The parts of getting a good sound that are the same on every rig: what each control does, how to set an EQ, where pedals go, and which parts of a recorded tone you can reach at home. No gear you have to buy, and no pretending the last ten percent is reachable when it is not.
Set the gain first, then start with bass, middle and treble at 5 and move one control at a time. Cut the band that bothers you before boosting the one you want, because boosting raises the overall volume and tricks you into thinking the tone improved when it only got louder.
Gain sets how hard the preamp is driven and therefore how much distortion the amp makes. Volume sets how loud that is. On an amp with both a volume and a master volume, the first sets preamp level and the second sets how hard the power section works, which is a different kind of distortion with a different feel.
The standard order is tuner, then filter effects like wah, then compressor, then drive and distortion, then modulation, then delay, then reverb. The rule behind it is that each effect should act on a signal that already contains everything it needs to react to, and nothing it should not.
Scooping the mids means cutting the midrange control while leaving bass and treble high, which produces the smiley-face EQ curve behind most classic thrash rhythm tones. It sounds enormous on its own because the ear reads the exaggerated extremes as size.
Humbuckers send a hotter, darker signal into the amp, so they reach a given amount of saturation at a lower gain setting and usually need more treble. Single coils send a lower-output, brighter signal, so they need more gain for the same saturation and less treble to stay comfortable.
Cut the bass further than feels right, keep the gain lower than you expect, leave the mids audible, and use a noise gate. Most amps that supposedly cannot do metal are being asked to make heaviness out of bass and gain, which is where heaviness does not come from.
A record is a mix, not an amp. Layered takes, microphone choice and placement, studio compression, and mastering all sit between the amplifier in the room and the file you are listening to, and none of them are things a knob position can reproduce.
Everything in these guides is true of every amp. What none of it can tell you is where to set the controls for one specific song on one specific rig, because the same target lands at different positions on different amps. Tonelify does that part: name the song and the gear you own, and it returns the values for the controls your amp actually has.
