Ownhammer revolution irs

evh1972

Member
I'm considering getting the Ownhammer Revolution IRs since I've read alot of great things about them. However, I also think the Leon Todd IRs (that are free) are amazing so I'm wondering if anyone has purchased the Ownhammer Revolution IRs and what you thought of them?

I play mostly heavy rock/metal.
 
that's definitely not true.
I was being a little hyperbolic but in general if one is not very satisfied (or thrilled) with some of these hundreds of preloaded options, there may be a different issue at play. If your hobby is collecting IRs like stamps: giver.

My suggestion to OP would be to apply the existing OH IRs to your setup, do some deep listening, adjust and repeat. It’s not a slight on OH who make great stuff but there are very similar, if not the same OH cabs preloaded as found in the (r)Evolution Debut pack. If they blow your mind, support OH by purchasing further packs.
 
IRs are the secret last piece in the puzzle. It’s weird. I’ve bought some that work complete wonders for the overall sound of the amp. But, then I might find something better that’s already in the Axe later. It depends and is not an exact science, depends on the user. Taste is subjective
 
I have a big collection of IRs from a bunch of different companies that I bought when I was using a certain other modeling company’s unit, and, now that I am on Fractal’s platform, I find I have only looked through my collection a couple times, and used one or two, and for the majority of my presets I have used factory cabs.

I’ve been told that the factory cabs are not necessarily the latest versions from some of the vendors that the factory cabs represent, but there are a lot of great cabs built into the firmware, and we can waste a lot of money unnecessarily chasing a sound that is already bundled with the unit because we didn’t take the time to walk through the available choices.

A while back I was looking for a specific 1x12 speaker to model one of my tube amps, and was having a hard time finding the right sound. Finally I quit trying to find the exact speaker and instead followed Fractal’s advice and used my ears instead of my eyes, and found a combination of two factory cabs that, blended together, sound like my amp, and I didn’t need to touch any third party IRs.

It really pays to look through the collection of built-in cabs.
 
Everyone has their opinion about 3rds party IRs, whether they are worth it or not. If you're able to get the tones you want from the factory IRs, great. The FM3's factory IRs are really good but not the end-all collection.

After years of using mics on cabs, I have a preferred tone which comes from a specific location on a speaker and found that Redwirez IRs offer what I like, both in feel and tone. Most 3rd party IR makers, including Ownhammer, will include many mic locations and mixes that you can choose from.

I have bought and used some Ownhammer IRs but don't have experience with the Revolution series but they do make great IRs. I discovered Redwirez and found that their IRs have a rawness and openness to them that I prefer. Since you're looking for rock/metal cabs and if you are interested, look at their Modern Classic Bigbox.

I am not affiliated with Redwirez or any other company, just a gearhead with too much time on their hands.
 
For me, the big plus with 3rd party IRs is the ability to mix them together and generate a single mix IR in Cab Lab. A fair number of my presets are pushing close to the CPU capacity, and submixing IRs saves several percent.

I just wish that there was a simple, clean, easy way to catalog the ones actually in use in presets, delete the unused ones from the unit, and 'defrag' the user IR space while simultaneously updating presets with their new locations. That's a job for some sort of scripted action that runs at a button click, not for a human with a couple of attention-starved cohabitants and a to-do list reaching off to infinity and beyond....
 
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That's a nice bundle - I've got the OwnHammer Deluxe Reverb bundle and Heavy Hitters they're killer for heavy rock/modern metal. I really struggled to get a big metal rhythm tone that I liked with other IR's. Everybody's ears are different though so try a few different company's version of a metal workhorse like a Mesa 4x12 and see which company sounds and feels the best to you. I mean for the cost of a delivered pizza you can grab that Revolution bundle and have all your bases covered from cleans to rhythms I'd say go for it.
 
For me, the big plus with 3rd party IRs is the ability to mix them together and generate a single mix IR in Cab Lab. A fair number of my presets are pushing close to the CPU capacity, and submixing IRs saves several percent.

I just wish that there was a simple, clean, easy way to catalog the ones actually in use in presets, delete the unused ones from the unit, and 'defrag' the user IR space while simultaneously updating presets eith their new locations. That's a job for some sort of scripted action that runs at a button click, not for a human with a couple of attention-starved cohabitants and a to-do list reaching off to infinity and beyond....
I think FracTool can create a text file with what presets use what IRs.

But even if you figure out which ones aren't used, there's no way to reorganize your user IRs without messing up your presets. Fixing that is one of my most desired potential new features :)
 
I recently purchased the OH GNR pack. It's probably not the "Revolution" series, since I don't recall seeing that verbage in the marketing, but I'd still like to share some thoughts.

When I first got the GNR pack I tried dozens of the IRs with my existing FAS Wreck core tone. I really wanted to hear an improvement. I mean c'mon man, about 1/3 of the IRs are the "RAW" option. Any photographers out there? Sometimes these terms aren't just marketing. Well, I was sucked in. Anyway . . .

After many hours of auditioning I could not find a better IR than the stock IR I chose in the FM3. The OH sounded good, but the Fractal IR has something inexplicably magical that truly defines what I'm looking for to make the FAS Wreck shine. But!

Fast forward a week or so. I decided to pair the OH IRs with the Brit Silver. Perfection! I found an IR amongst the hundreds in the pack that is simply a match made in heaven. This is now my core "classic rock" tone. It was incredibly easy to dial in and sounds stellar with zero deep diving required.

I don't particularly enjoy auditioning hundreds of IRs per amp model to find the right one (which sometimes means just settling on one), but I'm sure glad I have the massive quantity of excellent options available in the FM3. I'm also glad there are 3rd party options available, especially when it comes to specialization. GNR pack and Brit Silver are meant to be. And even though I love my current Fractal IR pairing for my DC-30 tone, I'm strongly considering looking into 3rd party IRs that specialize in Matchless cabs based on my experience with the GNR/Brit Silver combo.
 
I discovered Redwirez and found that their IRs have a rawness and openness to them that I prefer. Since you're looking for rock/metal cabs and if you are interested, look at their Modern Classic Bigbox.
I bought this last night, and I am about to treat myself to a couple four more YA packs. I'm new to this and I'm having an amazingly good time.

I was surprised by the number of IR options in the box, and I was wondering how you prefer to use yours. Raw or ? Z50, Z100? I guess I could throw them all in there but if I can rule some out that would be helpful. What do you think?

Also, thanks for turning me on to this pack. There are a lot of great cabs in there. I hope I like them as much as you like yours.

Boring update: Spent a lot of time unzipping, sorting, and copying IRs to my music storage, cutting out formats I wouldn't need. I ended up with the BIGBoxX Vintage Classics, and for various tones I know I am going to chase, I picked up YA's Deluxe, Bassman, MESA OS 4x12, and the MESA 2x12 V30s to add to the MRSH 412 M25. I still have to devise the right way to organize them and load some into the FM3, but I haven't seen how the Redwirez stuff shows up in the browser yet. I'm thinking of grouping the various Fenders and Marshalls and MESAs together. Spent all night just on this part so didn't get to playing. But I got out the old JEM to add to the growing forest of guitars around my FM3. I do love my weekends.
 
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Personally I load only the mixes from the YA packs.

I don't have the time to sift through the whole everything, and even though YA dominates my user cabs at this point, I'm not sure I'd want to have all that on-unit anyway.

I also figure Justin has a better ear for what works than I do, I'll take advantage of that added layer of his judgement.
 
Everyone has their opinion about 3rds party IRs, whether they are worth it or not. If you're able to get the tones you want from the factory IRs, great. The FM3's factory IRs are really good but not the end-all collection.

After years of using mics on cabs, I have a preferred tone which comes from a specific location on a speaker and found that Redwirez IRs offer what I like, both in feel and tone. Most 3rd party IR makers, including Ownhammer, will include many mic locations and mixes that you can choose from.

I have bought and used some Ownhammer IRs but don't have experience with the Revolution series but they do make great IRs. I discovered Redwirez and found that their IRs have a rawness and openness to them that I prefer. Since you're looking for rock/metal cabs and if you are interested, look at their Modern Classic Bigbox.

I am not affiliated with Redwirez or any other company, just a gearhead with too much time on their hands.
Got to agree,I love Redwirez and most of the time go for the FM3 stock basketweaves which are actually Redwirez IRs.
 
I have tons and tons of IR's from over the years. I think the Ownhammer Revolution is an amazing value and really captures a broad variety of tones including staple cabs like Fender Deluxe, Vox AC30, Marshall 4x12 with Greenbacks, Mesa 4x12 with V30's, etc.

What I like about Ownhammer is they are consistently shot so it's a little more predictable to find what you're after. If you flip from one cab to another, you aren't surprised by one being super bright and one being super dark. The Revolution ones are also very well shot with a little cleaner low end than older Ownhammer.

The downside is that Ownhammer included IMO way too many mixes and options. There's almost 9,000 impulses from what I can see which is completely overwhelming. In older packs there used to be a quick start folder with just a handful of mics and mixes. The Revolution pack doesn't have that which is frustrating. You can kind of pull together your own but it takes a lot more work and experimentation.

I have a ton of York Audio stuff as well and to my ears it sounds more raw and direct where the Ownhammer sounds more polished and mixed. Again the Revolution stuff is a little cleaner and more raw sounding than the old stuff which is nice. But you can get some of that jumping around tonality on the York impulses where Ownhammer maybe sounds a little more EQ'd to sound more similar.

Compared to factory IR's, I'm really trying to embrace those more. There's a huge variety of factory IR's and I think you can get just about any tone with them, it just takes more experimentation. But to be honest you have to also experiment and spend time with aftermarket IR's too. So it can be a wash.

What I've been doing is flipping through presets and when I find a sound I like, I save the cab block as a library preset. Then I can easily paste the cab block into a new patch. When I A/B against my Ownhammer/York impulses, I often find I prefer the cab blocks I saved from factory. Some that I like are in the Marshall Plexi 100W and Brit 800 patches, like the Legacy 60/61 combo (Fractal 4x12), Legacy 103 (4x12 TV), Legacy 59 (4x12 TV Mix), Legacy 119 (AC-20), etc. I like to have some brighter and darker options depending on if the amp is bright or dark.

Another piece of advice Justin York recently gave is to not try and do all the EQ'ing through the impulse but through the amp controls. I think that's where I get in trouble, because the impulse can be so powerful on the overall tone. But in reality the different impulse mixes for the same cab are often more subtle, and it may be better just to adjust the high/low cuts or amp EQ. Or use a different cab altogether.

Yet another thing you can do with the FM3/Axe 3 is to use two mics and blend them together to taste, so picking a 57 and a 121 which gives you a bright and warm option, then lower the volume of one to taste. So if a cab sounds bright, lower the 57 which will raise the volume of the 121 and give a warmer sound. You just need to make sure the solo tone of the 57 is bright and 121 is warm, otherwise pick a different impulse or cab.
 
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