Gift of Tone #12 - JUSTIN YORK

York Audio said:
Thanks! Yes, I make presets the way I would set up my real gear, so I always put my reverb and delay before the amp. It sounds less sterile and gives your tone a little more character.
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I’ve been so busy that I have not had a chance to try this out yet, but I’m glad this is set up with the FX in front. I’m so inclined to do the opposite because for so long I was always trying to build the ultimate stereo rig that once I got the FM3 and heard the incredible stereo reverbs and delays I just always went with the “after the cab” (mostly parallel) setup. However, there is definitely something special about how I did it for years before FX loops, which was in front of the amp.

All these GOT series are so cool for expanding my horizons or just reminding me there are different ways to do things. Thanks again!!
 
austinbuddy said:
There are no better produced, usable Cab IRs out there than those made by York Audio, IMHO.

Thanks for this Gift of Tone amigo!
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Thank you, Buddy! That’s very high praise coming from you. I think your GOT patch sounds great, too!

GuitarGuy316 said:
@York Audio Justin, I really got some early Paramore vibes from the first 2-3 albums listening to the tones. Not sure if any of these are your aspiration in creating this, but something along the Riot and Brand New Eyes era would be great!

For lead tones from that era, I can’t quite figure out what effect y’all used…some kind of harmonized or pitch/octave?
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Paramore mainly used a JCM 2000 DSL100 for those albums, and my ear naturally gravitates towards that “style” of high gain. It wasn’t intentional to create a Paramore type of tone, but you could definitely use it for that.

As far as the lead tone effect you mentioned, it’s a whammy pedal on the root+octave up setting. Try the Classic Whammy in the pitch block at the beginning of your chain before any overdrives, modulation effects, etc. and it should get you in a good spot. The “warble” from the Whammy is a big part of that tone.

astrolux said:
This whole GOT series has been phenomenal, but this one is especially welcome. I was just messing around with refining some IRs in a few of my own presets (I've gone fully York Audio and am still working through everything) -- during that time I was thinking how much I'd love a preset pack from YA.

Thanks Santa!
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I’ve always been hesitant about creating preset packs simply because I know that what I program with my hands and my gear will sound different than what another user experiences with their own hands and gear. The fact that this preset seems to be translating well for a lot of you makes me a little less hesitant about making one. :)

Habuman said:
HELL YEAH!!! This is sounding great. Going to fire it up at this Saturday's gig.
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Whoa! That would be awesome! I’m glad you’re liking it enough to want to try it out in the real world! You’ll have to let me know how it goes.

GitGuy513 said:
I’ve been so busy that I have not had a chance to try this out yet, but I’m glad this is set up with the FX in front. I’m so inclined to do the opposite because for so long I was always trying to build the ultimate stereo rig that once I got the FM3 and heard the incredible stereo reverbs and delays I just always went with the “after the cab” (mostly parallel) setup. However, there is definitely something special about how I did it for years before FX loops, which was in front of the amp.

All these GOT series are so cool for expanding my horizons or just reminding me there are different ways to do things. Thanks again!!
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That’s perfectly understandable. Since the Axe CAN do things we don’t typically do with real gear, it’s easy to go that route and build those kinds of rigs. Everyone is different, but I always found that taking a more simplistic approach gave me more realistic results.

But hey, you can always try mixing the best of both worlds by using mono effects going into the amp and some tasteful/understated stereo reverb/delay effects after the cab for some stereo width that doesn’t take away from the character of your tone. I like the idea of using stereo FullRes room captures to get some width while keeping the integrity of the mono source intact. I wish I would have made some room captures of that cab when I did the test shots this IR came from.
 
York Audio said:
I’ve always been hesitant about creating preset packs simply because I know that what I program with my hands and my gear will sound different than what another user experiences with their own hands and gear. The fact that this preset seems to be translating well for a lot of you makes me a little less hesitant about making one. :)
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The fact you make your own IRs would mitigate a fair bit of this. Of course there's still variability in setup, but having an IR tuned to the preset really makes a difference.

Austin Buddy's stuff is also fantastic and I lean on it a lot. However, I end up swapping most of the Cabs for a "York Audio equivalent." It does leave me wondering what a preset built with a specific YA IR in mind would sound like..

I'm realizing I should probably just go steal the presets I can find in the YA vendor thread until this becomes a reality...
 
GuitarGuy316 said:
Gotcha thanks. So you added them into cabs 3/4 with this preset to run 3 cabs at once?
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More like 1 cab and stereo room mics for ambience. This setup is for stereo FRFR/recording. It probably wouldn't do well in mono or through a normal cab.
 
GitGuy513 said:
I just always went with the “after the cab” (mostly parallel) setup. However, there is definitely something special about how I did it for years before FX loops, which was in front of the amp.
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For a delay into a distorting amp, the obvious thing should be that a delay before the amp will distort the repeats less and less (as they lower in volume). After the amp, it's just repeating the distorted sound. I had to hear that in a ToneTalk episode before it dawned on me too...
 
Brewce said:
For a delay into a distorting amp, the obvious thing should be that a delay before the amp will distort the repeats less and less (as they lower in volume). After the amp, it's just repeating the distorted sound. I had to hear that in a ToneTalk episode before it dawned on me too...
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That's true. But there's more to it than that.

When you put the delay in front of a distorting amp, the notes you're playing are mixing with the delay, and then getting distorted. That mixing creates intermodulation distortion. Intermod produces frequencies that wouldn't be there otherwise. Those frequencies can sound thick and full, or muddy and dull, depending on what kind of music you're playing and how much gain you're running. If you're running your amp with no distortion at all, delay-before and delay-after both sound the same.
 
Brewce said:
For a delay into a distorting amp, the obvious thing should be that a delay before the amp will distort the repeats less and less (as they lower in volume). After the amp, it's just repeating the distorted sound. I had to hear that in a ToneTalk episode before it dawned on me too...
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Oh yes, I’m very familiar with this issue. This is why once I had amps with FX loops I ran time based FX in the loop of an amp where I was using the amp to get most my drive. However, with clean tones and drive pedals can make for some cool stuff. As @Rex stated it’s a delicate balance. I found that dotted 1/8th note “the edge” or classic “Gilmour” type stuff works best before the amp.
 
astrolux said:
The fact you make your own IRs would mitigate a fair bit of this. Of course there's still variability in setup, but having an IR tuned to the preset really makes a difference.

Austin Buddy's stuff is also fantastic and I lean on it a lot. However, I end up swapping most of the Cabs for a "York Audio equivalent." It does leave me wondering what a preset built with a specific YA IR in mind would sound like..

I'm realizing I should probably just go steal the presets I can find in the YA vendor thread until this becomes a reality...
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In my opinion, building a preset should always start with the IR. In the case of my GoT preset, I built the whole thing around an IR I made last summer, so the IR wasn’t tuned for the amps… the amps were tuned for the IR.

Any preset pack I made would be the same thing. Just finding an IR I liked and then tweaking the amps and effects around it. A good way to do it is to pick your cab, maybe start with Mix 01 or 57-1, pick your amp, and dial it in to sound great with the IR. Then you can try other Mixes or single mics to see which ones have character you like and re-tweak your amp if necessary.

Hopefully this helps and makes sense.

Brewce said:
For a delay into a distorting amp, the obvious thing should be that a delay before the amp will distort the repeats less and less (as they lower in volume). After the amp, it's just repeating the distorted sound. I had to hear that in a ToneTalk episode before it dawned on me too...
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I think that’s one of the reasons why I like running effects into the front of an amp. If all of the repeats are equally distorted, it can smear things pretty easily. When repeats are cleaner than the initial attack, you get more of the “main part” coming through and the delays are a nice musical wash behind it.

It’s all personal preference though. I don’t think I’ve ever used the FX loop in any of my amps simply because I think it sounds too pretty and I like a little more controlled chaos in my tones… but that’s just me.
 
York Audio said:
It’s all personal preference though. I don’t think I’ve ever used the FX loop in any of my amps simply because I think it sounds too pretty and I like a little more controlled chaos in my tones… but that’s just me.
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Yes, for me and this is almost 25 years ago when I realized that the “studio like” (pretty😉) quality of delays/echo in the loop solved some muddiness issues I sort of just got stuck there for a while. This was after years of getting much of my sound from a real 70’s era Rams Head Big Muff and a 70’s Deluxe Memory Man in front of a Fender Twin. Kind of a bizarre combination by todays standards, but this was the best stuff available where I lived and started playing. It was probably more out of not fully understanding everything at the time.
 
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It sounds amazing!
I paired the cab with a few amps like the Herbert and VH4 and it really works well.

@YorkAudio: did you design this preset mainly for recording/playing, or for live applications?
 
089Ray said:
It sounds amazing!
I paired the cab with a few amps like the Herbert and VH4 and it really works well.

@YorkAudio: did you design this preset mainly for recording/playing, or for live applications?
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I’m glad you like it. I didn’t really tweak the preset for anything in particular, I just thought it sounded cool. Whether it’s recording or live, it’s all about dialing in things to fit whatever you’re wanting to do. So beef it up, thin it out, brighten it, darken it, crank the gain, turn the gain down… those are all things I’d mess with depending on the song and context of the tone.
 
York Audio said:
I think that’s one of the reasons why I like running effects into the front of an amp. If all of the repeats are equally distorted, it can smear things pretty easily. When repeats are cleaner than the initial attack, you get more of the “main part” coming through and the delays are a nice musical wash behind it.

It’s all personal preference though. I don’t think I’ve ever used the FX loop in any of my amps simply because I think it sounds too pretty and I like a little more controlled chaos in my tones… but that’s just me.
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Curious if you're primarily using digital delay types because I think they are the only ones where everything would be "equally" distorted.

I think all of the analog types include signal degradation to each repeat.

Personally the issue that made me move to FX loop with physical amps was that the delay becomes less prominent with more gain, so switching between clean and distorted tones ended up with very different delay for me.
 
unix-guy said:
I think all of the analog types include signal degradation to each repeat.

Personally the issue that made me move to FX loop with physical amps was that the delay becomes less prominent with more gain, so switching between clean and distorted tones ended up with very different delay for me.
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Degradation, yes. But not decay. That’s between you and your Feedback knob. :)
 
Rex said:
Degradation, yes. But not decay. That’s between you and your Feedback knob. :)
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Yes, which by definition means that the repeats are not equally distorted, right?

Or, maybe they are but they won't sound the same due to degradation...

Another thing that occurred to me is the most of my experience back then was Drive -> Delay -> Amp... So maybe my experience was really the same as Justin is saying? ;)

Anyway, my preference is analog delay types after the amp... But I think I'll try putting it pre-drive and see if I like it. Easy enough to try!
 
unix-guy said:
Curious if you're primarily using digital delay types because I think they are the only ones where everything would be "equally" distorted.

I think all of the analog types include signal degradation to each repeat.

Personally the issue that made me move to FX loop with physical amps was that the delay becomes less prominent with more gain, so switching between clean and distorted tones ended up with very different delay for me.
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I’m not a fan of pure digital delays. That’s as sterile and uninspiring as it gets in my opinion. The “equally distorted” thing depends on where the distortion is coming from. If the distortion is going into the delay, the distortion amount on the repeats won’t change since it’s repeating the signal going into it. An analog style delay will repeat the same distortion even as the volume drops, it’s just that the top end will degrade with each repeat.

If the delay is before the distortion, the volume degradation is like turning your guitar’s volume knob down with each repeat. The lower volume repeats going into your distortion (pedal or amp) will result in less distorted repeats since they’re hitting the distortion source’s input at softer levels with each repeat. The real character happens when playing and repeats overlap; making the repeated distortion nonlinear as its input stage gets hit at different levels.

It may not be for everyone’s style, but I like a little volatility in my reverbs/delays to keep things unique and exciting.
 
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