AFIII I'm fairly new to high gain tones, is this good? (Tool - Invincible)

DLC86

Fractal Fanatic
Hi, as title says I've started digging into high-gain just recently cuz I've always been a blues/classic rock player mainly.
I'd like to hear your opinion on this tone and eventually suggestions on how to make it better, cuz I'm still not entirely satisfied especially on palm mutes and in the high frequencies (maybe it's my guitar's fault though, I played it with a SSS strat 😅)

Sorry for the little mistakes

 
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Hmm.

When you said you were working on high gain tones I was expecting something with a little more crunch.

I thought it was a really nice tone, but a tone intended for a more subdued mood. Obviously, the note/chord selection of the song contributes to that impression...so, tone fits the song perfectly.

Still, it didn't get as aggressive as I would have expected from the term "high gain." So maybe you were just going for something different than what I think of, when I use that phrase.

But you did mention this was with an SSS Strat. Perhaps it would crunch up a lot more if you were feeding it from some modern-style high gain humbuckers? If you don't have one handy, you could always slam the front-end with a pedal (or drive block, or even EQ block) that forces more high-mids breakup.

All in all: Sounds nice! Fits the music, no matter what adjectives one uses to describe it.
 
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Hmm.

When you said you were working on high gain tones I was expecting something with a little more crunch.

I thought it was a really nice tone, but a tone intended for a more subdued mood. Obviously, the note/chord selection of the song contributes to that impression...so, tone fits the song perfectly.

Still, it didn't get as aggressive as I would have expected from the term "high gain." So maybe you were just going for something different than what I think of, when I use that phrase.

But you did mention this was with an SSS Strat. Perhaps it would crunch up a lot more if you were feeding it from some modern-style high gain humbuckers? If you don't have one handy, you could always slam the front-end with a pedal (or drive block, or even EQ block) that forces more high-mids breakup.

All in all: Sounds nice! Fits the music, no matter what adjectives one uses to describe it.
Yeah, probably not the highest gain ever but still higher than what I'm used to. Tried to stay faithful to the amount of gain of the original song.
Probably should have said crunch or prog-metal tone 😅

This is the exact type of tone you should be proud to get when shooting for Adam Jones. With an SSS Strat to boot? Shit, my guy.
If you’re interested, I can send you my mix-ready Tool preset that I’ve been working on for the past couple of years.

That would be wonderful, thanks! 😍
Given your username I have high expectations 😁

The thing is I don't hear/feel it as punchy as the original and I had to eq it quite heavily in post processing to make it more similar, it's a VH4 preset I usually use live but it didn't really work well in this mix without adjustments.
Maybe I just need to search for a better IR, who knows.

would not have guessed a SSS strat. Impressive.
Thanks! I just turn down the tone knob a bit and boost the input of the amp to make it sound more humbuckery, works pretty well.
 
The track sounds great! Guitar tone is really nice! Is the back track the actual track or is that something you created?
 
Tight work! One of my favorites on the new album, too!

Just last night I spent a good hour and a half analyzing Tool with headphones on. What blew me away was how their music is mixed, despite different producers being responsible for it. This is getting away from the guitar tones a bit but I was surprised at how often the guitars are centered in the mix, even when there are vocals going on. Hard panning seems to be done more for an effect rather than filling up each side of the spectrum.

The cool thing about that is that it causes the song to take on the form of a living organism, shrinking and growing as the song changes. One second everything would be in the center, then starts fading to the sides, gets huge and spread out for a moment and then back in. There’s definitely not a standard “Ok, put the Diezel on the left side and a Recto on the right” approach. I know they use a ton of amps blended together to get the final sounds, usually no less than 3 and up to 8, but I’m more impressed with how they’re mixed in the stereo spectrum more than anything else.

Gave me a lot to think about. I’m mixing one song now that has a total Tool feel to it, purposefully and after digging into those songs last night, it totally changed how I plan on mixing this one. I had printed off like 6 different amps from the DI’s and was intending to do my regular, “You go on the left, you go on the right and that’s that” but that’s definitely not the case now. This one is particularly dynamic with really quiet verses, loud chorus and then finishes with long crescendo....so now I’m plotting how I’m going to make all that work while trying to create the ‘living, breathing organism’ sound.

Definitely check out some of their work with headphones, it certainly opened up my eyes considerably to how their albums are mixed and where they’d use certain tones for certain things.
 
Tight work! One of my favorites on the new album, too!

Just last night I spent a good hour and a half analyzing Tool with headphones on. What blew me away was how their music is mixed, despite different producers being responsible for it. This is getting away from the guitar tones a bit but I was surprised at how often the guitars are centered in the mix, even when there are vocals going on. Hard panning seems to be done more for an effect rather than filling up each side of the spectrum.

The cool thing about that is that it causes the song to take on the form of a living organism, shrinking and growing as the song changes. One second everything would be in the center, then starts fading to the sides, gets huge and spread out for a moment and then back in. There’s definitely not a standard “Ok, put the Diezel on the left side and a Recto on the right” approach. I know they use a ton of amps blended together to get the final sounds, usually no less than 3 and up to 8, but I’m more impressed with how they’re mixed in the stereo spectrum more than anything else.

Gave me a lot to think about. I’m mixing one song now that has a total Tool feel to it, purposefully and after digging into those songs last night, it totally changed how I plan on mixing this one. I had printed off like 6 different amps from the DI’s and was intending to do my regular, “You go on the left, you go on the right and that’s that” but that’s definitely not the case now. This one is particularly dynamic with really quiet verses, loud chorus and then finishes with long crescendo....so now I’m plotting how I’m going to make all that work while trying to create the ‘living, breathing organism’ sound.

Definitely check out some of their work with headphones, it certainly opened up my eyes considerably to how their albums are mixed and where they’d use certain tones for certain things.
Yeah, they definitely use some of those "old school" techniques in their mixes, in some way it seems like an evolution of what Pink Floyd used to do (no surprise here since Maynard is a big PF fan).

In this song it seems guitar are hard panned for pretty much the entire piece though, but they don't sound as wide as my sample.
I don't know if that's cuz they're panned at 70-80% or if it's just due to Adam being a much more precise player than me 😅
 
Yeah, they definitely use some of those "old school" techniques in their mixes, in some way it seems like an evolution of what Pink Floyd used to do (no surprise here since Maynard is a big PF fan).

In this song it seems guitar are hard panned for pretty much the entire piece though, but they don't sound as wide as my sample.
I don't know if that's cuz they're panned at 70-80% or if it's just due to Adam being a much more precise player than me 😅

Floyd’s my favorite band of all time, there’s definitely some similarities! Especially with the live shows.

Who knows how they got to the final mix in this, they use so many different signals to make up Adam’s tones on the albums I’d be willing to bet they’d need the track notes to remember everything. I’m also if they just get all those tones tracked and then Adam sits down with Joe and tells him what he wants to hear or if Joe just uses all his options as he’s mixing the album, picking the best sound for the particular section. That’s definitely a mix session I’d love to sit in on.

Who knows how they ended up getting to the point they ended up at with this song. There’s definitely not a one-size-fits all approach to their mixes, as where you can take someone like Lamb Of God, make a template for the entire album’s mix and barely stray from that.

Regardless, you did a killer job with the tones and playing!
 
Nah man, a Diezel into a Diezel = instant Jonez Tonez

Rev, let me send you my preset. I’d enjoy your feedback.

Oh no, please don’t send me tones I could possibly love that are in the vein of one of my favorite bands of all time. The travesty! :D

I’d love to check it out!
 
That sounded fantastic!!!! How did you record the drums? I want to be able to start messing with electronic drum software. I just don't know where to start.
 
That sounded fantastic!!!! How did you record the drums? I want to be able to start messing with electronic drum software. I just don't know where to start.
I just recorded the guitars, bass and deums are from a backing track I found on youtube.. but I agree it sounds spot on.
Regarding e-drums plugins, you can't wrong with superior drummer 3, but it needs a bit of tweaking to make it sound that good
 
Perfect way to start my day. Thanks for sharing this.

I've been making my way down the Adam Jones rabbit hole for the last few weeks and, as a new user, hearing this gives me even more confidence in the Axe.

I was briefly concerned that the 12:45 would be a bit lacking without Maynard's vocals but I'm immediately listening to your recording a second time. :tearsofjoy:
 
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Perfect was to start my day. Thanks for sharing this.

I've been making my way down the Adam Jones rabbit hole for the last few weeks and, as a new user, hearing this gives me even more confidence in the Axe.

I was briefly concerned that the 12:45 would be a bit lacking without Maynard's vocals but I'm immediately listening to your recording a second time. :tearsofjoy:
Thank you
I'm actually tempted to re-record it with the preset @Jambi shared with me cuz it sounds even closer, and also to add my voice.. but I'm not sure I can handle the task of singing like Maynard 😅

That performance and the tone were end-to-end awesome!
That's cuz you haven't listened to it multiple times like me 😅
 
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