Ableton Forum

The Warpigs are great. Powerful; chunky; great harmonics and excellent definition. It's difficult to gauge which one is 'you', without trying them out (not always an option) - but I'm also interested in the nailbomb.

Whilst amp sims will always be my first port of call due to practicality (both in terms of sound; and efficiency) one benefit of getting my project off the ground will be getting a decent amp (probably starting with a Marshal DSL halfstack; upgrading to a Diezel) for recording/live use. I feel like it's a level of quality and power I need to experience (I sold my last valve amp five years ago; and my guitar playing has advanced significantly since then).

Regarding bass tones, when using synths with guitar, what I would say is that regardless of your style, you need to ensure consistency in the tones you use behind your guitar in mixes. It's profoundly easier to change the frequencies/qualities of a synth's tone to ones that will not compliment and even clash with a guitar, compared to when using a bass. Carefully tune/EQ your drum kits and basses and add them to your library; also note the note range that compliments your guitars range best; and generally you learn to keep your programming within a certain range to work with your guitar.

there's a great video from the french band "air" of the guitarist who uses Guitar Rig. I'd recommend guitar rig personally, but i haven't used it extensively in the live context. if all you need is the guitar sounds, run it in standalone and it might be more stable than within Live.

Reading around, it sounds like the Motu Zbox is for people using cheapo sound cards?

I have a TC Electronic Konnekt 8, with instrument inputs - would it make any difference?

According to them, yes. Personally, I doubt it. Dialing the input levels properly (on the hardware & software level) is imo way more crucial to achieving a good tone/feel than a little loadbox like that. But it's priced just low enough to make you think "it might not be the magical thing I'm expecting, but hey, it's cheap enough to buy and try it."

And this might sound obvious, but don't underestimate the importance of the simulations themselves. When I was searching for a good clean tone, I was frustrated by what I perceived as a lack of dynamics/responsiveness, which I blamed on my setup (guitar with high output humbuckers -> 5 meters cheap cable -> Komplete Audio 6). Then I tried Lepou's LeXTAC (yellow channel) with Redwirez impulses (I tried with the Marshall 1960A with Celestion G12s which we can get for free) instead of Guitar Rig and wow — plain and simple, the culprit was the software. With the same hardware setup, I rediscovered what it can be to play through amp sims.

I've got Lepou setup, what do you recommend for loading impulses?

Gab, I would also like to know what you would recommend for loading Impulses?

Alex, thanks for the piece of advice, I'll be sure to keep that in mind when I finally get around to using synths and guitar together.

Ambientidm, that device sounds interesting, and useful. I might have may have to get one.

Jekblad, I'll give Guitar Rig a try. Hopefully I'll be getting a NI Audio Komplete 6 unit this christmas.

For impulses, just try LeCab2. Don't hesitate to use multiple IRs after the amp. Generally, I use two mics close to the speaker, panned slightly apart (say 30% left and 30% right), and two ambient/room mics panned hard left and right. Adjust levels to your taste. It really allows the sound to "breathe".

You can technically do the same in Guitar Rig 5 with the Control Room Pro, which actually uses Redwirez impulses (built into the software — there is no way to re-use them without the Control Room Pro), but curiously I find using an impulse loader with normal impulse files much easier.

Remember you can use Guitar Rig 5, disable the built-in speaker emulation and use an impulse loader in the chain. And although I might seem to diss GR5 in favor of free amp sims, something would be missing in my setup if I had not GR5. It might change in the future, but if you get it for free with your audio interface, it's worth trying to get something out of it.

alexjholland wrote:Reading around, it sounds like the Motu Zbox is for people using cheapo sound cards?

I have a TC Electronic Konnekt 8, with instrument inputs - would it make any difference?

it's for impedance issues
my guitar interface is a vg-99 so i don't need it but others might

I didn't read everything yet, but I personnaly use ableton as my guitar fx/looper rig, then I run the guitar tracks out through an AC15, and that makes the difference compare to going out through a PA.

ambientidm wrote:

alexjholland wrote:Reading around, it sounds like the Motu Zbox is for people using cheapo sound cards?

I have a TC Electronic Konnekt 8, with instrument inputs - would it make any difference?

it's for impedance issues
my guitar interface is a vg-99 so i don't need it but others might

I'm not quite sure. It says it reproduces the load of a real amp on the pickups of the guitar, so there might be a slight impedance change, but you still need to plug it on an instrument imput. It's nothing like a direct box, for instance.

Gab wrote:

ambientidm wrote:

alexjholland wrote:Reading around, it sounds like the Motu Zbox is for people using cheapo sound cards?

I have a TC Electronic Konnekt 8, with instrument inputs - would it make any difference?

it's for impedance issues
my guitar interface is a vg-99 so i don't need it but others might

I'm not quite sure. It says it reproduces the load of a real amp on the pickups of the guitar, so there might be a slight impedance change, but you still need to plug it on an instrument imput. It's nothing like a direct box, for instance.

i guess i didn't read it too closely
just go with a countryman di box instead

VicesLikeVipers wrote: Subsynth: you set up sounds interesting. Do you use a controller to change settings?

This was my setup a while back, I've tweaked it a little bit since.

I have a Livid Ohm that I mapped a few buttons for on/off of the delays and a knob to the OD/Volume combo knob. (sorry my macro knobs aren't visible) Before that I had an APC and would use the "device control" to control more, I have some spare knobs on my keyboard midi controller so I may get to mapping those to my EQ controls.

I use the external instrument so I can tweak the latency / delay a little bit, I don't know if it helps or not...

The "speaker on" control turns on a clean signal at the end of the chain.

The blue dry/wet is for reverb.

Here's where my guitar tone's at currently: https://soundcloud.com/p-ride/checkin

My mixes sounded ace on my KRK monitors, but way bass heavy (to the point of drowning mids/uppers) in my car.

Perhaps my monitors handle bass a lot better than car speakers and I need to take that into account? I need to do some research/experimentation..