2%.
The AC30 has a different EQ structure (Cut instead of traditional Bass/Mid/Treble), so Mid data doesn't apply. Master at 8-10. Drive stays moderate (2.9-5.2).
11 presets. 4.4%.
Mids are scooped (2.7-4.5). Treble pushed bright (5.0-8.4). Everything else controlled. The bright treble preserves pick attack and note definition, while the scooped lower mids cut the muddiness that tends to build up in high-gain settings—keeping things tight on fast riffs.
11 presets. 4.4%.
Compared to the Deluxe: more drive (4.5-6.7 vs 3.7-6.1), more bass (5.0-7.0 vs 4.5-6.8), lower presence (1.2-4.8 vs 2.0-4.8). Master still at 10. Bigger, bassier, more headroom.
Takeaways
1. The Panama and Rectifire get opposite EQ treatment—and it maps to their circuit architectures.
The Panama keeps mids up as Drive increases (r=0.48). The Rectifire scoops them (r=-0.42). This maps to the real amp designs: the Recto's cathode follower tone stack handles deep mid scoops cleanly, while the 5150's plate-fed tone stack preserves midrange naturally and its extra gain stage fills in any frequency dips. Genre conventions play a role too, but the EQ choices people make on each model are consistent with how the underlying circuits actually respond.
2. The Panama gain recipe is nearly unanimous.
Drive stays below 4 in more than half of Panama presets, and a Scream 808 shows up in 71% of them. That's not a split vote—it's a consensus. The community has converged on the same gain-staging approach: let the 808 tighten the low end and push the signal hotter, and let the amp's preamp produce the saturation. Drive at 4 on a 5150 is already plenty of breakup. The 808 isn't adding distortion; it's shaping what arrives at the front end.
3. Presence and Master are linked—Marshall Masters tell you why.
Marshall-type models cluster their Masters at 3-6, and presence gets cut across the board. On these amps, presence works through the power amp's negative feedback loop—and at moderate Master levels, that loop stays fully active and can sound harsher than expected. The community response: cut Presence. The Fender-style amps dodge this entirely by running Master at 9-10, where the power amp is fully engaged and the NFB loop naturally softens.
The practical fix: push Master higher and reduce Channel Volume to compensate, which engages more power amp saturation and naturally tames the high end. (This mechanism is specific to Fender and Marshall models—the AC30 has no global NFB, and the Dual Rectifier's presence in Modern mode is a preamp filter, not NFB-based.)
4. Clean amps run Master at 10—and it's not a default, it's a design choice.
94% of Jazz Rivet presets, and nearly every Fender and AC30 preset, max the Master. On non-master-volume amps, Helix's Master controls how hard the signal drives the power amp section. Maxing it gives you the full power amp character—the warmth, compression, and sag that come from the power stage being fully engaged. This is how these amps were designed to sound; the real versions have no master volume because they were meant to be cranked. Turning Master down thins the tone by starving the power amp of signal and reducing the influence of Sag, Bias, and other power amp parameters. Channel Volume is the actual output attenuator—a flat-response level control after the amp model, like a fader on a console.
The Recipes
If you want a starting point, here's what works: