Ableton Forum

someone enlighten me please. These electric guitar effects are not good at all and very limiting. Do most of you tweak these to get the sound you want or do you chain your own effects? If so please give me some examples Thanks for your help.

I don't think they're as traditional as, say, guitar rig's effects. However, they can provide some interesting treatments that you can't find anywhere else. Just experiement with nontraditional signal chains and I think you'll eventually find something enjoyable and appropriate for whatever type of song you're making.
Have fun, this is one of the coolest parts of the process for me. It's pretty random and very exciting when you find something that works that's never been done before.

there is no good distortion in live.

i agree, there are no real traditional effects.

however, you can do really cool stuff.

I gave up on live for guitar fx.. actually that came out wrong, what I mean is why use Live when I have 30 odd pedals.

Umm... I prefer Live's guitar effects over Guitar Rig's. By a long shot.

I tried using Guitar Rig for like 3 hours, and all of their distortions sounded like complete digital poo. Then I tried Live's effects. Ahh, that "guitar tube amp" preset sounds so much better than any of those Guitar Rig presets.

I was actually hoping Guitar Rig would sound better, simply cause I like its UI. But no, it sounds like crap.

can you give me some examples of what you like to use, if I'm not being too nosey, for like a good rock guitar? Do they need to be chained with other effects? Also, my latency when I record guitar is also pretty bad. Any tips would be appreciated.
peace

i tried to use it with distortion/amp modeling, but i reckon latency is a vide killer.... it just never feels quite right, even with ultra low latency... so i just use it for send FX... like reverb and delays... which is cool to sync delay times with tracks etc... and blend the direct signal with the send fx, which you don't really have to worry about latency with.

Under Live Devices:

Audio Effects > Audio Effects Rack > Guitars & Plucked > Guitar Tube Amp Light

Then adjust the heavy tube up a little bit. Then adjust the "Air" and "Cabinet morph".

I really like the sounds you can get out of this chain effect. Very natural, in my opinion.

Depends what sounds you're looking for.

I think that the audio rack has some pretty nice racks of eq/compression/delays/mod effects such as chorus and flange etc with reverbs. I agree that the distortion isn't the best but I've yet to see a native distortion effect in any DAW make me want to put down my pedals, and that extends to Guitar Rig and Amplitube etc (yes, their fx are better and useable to a point but this is why you pay close to 500 dollars for a vst instrument). And there are those racks by covert operators and puremagnetik that have some usable sounds to this effect too.

Live's distortions and amp sims can do some interesting things to basses and keyboard sounds though...

For a cheaper alternative, have a look at Studio Devil. http://www.studiodevil.com/home/

Not as flexible as the big guns (guitar rig or amplitube) and certainly lacking in effects, but has a very nice warm crunch that's pretty good.

For insane distortion, look at Ohmforce Ohmicide.

For other FX, you can rack to your heart's content AFTER you have a reasonable tone to effect.

yea, the live effects on guitar sounds are quite weak. that is why i invested in my emu 1616m and now i can use the guitar effects on that soundcard as a vst and it works well. Then if i get super lazy i get my boss br864 multi track and do the guitar effects on there and bounce into live.

I use Guitar Rig 3 to mimic the sounds of playing through actual amps with guitar pedals and rack-mounted traditional effects. I disagree with their distortions sounding like "poo" though--I have several of the pedals they are modeling and they seem dead on to my ears.

But I like to use the guitar effects in Live to create totally new sounds, something more along the lines of using a guitar as a synth controller, without the dropout or fussing over equipment.

Guitar rig has gotten better and more realistic with each release, but it will never sound as good as using nice pedals or a good external fx processor like Vox Tonelab, through a nice amplifier and miced up with , say an Sm57, and nice preamp.

Try that combination and it is a lot quicker and easier to get the tone you want than using Guitar Rig and having to mess about with eqing and compression to get something resembling it. IMHO of course.

I never said that GR distortions sound like poo. They can sound really good with the right combination of patch choice and fx and mixing but amp simulators never quite catch a certain something that micing a guitar amp *if done properly, and many mess it up* provides.

Bobb-
I know your frustration. U gotta take what you can from Live, you can get very atmospheric sounds with the EQ's and multiple delays. There's alot of creative sounds to be had with routing your guitar through multiple sends and you can always have a direct line of your guitar going to your amp that never touch converters as well. it's all about routing inside and outside of the box.
For guitar sounds just get stomp boxes, nothing compares. Z.vex, Analogman, Robert Keeley, Pigtronics (i think there called) are just a few producing top boxes these days. Analogman has great links to creative pedal makers. Old DOD pedals can give you good sounds on the cheap too.
There's a guitarist using Live in a band called Hans Blix here: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... =104465144
This guy uses Live and guitar on stage with much success.

nebulae wrote:For a cheaper alternative, have a look at Studio Devil. http://www.studiodevil.com/home/

Not as flexible as the big guns (guitar rig or amplitube) and certainly lacking in effects, but has a very nice warm crunch that's pretty good.

Nice call. Both of the Studio Devil plugs are absolute heroes! Excellent building blocks for tones. My current setup: I rack an instance of BVC with everything dimed in parallel with an instance of the Virtual Guitar Amp set for British/Crunch, moderate gain and pulled down 3 db. For leads put an instance of the SimulAnalog's Tube Screamer in front of the rack - you may want to experiment with the Live 'Gate' plug as well for noise suppression. You can get by with just BVC and the Tube Screamer plug if you are on a budget (of $0).