Ableton Forum

I have been playing guitar for a number of years and I am trying to (as usual) get the best distortion possible for very heavy rock and industrial music. I have a six string and a 7-string.

What is the best distortion plugin you guys use? I have been experimenting with the effects included with Live5, as well as Reaktor 5 (Banaan Electric), and also Izotope's Trash. I also checked out some from plugins from KVR.

What's your best recommendation to get some killer, absolutely over the top distortion?

i really love Trash for this.
Guitar Rig is okay for it as well, but Trash has given me a few episodes of "crunch" that GR could never accomplish.

[edit] - here's a sample of what Trash can do - http://www.djadamjay.com/music2/AJ_Industrial3.mp3

and thats not a guitar, its actually drum sounds in Impulse going through iZotope Trash. yea, its that crunchy and capable. anything that can turn drums into a reznor-style Les Paul assault gets my vote.

Banaan Electric is my fave.

a stack of marshalls is my favorite.

my experiences w/ the software distortion, they can be actually pretty passable though never quite as authentic as the "real" thing, ya know, where you can smell the tubes

some things i've figured out (if you haven't already )

Gate, limit, compress; using these with a disto-plug, you can get a signal-path-patch that really crunches.

Reverb - often, a lot of effort goes into getting just the right reverb for a distorted guitar, if you do it close and tight it can sound just, in-yo-face - it goes a long long way.

If you're using a delay, put it in a send and just a touch of chorus behind it, will sound quite a bit warmer.

Expect some flutter if you're matching human-timed and MIDI-timed sources.

Gotta second this one:

a stack of marshalls is my favorite.

But if you cant get this then i like PredatoHm, by Ohm Force. Also try mixing and matching the Ableton Plugs, especially the Vinyl Distortion device, definately one of my favorite Distortion plugs. Add to this a couple Saturators and youll be set.

Mike

Although not intended specifically for Guitar, the Audio Damage plugins are great! Try Master Destrukto from the Mayhem FX Suite. Yeah baby!

"Master Destrukto features a total of four different distortion algorithms, which can be used in concert or separately. Taken as a whole, this plug can turn any sound in to a torn-up mess of a waveform. Nothing else like it."

Along with those mentioned, I like Steinberg's Warp plugin, it's fairly small, but makes nice distorted guitars. Much less effort to get usable distorted guitar sounds out of it than bigger amp sims...

Another way to get heavy guitars is layer or stack differently tuned guitar tracks over oneanother. Take original track and duplicate it as many times as you want different sounding layers to mix together. On each layer use different EQ and distortion setting. And also give some other effects a try like others mentioned (reverb, chorus). Once you mix all of these layers together you will have a wall guitar noise bliss.