There are several ways of altering the characteristic in a globe valve depending on the particular design.
The most common is to use the profile on the front of the plug head. In this case, the seat ring and retainer are not changed. If the plug is cage guided the characteristic of the control valve is usually determined by the retainer or disk stack with the plug having a flat face. As the plug moves up, it uncovers more flow paths.
A series of small holes at the bottom of the retainer with larger holes at the top will give a bi-linear characteristic, which can be designed to give results similar to equal percent.