OK, let's have some more science. Undoubtably, you can shape tone with an EQ. If you have tried every knob on your guitar and your amp, and you don't like that, it's worth a shot.
So let's talk about what is happening with distortion. There is a good page on muzique.net I think it is that talks about hard vs. soft clipping, and symmetrical vs. asymmetrical clipping. There are a lot of different tones just from those techniques.
The types of distortion will be expressed as a unique harmonic distortion signature; even- vs. odd-order, higher order and lower order.
The fundamental range of a guitar is 80Hz to a little over 1kHz. A guitar generates a fair amount of harmonics naturally; this is dependent upon the type of pickups as well as your style of plucking. Tone controls are generally designed to act as a high-shelf cut in the harmonic overtone range, acting as a 6dB/octave low-pass at their max setting. So you have some degree of control over the content of the overtone series right on the guitar and your fingers.
Let's assume a simplified model where there is no harmonic distortion in any part of the chain, other than the distortion circuit (whatever that may be). So we insert a graphic EQ in the chain. There are three possibilities for the EQ bands: they are below 80Hz (sort of a rumble filter, I guess, that may help but could also be easily and cheaply added on the guitar itself); within the range of the guitar's fundamentals (along with the overtones of the low fundamentals); or solely within the range of the overtone series.
It's pretty well known that if you take the guitar in its "brightest" setting--the bridge pickup, picking hard right at the bridge, you will generate lots of overtones.
That overtone-rich signal now heads to the distortion circuit. If you have a distortion that generates lots of higher-order overtones, that approach could sound quite painful. You are also going to get a lot of intermodulation distortion, which is why you aren't likely to select that combination for chords.
OK, so with your graphic EQ, you can cut some of those overtone ranges--probably the painful ones--before they hit the distortion circuit and generate yet more overtones. I fully acknowledge that's a good idea; I just question the absolute need when there are so many other points available to accomplish the same goal.
If you are cutting the fundamental ranges, then you could get unusual results, which may be what you're looking for, but I would consider more of a special-effects tone.
Finally, a guitar woofer will roll off above about 8kHz, and the mics typically used on guitar will give away a bit more above 12kHz. That is not to say that changing the EQ of those ranges will have no effect on the final output, again due to intermodulation products.
I understand why you might want to use any or all of those techniques, but if any of them become
mandatory, then I would consider the electric guitar to be essentially a broken instrument. I mean, I don't see violinists or oboists saying they need graphic EQ . . . slap a good flat-response mic on a good instrument and a good player in a good room, and you're done.
I experience the same thing with a DI into a mic amp--no EQ of any sort required. Now, would I feed that direct into a distortion circuit? Sometimes; most of the time actually. EQ after distortion usually works fine for me, I don't use lots unless I want an unusual tone (I like unusual tones, but I never use them twice). I almost never use a heavy amount of hard clipping as a normal guitar tone though--I want a signal that breaks up a little at the top, a bit of second-order to warm things up below. That kind of tone is really not hard to get. A good metal tone, I dunno. Another problem with the article; it was kinda one-size-fits-all.
I fully understand what you want and how you get it, which is great. I just didn't get that from the article. Seriously, the first thing it recommends is a chain of three pedals. I'll pretty much never agree with that unless we are talking The Edge or something, that's just my bad experience from the '80s though (I like The Edge
)
Funny thing is, before I ever did mics I was looking at doing guitar pedals instead. Of course, there are a zillion boutique pedal makers, most of them with much better artwork than I could ever be bothered with, so I don't think I would have been very successful . . .
Now, a
tailored EQ pedal with the ranges/Qs in question specially selected, with high-quality components; that sounds very interesting. For somebody else to do
Somebody probably has. That to me would have much more appeal--like a mini-Pultec for a guitar in a stompbox (when I use EQ before emulation, it's usually the UAD Pultec). Now we're talking
