The Tone Thread

[Greg_L]

Cheers, now I know what I'm looking for I can. The thing I like about this is that I can still dial in my tone in the room and actually play with a real guitar tone.

Its certainly one of the cheaper options on my list of ways to record loud but not loud.

Mine fell off the top of a Marshall stack a while back and the giant ceramic rheostat broke. I ordered another one and put it in myself. While I was in there, I was shocked by how little was actually going on inside an attenuator. There's nothing to it. You could just build one yourself if you wanted a little project.

[JD01]

Cheers, now I know what I'm looking for I can. The thing I like about this is that I can still dial in my tone in the room and actually play with a real guitar tone.

Its certainly one of the cheaper options on my list of ways to record loud but not loud.

Mine fell off the top of a Marshall stack a while back and the giant ceramic rheostat broke. I ordered another one and put it in myself. While I was in there, I was shocked by how little was actually going on inside an attenuator. There's nothing to it. You could just build one yourself if you wanted a little project.

Its probably well with my capabilities, but I'd rather not change nuking my amp when I fuck it up and its not that expensive. Its within the realms of a birthday present from wifey.

It would only be sitting on my amp shelf so is unlikely to fall anywhere - my amp isn't loud enough to need attenuating live if I ever start playing live again.

[Greg_L]

Its probably well with my capabilities, but I'd rather not change nuking my amp when I fuck it up and its not that expensive. Its within the realms of a birthday present from wifey.

It would only be sitting on my amp shelf so is unlikely to fall anywhere - my amp isn't loud enough to need attenuating live if I ever start playing live again.

One thing to note is that there is no such thing as a transparent attenuator. They all alter the sound to some degree. How much sound degradation you get depends on how far you bog the amp down. Bringing a cranked Plexi down to TV volumes requires a huge pile of attenuation, so naturally the sound suffers some. That's not really what it's for though. Knocking off a few dbs so I can use that amp live is much more tolerable.

The problem with recording with attenuation is you remove the speaker from it's happy spot. Sure you can crank the amp and bring the volume back down to a saner level with the attenuator, but you totally neuter your speakers like that. And we know that the speaker is a huge part of the equation. But just knocking off a few dbs is no problem.

[JD01]

Its probably well with my capabilities, but I'd rather not change nuking my amp when I fuck it up and its not that expensive. Its within the realms of a birthday present from wifey.

It would only be sitting on my amp shelf so is unlikely to fall anywhere - my amp isn't loud enough to need attenuating live if I ever start playing live again.

One thing to note is that there is no such thing as a transparent attenuator. They all alter the sound to some degree. How much sound degradation you get depends on how far you bog the amp down. Bringing a cranked Plexi down to TV volumes requires a huge pile of attenuation, so naturally the sound suffers some. That's not really what it's for though. Knocking off a few dbs so I can use that amp live is much more tolerable.

The problem with recording with attenuation is you remove the speaker from it's happy spot. Sure you can crank the amp and bring the volume back down to a saner level with the attenuator, but you totally neuter your speakers like that. And we know that the speaker is a huge part of the equation. But just knocking off a few dbs is no problem.

I won't be recording the speaker though - I'll be recording the direct signal (as you did in your example) and adding a cab impulse. I'll be attenuating it down to a TV volume level, but that's just for my own sanity/ears so I can record earlier in the morning and into the late evening and just generally not annoy people.

Its just one of the options I have along with things like Tad's Torpedo style thing, getting a nice 2x12 and just carrying on as I am, getting something digital. I'm actually pretty happy with the tones on my latest recordings and they'll probably improve more when I change pickups.

Its probably for the best that I didn't make major changes last autumn as I originally planned as when I make a change now I'll be trying to make an improvement/tweak as opposed to trying to find some magic fix to a problem as I would have been doing last Autumn.

[Greg_L]

I won't be recording the speaker though - I'll be recording the direct signal (as you did in your example) and adding a cab impulse. I'll be attenuating it down to a TV volume level, but that's just for my own sanity/ears so I can record earlier in the morning and into the late evening and just generally not annoy people.

I see. Okay. I don't know what kind of monitoring latency you'll get. You might need to make a way to hear the amp live as you play. You might still need to mic the speaker just so you can hear it through the headphones. You will not want to hear the direct feed in. It will be crap.

[JD01]

Yeah, I won't be listening to the direct feed at all. I'll just apply the impulse to the track afterwards.

[rammer24]

Bloody hell, Rami, this sounds good too. So is this all free?

Yeah. Free Lepou Hybrit into a free LeGreg cab impulse.

[Greg_L]

Yeah. Free Lepou Hybrit into a free LeGreg cab impulse.

Ahem, it's Gregois le Bloodshit.

[rammer24]

Oh shit sorry. I thought we were on a first name basis. Pretty presumptious of me, I guess.

[Greg_L]

Oh shit sorry. I thought we were on a first name basis. Pretty presumptious of me, I guess.

We are, but I prefer to keep it formal when speaking French.

[Minerman]

Greg: Did you make those impulses dude??? I've briefly read how some guys do it, but I've never attempted that myself...Lemme know...

Rami: The Axe FX folder are impulses to use with an Axe FX dude, I think you just copy 'em into the Fractal unit from your computer...

The Nebula thing is another animal altogether...I have Nebula 3, & that's part of my signal chain for my mixes...It's basically simulations of any kind of gear you could imagine, Neve, SSL desk/mixer channels, compressors, eq's, reverb units, basically anything you could imagine...It's hard to get your head around at first, because of how you have to adapt your workflow for it...Say you load an API eq, you have to have an instance of Nebula for each band of the eq you want, so if you want a 5-band eq, you use 5 Nebula instances on that track...It sounds just batshit crazy, & is very CPU heavy, but when you finally get your head around it, it's ok...I personally don't think it's a lot better than say Slate's console emulations, but a lot of people swear by it...

In short, what you wanted to know about the Nebula cabs is that it's a very CPU intensive cab sim, that does sound a little different/maybe better than regular IR's, but it comes at a cost...Nebula 4 was released a couple months ago, but I haven't kept up with it to even know if there are any new guitar amp cabs/IR's for it or not...When I use Nebula, it's always the last stage of the mix, but for me, the Slate plugins I have as as good & easier for me to use...

[JD01]

Bloody hell, Rami, this sounds good too. So is this all free?

Yeah. Free Lepou Hybrit into a free LeGreg cab impulse.

Just remembered - I can't actually DI my guitar straight into my AI. The pickups are too hot and it clips the preamp.

[rammer24]

Rami: The Axe FX folder are impulses to use with an Axe FX dude, I think you just copy 'em into the Fractal unit from your computer...

The Nebula thing is another animal altogether...I have Nebula 3, & that's part of my signal chain for my mixes...It's basically simulations of any kind of gear you could imagine, Neve, SSL desk/mixer channels, compressors, eq's, reverb units, basically anything you could imagine...It's hard to get your head around at first, because of how you have to adapt your workflow for it...Say you load an API eq, you have to have an instance of Nebula for each band of the eq you want, so if you want a 5-band eq, you use 5 Nebula instances on that track...It sounds just batshit crazy, & is very CPU heavy, but when you finally get your head around it, it's ok...I personally don't think it's a lot better than say Slate's console emulations, but a lot of people swear by it...

In short, what you wanted to know about the Nebula cabs is that it's a very CPU intensive cab sim, that does sound a little different/maybe better than regular IR's, but it comes at a cost...Nebula 4 was released a couple months ago, but I haven't kept up with it to even know if there are any new guitar amp cabs/IR's for it or not...When I use Nebula, it's always the last stage of the mix, but for me, the Slate plugins I have as as good & easier for me to use...

Thanx buddy. Well, that's 2 folders I won't be needing. I don't have Axe FX, and Nebula sounds way like way more than I'd ever need.

[Greg_L]

Greg: Did you make those impulses dude??? I've briefly read how some guys do it, but I've never attempted that myself...Lemme know...

No, no, hell no. I did not make them. I don't know how to make them or who made them or where I got them or even why I got them. I've had them for a few years now, just sitting in a folder. I think I probably downloaded them from somewhere just for my own education and experience. I had to give it a try. I'll try anything. I've shared them because they do work and sound good if someone wants to go that route.

[Minerman]

Thanx buddy. Well, that's 2 folders I won't be needing. I don't have Axe FX, and Nebula sounds way like way more than I'd ever need.

Yeah dude, FWIW, I've used Nebula on a few mixes, but it's a lot of hassle for not much in return compared to other plugins...I don't think I've used any of those cabs in years now, waaaay before I went the real amp route...

No, no, hell no. I did not make them. I don't know how to make them or who made them or where I got them or even why I got them. I've had them for a few years now, just sitting in a folder. I think I probably downloaded them from somewhere just for my own education and experience. I had to give it a try. I'll try anything. I've shared them because they do work and sound good if someone wants to go that route.

Ok dude, I thought you'd made 'em...I've read how to do that a few times, but it seems like a lot of work to me...I thought you'd turned on your voodoo wizardry switch & made some Gerg impulses...


Everybody remember I've got all kinds of IR's if any of you want any of 'em...

[Greg_L]

Okay gents, this was kind of interesting.

This is basically what Rami was asking about in his thread about running sims into an amp. So what I done did here is this...I pulled up LePoop SLP/JCM sim in Reaper, and set it to JCM mode with the same settings I used on my own JCM 800 yesterday. The difference this time is instead of using a cab sim, I ran it out to the power amp return of my Marshall JVM into a real cab. So this is a sim head into an actual power amp into an actual cab mic'd with an actual mic. Weird.

On the real amp side of things, I'm only using the power amp section of the amp. Basically, all I get is volume and presence. None of the gains, channels, or EQs on the amp do anything set up like this. It's strictly power amp. All I can do is turn it up and down and give it more or less presence. All of the tone shaping,gain, EQ, etc is done in the sim. The mic setup is the exact same as yesterday's clips. Unmoved.

Anyway, here it is.

LePoopJVMGB57.mp3

Now to me, that's searingly bright and pretty harsh. But that's exactly how it came out using the same settings on the sim as I'd used on the real amp.


So here it is again with a little high shelf EQ reduction.

LePoopJVMGB57EQ.mp3

That's a little better.

See what you think.

[ocnor]

Both clips sound ok to me.

[JD01]

The first one is bright, but not too bright. I think they both sound alright, they just lack a bit of balls and the clarity of your usual clips.

[Greg_L]

Both clips sound ok to me.

Yeah I think they're definitely better than I expected.

The first one is bright, but not too bright. I think they both sound alright, they just lack a bit of balls and the clarity of your usual clips.

I noticed while I was tracking it that it was missing the punch and dynamics that I usually feel from playing straight into the amps. It seemed very flat, for lack of a better word. And that's always been my biggest gripe with sims - they have no dynamics. I guess they can't. The sim being amplified by a real amp didn't seem to matter. That flatness was still there.

[rayc]

The 1st one definitely is bright. Mind you it's a tone I'd work hard to achieve and be happy as Larry I found. The 2nd with the shelf down certainly sounds more 'real" but it does lack the thud and bam of the guitar -> amp -> speaker-> mic connection.