Too much bass in my jamspace

[Kornflake]

Sorry to keep asking questions here, but I figured the people at the Dream Theater forums probably know quite a bit about this sort of thing...
I just got a new guitar amp, and I'm loving it, but I'm finding it to be very very bass heavy.  I'm thinking it might be the room I'm playing in since this happened with my old amp and all my pedals too?  I always find that I need to turn the bass on all my stuff way way down and everything in the room is really really loud. What's the best way to set up a room to get some good acoustics?
The room is pretty much square shaped with each wall measuring about 16 feet.  It's got carpet on the floor and drywall ceilings and walls.  I have my guitar amp in the corner angled to be aimed towards the centre of the room.  In the opposite corner I have drums that face the amp, and in one of the other corners I have a sectional sofa that has a corner piece so it runs about 6 feet across each wall and meets in the corner (not an instrument, but I'm sure it effects the sound)
Is there anything that I can do to fix the acoustics in this room without spending a tonne of money?

[carl320]

Do you have your amp set with a lot of bass?  That can be another thing to think about.  Normally with electric guitars you shouldn't have too much bass in the sound, because when it's recorded it muddies up the sound.  For better clarity, you should have more mids.

Although with a square room, bass frequencies can build up in certain areas and affect the sound.  You could try placing the amp in a different place (away from a corner).

[jackbauer114]

For sure make sure you have more mids and less bass... idk what your amp setup is but make sure the cab is not directly on the ground... i have a peavey cab with no casters and if its directly on the floor it shakes the house with bass.

[jfwund]

What kind of guitar are you using? What kind of wood/what pickups? A mahogany guitar with humbuckers (les paul) will sound much darker and bass-heavy than an alder guitar with single coils (strat), as a rule of thumb. It could just be your guitar.

Have you tried plugging directly into the amp, no pedals? If that's OK, then you can just go pedal by pedal until you figure out which one's giving you the extra bass.

Turning the bass all the way down on the amp sure won't help your tone any (although on my Mesa the bass is set at around 8:00). but more mids could help. Does it have master volume? Where's your gain set? I've found that sometimes turning up the gain can add some lower frequencies to the mix.

Basically there are a ton of variables here, and if the bass is as heavy as you say, then there's probably not much to do in terms of changing the room setup that will fix the problem. You can always pull out the carpet and get the sofa out of there -- harder surfaces tend to reflect sound and don't absorb as much -- but that's a big job with no guarantee to solve your problem.