The New Tone Thread

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Lt. Bob said:
well .... it's a modeler ...... I don't want to suggest you spending more money and I'd never suggest a particular amp but a modeling amp is simply an very basic amp-sim with a power amp and speaker attached.
Essentially it's AT4 thru your monitors, but with far less versatility.

Personally I find the 'puter based sims sound pretty damned good to me so for studio use I think you'd do better with one of the full featured amp sims ....... modeling amps always have limited tweakability compared to one of the big sims .... I really think that a modeling amp is more for someone who needs to carry it around and be able to jam or play live or play with friends so he can carry it over to their house.
But a full 'puter amp-sim is just gonna be mo' better IMO.

For what it's worth, I've never heard anything from you that sounded bad ...... to my ears your recordings are always various levels of good ...... some are flat-out awesome while others are merely very good ..... but I've never heard a single thing from you that wasn't good.
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I really appreciate that, Bob. I agree with the limitedness of the modelling amp. When I bought it, I was stupid. I didn't do any research. I just saw a Fender tube amp for sale brand new for about $275 and I got it. Turns out it was a modelling amp. It is very limited. For the distorted sounds, I can literally move my gain from 2 to 10 and hear no difference at all. I have to put the gain down to 1 just to hear the distortion back off a bit. I'm seriously going to look into AT3 or 4. I know it might be a bit of a cop out, but I do most of my best recording really late at night, which is why I usually have to re-amp. I can't crank it here at 2am. I think a good sim will allow me to record more often and better.

Greg_L said:
Agreed. We're nit-picking your guitar tones which are already at a way higher level than most home recorder's guitar tones.
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Thanx Greg. My problem is that I'm a perfectionist, and that's never good because it always leads to frustration, since there's no such thing as perfection. In this case, I want to plug my guitar in, turn up the volume and rock out sounding like Angus Young. That never happens. I would be ecstatic to get a sound as good as what Minerman's getting with his sims.
 
RAMI said:
Thanx Greg. My problem is that I'm perfectionist, and that's never good because it always leads to frustration, since there's no such thing as perfection. In this case, I want to plug my guitar in, turn up the volume and rock out sounding like Angus Young. That never happens. I would be ecstatic to get a sound as good as what Minerman's getting with his sims.
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Well, yeah, but sounding like Angus Young is a tall order.

There's also the dilemma of what you hear vs what others hear. It's tough to know when enough is enough. We tend to focus on minutia that no one else will ever hear. But if you're not pleasing yourself, then it becomes no fun. So it's a fine line to walk. I've had to somewhat recently train myself to just accept what I get most of the time and rock the fuck out. I don't want to get into option overload. I plug in, turn up, trust my instincts, and let er rip. It works great pretty much 100% of the time. Other people don't hear any of the insecurities we hear in our own stuff most of the time. I mean, I hear pro mixes that sound like shit to me, so wtf am I worrying about? I don't worry about what anyone else thinks anymore unless I ask.
 
Greg_L said:
Well, yeah, but sounding like Angus Young is a tall order.

There's also the dilemma of what you hear vs what others hear. It's tough to know when enough is enough. We tend to focus on minutia that no one else will ever hear. But if you're not pleasing yourself, then it becomes no fun. So it's a fine line to walk. I've had to somewhat recently train myself to just accept what I get most of the time and rock the fuck out. I don't want to get into option overload. I plug in, turn up, trust my instincts, and let er rip. It works great pretty much 100% of the time. Other people don't hear any of the insecurities we hear in our own stuff most of the time. I mean, I hear pro mixes that sound like shit to me, so wtf am I worrying about? I don't worry about what anyone else thinks anymore unless I ask.
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I agree. So true about hearing what others hear. I can come up with a sound, convince myself it's good, read a few opinions on it, and then go back and think "Of course this it scratchy (or honky, or whatever....). What the hell was I thinking?". So, I'm going through a phase now where I don't trust my ears because I know that what I think sounds awesome today might sound like shit tomorrow.
 
JDOD said:
Been struggling with the lead work to one of my tracks for a while, all sounded predictable and shit. I don't normally mess about with loads of effects but I have this morning... I also watched a thing last night where someone was explaining signature licks from Steve Vai and Randy Rhodes...

The strange thing is, I quite like it.

View attachment 95336

No I just have to do the lead work over the main riff which is a lot more difficult as the chords don't have a normal relationship to eachother.
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Haha, nice phaser effect. Funny, it actually works in that context. Was the guitar toggled to single-coil mode? It had that single coil chime and brightness to it. It stands out well, sounds close to a Tele.
 
Tadpui said:
Haha, nice phaser effect. Funny, it actually works in that context. Was the guitar toggled to single-coil mode? It had that single coil chime and brightness to it. It stands out well, sounds close to a Tele.
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Yeah, coil tap on the neck pickup. It's just a random sim phaser set with no forethought! I did give a little thought to the timing of the delay
 
RAMI said:
I agree. So true about hearing what others hear. I can come up with a sound, convince myself it's good, read a few opinions on it, and then go back and think "Of course this it scratchy (or honky, or whatever....). What the hell was I thinking?". So, I'm going through a phase now where I don't trust my ears because I know that what I think sounds awesome today might sound like shit tomorrow.
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It seems to me that you're just not getting to tape what you hear in your head. And that could just be a matter of getting a different amp or switching to good sims. I mean, look at the variables - you play good, you play good guitars, so what's left? The amp. If you want Angus-like sound, well, you know how he does it. :cool::thumbs up:

The rest of your sounds are on point. Vocals, bass, drums, you always nail that stuff. So maybe your ears are tricking you with guitar tone for right now, but they work great for everything else.
 
Jdod,
Oh man I miss Sunday morning wake and bake. It always wrecked the rest of the day, but what a glorious wreck it would be :) I hear ya on the low notes disappearing. It's made worse because I was improvising, and I tend to play softer and less confidently when I'm flying by the seat of my pants.

Ray,
Good point...it's hard to tell much about a bass tone when there are only 2 notes to go by :) I'll try something else in the near future with more range to it

Greg,
Thanks man, appreciate it. And I swear that I'll post some 2204 tones soon. I'm still not happy with my recorded tones from it, but I'll at least post what I'm getting so I can get some direction about where to go from here.

Rami,
Thanks dude! On the subject of new amps, I say find something that does one thing really well. Kind of like Greg with his Marshalls...you can walk up to it and within seconds get one of the few excellent tones that it can produce. The hard part is finding that right one that speaks to you. Pedals go a long way for different spices on the main course. And it doesn't hurt to have more than one main course! For me, I've been enjoying having a Fender for cleans and crunchy tones, and the Marshall for the crunch-to-almost-metal tones. Between those 2 amps and a choice of a few guitars, there are a lot of tones and textures to explore.

My only problem with amp sims is that I get absolutely buried in options. I'm thoroughly impressed by the tones that minerman is getting from AT4, so I can't really fault sims for having poor or unconvincing tones anymore. But just being the way I am, I usually end up spending an hour choosing heads, cabinets, speakers, microphones, mic position, pedals, etc. and totally lose sight of what I was trying to accomplish.
 
Greg_L said:
It seems to me that you're just not getting to tape what you hear in your head. And that could just be a matter of getting a different amp or switching to good sims. I mean, look at the variables - you play good, you play good guitars, so what's left? The amp. If you want Angus-like sound, well, you know how he does it. :cool::thumbs up:

The rest of your sounds are on point. Vocals, bass, drums, you always nail that stuff. So maybe your ears are tricking you with guitar tone for right now, but they work great for everything else.
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Thanx man. Yeah, guitar is the weak link right now. I just took a look at some Amplitube. Looks awesome, but like Tadpui said, it's almost too much choice. A million different amp options with a million different cab options with a million different mic options with room mic options etc..... I can see myself spending a week trying to find a sound and then just losing my mind and being found a week later, sucking my thumb in the fetal position. :eek:.

But I'm going to weigh all my options. I really think for me and my situation, a good sim might be worth trying out.
 
Especially if you are working in the same room as your amp, the cool thing about sims is that what you hear in your headphones is what ends up in the DAW, not a combination of headphones, amp and room
 
JDOD said:
Especially if you are working in the same room as your amp, the cool thing about sims is that what you hear in your headphones is what ends up in the DAW, not a combination of headphones, amp and room
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Yeah, you're absolutely right. I really think I'm going to check out some Amplitube. Fucking Minerman's a great sales rep and he doesn't even know it. His rock and roll tones sold me, man.

Hi Miner (Or anyone else that might know). I've been reading a bit. If I don't care about the "Room mic" section, is there a drastic difference between AT3 and AT4? I know AT4 added a few amps, like the Jubilee. But, generally, are they both pretty much the same sound quality if we take away the extra amps and the whole 3-D room mic thing?
 
ocnor said:
Yes we know how Angus gets killer guitar tones, but getting Mutt Lange to come to Rami's house could be quite problematic. :D
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He can send Shania and then I won't give a shit about my guitar tone. :D
 
Greg, I posted a song at the bottom of page 805 and there was a certain scrathiness to the tone, can you take a look and give me a hand.
 
JDOD said:
Greg, I posted a song at the bottom of page 805 and there was a certain scrathiness to the tone, can you take a look and give me a hand.
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Do you mean the rhythms? They sound pretty bad to me. The cleans and super noise lead are fine. The rhythms are murky and cloudy and scratchy. Sounds like a dark mic placement on a small cab. I get what you're going for, but it's hard to tell if it's a dialing-in-a-tone problem or a miking problem.
 
Greg_L said:
Do you mean the rhythms? They sound pretty bad to me. The cleans and super noise lead are fine. The rhythms are murky and cloudy and scratchy. Sounds like a dark mic placement on a small cab. I get what you're going for, but it's hard to tell if it's a dialing-in-a-tone problem or a miking problem.
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Yeah, I'm gonna try and retrack it this evening when I have a bit more time. That was a done fairly need the centre of the speaker too. This is starting to get on my tits a bit, I can't seem to record what hearing in my head and in the room.
 
JDOD said:
Yeah, I'm gonna try and retrack it this evening when I have a bit more time. That was a done fairly need the centre of the speaker too. This is starting to get on my tits a bit, I can't seem to record what hearing in my head and in the room.
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That's the center of the speaker? Jeez. How close?

Keep in mind that the center of a speaker is usually the brightest placement, but it also sometimes can sound like what you have here because the center of the speaker doesn't actually make any sound. If you pop the dustcap off a speaker, there's a hole back there. There's nothing there. The cone actually produces sound, and sometimes that can create like a sonic black hole right in the middle of the speaker up close because nothing is happening there. Sometimes just off-center sounds thicker but much cleaner and brighter than true dead center. Your rhythm tracks kind of sound like that hole-in-the-middle sound. Kind of. I'm just saying it's a possibility.
 
Its not quite in the centre - but then the grill is super dense so I can barely see where it is! I have a bright light with me today though to really try and work out what is going on in there to make my mic placement a little bit less random. I'm working out my mic placement based on measuring the distance from the edges of the cabinet to work out where the speaker centre is.
 
JDOD said:
Its not quite in the centre - but then the grill is super dense so I can barely see where it is! I have a bright light with me today though to really try and work out what is going on in there to make my mic placement a little bit less random. I'm working out my mic placement based on measuring the distance from the edges of the cabinet to work out where the speaker centre is.
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Is the speaker actually centered in the cab? Sometimes they aint.

Can you take the grill off?
 
Greg_L said:
Is the speaker actually centered in the cab? Sometimes they aint.

Can you take the grill off?
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From what little I can see, it appears centred. Nah, the grill cloth isn't coming off.

I've been working on sticking the mic just outside the centre. I'm actually gonna mark up the cloth with some tape this evening.

What pisses me off is that I sometimes get a decent tone and sometimes its a bag of dicks. I can't seem to get any repeatability - which is irritating as I move around a lot and often record in different places.
 
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