I need help!! I hate my tone and am trying to find something a little closer to what I hear from Gilbert or anyone from that matter. Just a good hard rock metal tone.

The problem is I think my tone is too thin.
I am running a humbucker guitar (PRS, Charvel, Ibanez with great pick ups) into my pedal board that has a tube screamer and a fuzz universe (that I use mainly for my distortion) and into a Laney VC 30.

I use the fuzz universe for my main distortion with the laney gain on 70s type distortion about 2 oclock.
I have my bass at 1 oclock
mid at 7 oclock
treble at 2 oclock

I read where everyone has the mids turned up but to me when the mid is turned up it makes the amp sound boxy.. just not good at all.

What am I missing? My tone just sucks...

Oh man IMO you can probably get an awesome tone with the VC30 distortion alone. Try setting everything to 5 first, then start by increasing the bass, then cutting the bass, then do it for the treble and blah blah you know how it goes.

What I'd do is, I'd use the VC30's distortion and just use the tube screamer as a booster

Pao

Yeah I have tried that and I end up getting frustrated and going back to the no mid tone...

What are everyone elses settings for their amps?

Bass 4
Mid 6
Treb 5
Gain 3.5-4

Pick hard.

Truth

You need mids. Not extreme amounts, noon is fine. Sucking out mids can be the biggest contributor to "thin" tone. Mids are where the majority of guitar tone frequencies lie. I used to scoop the freqs on my amps as well, till I played a few shows and my tone sounded like tinky tonks.

Just remember, EQ is better meant for cutting frequencies, not for boosting. Too much treble, your high notes will sound sharp and lack substance, too much bass will make low strings too muddy, too much mids is too boxy. My tone personally never goes too far past or below noon. Maybe 1-2 oclock past, and 10-11 oclock below.

Try using your VC for the main distortion, and your fuzz universe to supplement it with extra lows, gains, pick attack, whatever. You can accomplish this by turning the gain on it way down, with the volume up (on the pedal), and turning the gain on your amp up. Amp distortion is generally more "fat" sounding than pedal distortion.

Yep, you need a good balance between all of these, bass = fat, mid = presence (to be heard), high-mid/high = precision, even more presence and agressivity.

Like said before, try setting everything on 5 and then turn up what you need (maybe turning down the others if it doesn't sound good enough)

I agree with Brian here.

I always use The amp distortion ... No matter how shitty the amp sounds, its usually fatter than any pedal.

Then you can use your fuzz pedals... They'll help you boost or add more distortion or brightness to the tone.

I agree about the mids, I feel like the more I play the higher I crank the midrange. As the owner of a VC30, I can say from experience that if you try to play it at a dramatically low "bedroom" volume- that is, with the master under 1 (as in the level, not the clock position) the tone is very anemic. You could try turning it up but plugging into the low input if volume is the issue.

#1. get an ADA MP1
#2. any power amp will do (I like Carvins)
#3. get a Genz Benz GFlex 2x12 cab

all this = MAXIMUM TONE !!!