State of Epicicity
Fractal Fanatic
I am forever trying to get “that” sound of metalcore from the mid 2000s to 2010s. Can you share any tips or PM me?
I figured a dedicated thread would help way more; so many people will have better ideas than me! But I'll tell you the way I think about it to start the thread: Personally, I find it most useful to use a movable mic cab simulator, capture a static IR from that, then add a ton of Proximity and trim the length of the IR (usually to 512) to remove room reflections. For any amp where I want to find out real world response I then set Speaker Thump to my guess for the real world formula (Amp wattage / cab speaker wattage x 5), then I'll set Speaker Impedance by ear, usually to around 1.20. For some amps I'll increase the low cut of the Input EQ of the Amp Block by ear until palm mutes are tight. I try to get just enough gain to get the aggression I want, then just shape the frequency around that, first with just BMT to get the right character, adding Mids until there's just enough chunk, then using Presence and Depth as post eq type thing, to get the frequency response I like. One thing I find really important is to try to retain some warmth in the tone. I find it too damn easy to hype the high end to the point that the palm mutes are so defined they start to resemble a consumer boom box with a smiley faced eq. To me good tones have a somewhat muted pick attack, so I try to avoid that myself, but you should of course defer to your tastes and whatever inspires you.
To me the big initial factor is that IR. I definitely have a very weird frequency response from my guitar, so I've found that the movable mic plugins help me find the sweet spot that interacts with my pickups perfectly, then I can make them sound more present, if you will, with the Smoothing parameter. Then, most of what I'm doing on the amp is not trying to avoid harsh frequencies, but instead just dialing in for character; in other words, it all sounds pleasing, so it just becomes a matter of what I'm trying to say with my guitar at that moment.
This is my bullshit approach, but it works for me. @jamesmarshall has really good tips starting here in this thread, but I've barely played guitar in a month because I'm moving, so I have not been able to try them. They may also work great for anyone who struggles with static IRs as I do.
I'm sure you'll get lots of great advice from others, and of course no method is empirically right here, so I hope you find something that works well for you. Best of luck!