Schwarz: Greg's right man, that amp needs to have the power section cooking, & the only way to do that is to turn 'er up...Yeah, it'll be loud as fuck, but to me, there's nothing like a good tube amp hitting it's sweet spot, it's a magical thing...And, once you get it "there", you really don't need as much pre-amp gain as you'd think because of the sheer volume...
Shan: I've noticed about all my clips/tracks have that...I call it "cloudy" myself, because as soon as I do a little cut at that frequency, it's almost like boosting the high end...It helps bring out the clarity IMO...But, it would still be nice to not use the eq though, right??? It really doesn't matter what you have to do to get there, as long as the end result makes ya happy...