Being Steve Lukater a session guy it is hard to track down what gear was used in a particular track. If you watch pictures from the studio sessions you will see a parade of amps.
But since many ossociate Lulater with bogner i've watched a demo of the guy using that amp and worked on that tone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouPa5swr610
Side note: You will see 3 amps in the video. You will read a number of explanations for the number of stacks you see on many stages: it's a backup, only the power section is used to have more power on stage (???). I have a different one. A lot of BIG do not change channel, they change amp to get different tones. There are many reason. If you use 3 amps, one for the clean, one for the crunch and one for the rythm, you can feed diffrent cabs with different speaker and mike position. A very good example is the clean tone. Many prefer 2x12 open cab for the clean tones. Petrucci on stage uses 2x12 cab for the clean tone. Vai has been spotted several time using 2x12 fenders for the clean tones.
Lets talk about the Boger XT (aka Bogner Ecstasy). We have 4 option modeled after 2 of the channels of the real amp, 2 different switch position for every channel.
The Blue Vintage is the starting point. Like a Plexi with a fully working eq stack. Its modern counterpart is like an hotrodded plexi: more gain.
The Red has even more gain and it is voiced to have more mids, has you will expect from a lead channel. Some will define the Red Vintage as an hotrodded midboosted plexi and the modern like a trip in the JCM800 territory.
Lets talk about the preset now, this i sthe signal chain:
The first 2 are deactivated, we have:
a touch wah
a MIB distortion that Lukater uses as a lead boost
then we have the amp:
almost default settings with less mids and more gain. Sorta of all round. I've choosen the Blue modern channel because it is the more "in the middle". I can go from the lead tone in the video to almost clean by rolling off the volume.
Then the Fast Gate Noise suppressor and the Boger CAB, default settings:
The usual shelf EQ
Then another disabled effect:
An univibe is always present in Steve's pedalboards! Just switch it on and experiment.
(Also a chorus, if you like...)
Lukater uses a lot of delays with various settings, this is in the ballpark of the standard lead setting:
I've choosen the Ekopress for its vintage subtle character.
And finally the classic studio reverb, a plate:
If you noticed that my icon is different and want to know why, you can find it here:
https://ridingthemustang.blogspot.com/2020/12/amperoeditorhack.html
The preset was made for headphone playing, input level at 0 and not global EQ.
As usual you can download the preset from the user group!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/HotoneAmperoUsers/
If you think that i nailed the preset or i am completely wrong you can write down here in the comment or in the fb group!
