Wish 32 Band Graphic EQ Block + 5 More Parametric bands to Amp Input EQ Page + Option to flip to 32 Band EQ at Amp input EQ Page

[RackAddict]

Going along with the request below, a 30-32ish band Graphic EQ is definetly needed in the block options for graphic EQ. Like a TC-1128.

But at the amp input EQ page, I find that implementing a blanket low cut removes too many sub-lows... maybe about only from the 125hz to 350 range seems to be enough for 7-string based metal with various bandwidths, but retaining the lower 20-100-ish range is sometimes preferable for a full low end since many amps dont even distort frequencies that low anyways so why not the option to keep them full?
The Meshuggah-designed Big Bottom Amp in the Line 6 Vetta 2 HD head is a good example of huge low end retained yet still extremely tight. One can add lows after but you can tell that this model retained some sub-lows directly from the pickups. It actually made me think of getting one of those ISP Guitar subwoofers to split off from the stack.

One will still get the tightness by removing some mid bass without removing sub lows even in front. Ad one can combine with a stacked drive pedal of course. But I find I use a parametric before amps or drives with a combination of cut shapes of various mid-bass frequencies for shaping amp gain characteristics that i like to shape in different ways at different times for different types of metal.
In short, adding 5 more parametric bands at the amp input eq page would be nice. To prevent using up one parametric EQ in front. of the amp,

**Or... having an option to flip to a 32 Band Graphic EQ at the Amp's input EQ page to match up like a TC 1128 Rack EQ would be slick. (It also had scenes by the way!)

As well as a 30 or 32 Band Graphic EQ block as mentioned above as an actual block would be super nice as well to have. It would help with gain shaping. One of my favorite players Trey Azagthoth used i think a Rane 30 Band EQ into the front of his marshall jcm 900 but I am not sure if it was before or after his Rack RAT Dual. And perhaps routed as a dual 15 with one before the first of the dual Rat and mayvbe one after, switchable... but i forget exactly which Rane he used. But I tried to look on stage and this is the best information i can provide. Many EQ bands along side a Rat Rack Dual and I could tell from switching that there was order swiching to come up with all that various different Lava and molten rock both crunchy and smooth...

In long,
Something I learned from when i had a 32 band TC1128 Instrument Level EQ and my VHT Amps.... and Keeley pedals in A/B-ing stuff... when i was trying to tighten up my sound, the usual high passing bass frequencies would work, but once when i had a Keeley, it was pure magic because it was doing both the tightening, but it was not removing sub lows which were so deep! I couldnt explain why or how but I tried to match the idea on my TC1128 rack Eq into the amps and from that point forward i would only remove various bands from about 125hz to about 350hz but I would actually retain or slightly boost sub lows around 40hz give or take.
Then thats when i realized that amps only distort certain frequencies but some amps perhaps keep other frequencies clean in the bass ranges and actually allow them through clean to some amplitude.... And thats when i got the idea to request to amp companies to have flexible parametric EQs at the input stage combined with various crossovers.
That keeley modded TS9 also had this unexplainable silky glassy top end as well.

 

[reclavea]

Interesting ....I see the added benefits

 

[RackAddict]

Interesting ....I see the added benefits

Thank you. Just doing my job to maximize a Kemper-killer direction.
And also, it will help people get more of that ultra full low end to try to match that Diamond Eyes Deftones record that people were having alot of trouble tone-matching in a natural way. The producer on that record told me about some very neat tricks including the blending of sims and real. But the way they captured that 8-string was absolutely ridiculous.

There's also an ISP guitar subwoofer that was implemented alot back in those days to bring out some of the fullness of 7 and 8-strings right at the source. Christian of fear factory used to be into with that kind of stuff when he was temporarily the guitar player for Fear Factory on the album Archetype. And toured with the ISP guitar subwoofer. (Although im not sure what happened on Transgression after that or if it was still used.)

 

[reclavea]

Thank you. Just doing my job to maximize a Kemper-killer direction.
And also, it will help people get more of that ultra full low end to try to match that Diamond Eyes Deftones record that people were having alot of trouble tone-matching in a natural way. The producer on that record told me about some very neat tricks including the blending of sims and real. But the way they captured that 8-string was absolutely ridiculous.

There's also an ISP guitar subwoofer that was implemented alot back in those days to bring out some of the fullness of 7 and 8-strings right at the source.

Awesome!

Can you post links to the tunes or production?

 

[RackAddict]

Awesome!

Can you post links to the tunes or production?

Nothing recorded with my new Afx 3 yet. But I just have ambient stuff up just done from an intense pedalboard, the contents of which have now been sold.
I don't have metal production currently up but I am looking at doing a space black metal project soon.
I will post links of active projects this summer. For now just some ambient guitar with guitar synth on the player at visionoftranscendence dot org
Which has nothing to do with my metal-related axe fx requests but is more a mindpower thing.
More ambient recordings coming soon.
Spacey Black metal comes later. Possibly also meditative in ways.

 

[reclavea]

Nothing recorded with my new Afx 3 yet. But I just have ambient stuff up just done from an intense pedalboard, the contents of which have now been sold.
I don't have metal production currently up but I am looking at doing a space black metal project soon.
I will post links of active projects this summer. For now just some ambient guitar with guitar synth on the player at visionoftranscendence dot org
Which has nothing to do with my metal-related axe fx requests but is more a mindpower thing.
More ambient recordings coming soon.
Spacey Black metal comes later. Possibly also meditative in ways.

Ok....

Any specific sample tunes or links for Diamond Eyes Deftones record?

 

[RackAddict]

Ok....

Any specific sample tunes or links for Diamond Eyes Deftones record?

The whole record had this neat low end on the guitar.

 

[Luca9583]

Going along with the request below, a 30-32ish band Graphic EQ is definetly needed in the block options for graphic EQ. Like a TC-1128.

But at the amp input EQ page, I find that implementing a blanket low cut removes too many sub-lows... maybe about only from the 125hz to 350 range seems to be enough for 7-string based metal with various bandwidths, but retaining the lower 20-100-ish range is sometimes preferable for a full low end since many amps dont even distort frequencies that low anyways so why not the option to keep them full?
The Meshuggah-designed Big Bottom Amp in the Line 6 Vetta 2 HD head is a good example of huge low end retained yet still extremely tight. One can add lows after but you can tell that this model retained some sub-lows directly from the pickups. It actually made me think of getting one of those ISP Guitar subwoofers to split off from the stack.

One will still get the tightness by removing some mid bass without removing sub lows even in front. Ad one can combine with a stacked drive pedal of course. But I find I use a parametric before amps or drives with a combination of cut shapes of various mid-bass frequencies for shaping amp gain characteristics that i like to shape in different ways at different times for different types of metal.
In short, adding 5 more parametric bands at the amp input eq page would be nice. To prevent using up one parametric EQ in front. of the amp,

**Or... having an option to flip to a 32 Band Graphic EQ at the Amp's input EQ page to match up like a TC 1128 Rack EQ would be slick. (It also had scenes by the way!)

As well as a 30 or 32 Band Graphic EQ block as mentioned above as an actual block would be super nice as well to have. It would help with gain shaping. One of my favorite players Trey Azagthoth used i think a Rane 30 Band EQ into the front of his marshall jcm 900 but I am not sure if it was before or after his Rack RAT Dual. And perhaps routed as a dual 15 with one before the first of the dual Rat and mayvbe one after, switchable... but i forget exactly which Rane he used. But I tried to look on stage and this is the best information i can provide. Many EQ bands along side a Rat Rack Dual and I could tell from switching that there was order swiching to come up with all that various different Lava and molten rock both crunchy and smooth...

In long,
Something I learned from when i had a 32 band TC1128 Instrument Level EQ and my VHT Amps.... and Keeley pedals in A/B-ing stuff... when i was trying to tighten up my sound, the usual high passing bass frequencies would work, but once when i had a Keeley, it was pure magic because it was doing both the tightening, but it was not removing sub lows which were so deep! I couldnt explain why or how but I tried to match the idea on my TC1128 rack Eq into the amps and from that point forward i would only remove various bands from about 125hz to about 350hz but I would actually retain or slightly boost sub lows around 40hz give or take.
Then thats when i realized that amps only distort certain frequencies but some amps perhaps keep other frequencies clean in the bass ranges and actually allow them through clean to some amplitude.... And thats when i got the idea to request to amp companies to have flexible parametric EQs at the input stage combined with various crossovers.
That keeley modded TS9 also had this unexplainable silky glassy top end as well.

The TC 1128 is a killer piece..all analog with Midi and presets. + 1 for a bigger band Parametric EQ Block.

Regarding the tightness and sub lows for extended range guitar, i think it's still an area that could do with a lot of improvement in general in modern production. What you've got in the typical TS in front of a preamp sound is tight because of the low cut, but once you get down to tunings lower than E1 or typical 9 string tunings around C#0 or below, that low cut definitely removes that presence of the fundamental at that pitch, which can leave those tunings sounding too carved, with a huge amount of 1-4k attack and perhaps not enough note definition. Some tones out there with baritones and P90s for example end up having so much attack in the sound that it creates a kind of fatigue in the upper mids that you then need to soothe out post preamp.

One way to get around this would be for the Axe III's pitch follower to be radically improved to track down to 5 string bass territory (unlikely to happen but i never tire of requesting it!). This would then allow you to attach Pitch as a modifier to an adjustable low cut or filter, so that the low cut would change depending on the pitch of the notes being played. This would only work for single notes but would be killer (similar to the SurferEQ plugin or similar) for single note ERG riffs. You also get wild results by modifying the TS attack frequency using Pitch, but that would require a sophisticated low note priority system and a polyphonic pickup!

Another way around this is to not use the low cut in an Amp block at all and to experiment with the Amp's definition control, or use a Filter Block in Tilt mode which basically achieves the same effect of changing the overall balance between lows and highs.

I think this also depends on the quality of fundamental that the bass guitar (or synth) puts out in a given production. The Deftones 8 string tones also sound much rounder and less "TS boosted" than typical Djent tones, but including a sub channel is a cool concept. I suppose the sub info will fight the bass guitar at some point. It also depends on whether it's distorted subs being allowed into a preamp, clean DI subs via a crossover in parallel to the preamp, or crossover'd subs post preamp going to a dedicated sub cab.

A cool technique to dial back in some clean fundamental into a hardware high gain amp would be to run the guitar through a crossover and run the bulk of the frequencies into the preamp, and the subs into an eq and then into the fx return of the amp, allowing you to send the desired amount of clean subs to the power section, summed with the high gain preamp. As far as i know, you can't insert a signal into the "power amp only" section of the Amp block, but this would be a cool feature in itself, allowing you to model real life fx loop behaviour (eg different modelled preamps all routed into one modelled power amp section). To get around this you could run the subs from the DI crossover into an EQ and then directly to the Cab block or FR hardware power amp, so that they are summed with the post power amp signal of the Amp block.

A band that executes this concept really well is Death From Above 1979. They run a 30" scale bass into two heavily distorted solid state amps with a big low cut in front of the preamps, but also send a clean DI of the bass to FOH, so the engineer can dial in a sub signal to get that low end to sit with the midrange of the growling amps. It's all achieved with one instrument which ends up working better than an ERG fighting a bass guitar for low end territory.

 

[RackAddict]

The TC 1128 is a killer piece..all analog with Midi and presets. + 1 for a bigger band Parametric EQ Block.

Regarding the tightness and sub lows for extended range guitar, i think it's still an area that could do with a lot of improvement in general in modern production. What you've got in the typical TS in front of a preamp sound is tight because of the low cut, but once you get down to tunings lower than E1 or typical 9 string tunings around C#0 or below, that low cut definitely removes that presence of the fundamental at that pitch, which can leave those tunings sounding too carved, with a huge amount of 1-4k attack and perhaps not enough note definition. Some tones out there with baritones and P90s for example end up having so much attack in the sound that it creates a kind of fatigue in the upper mids that you then need to soothe out post preamp.

One way to get around this would be for the Axe III's pitch follower to be radically improved to track down to 5 string bass territory (unlikely to happen but i never tire of requesting it!). This would then allow you to attach Pitch as a modifier to an adjustable low cut or filter, so that the low cut would change depending on the pitch of the notes being played. This would only work for single notes but would be killer (similar to the SurferEQ plugin or similar) for single note ERG riffs. You also get wild results by modifying the TS attack frequency using Pitch, but that would require a sophisticated low note priority system and a polyphonic pickup!

Another way around this is to not use the low cut in an Amp block at all and to experiment with the Amp's definition control, or use a Filter Block in Tilt mode which basically achieves the same effect of changing the overall balance between lows and highs.

I think this also depends on the quality of fundamental that the bass guitar (or synth) puts out in a given production. The Deftones 8 string tones also sound much rounder and less "TS boosted" than typical Djent tones, but including a sub channel is a cool concept. I suppose the sub info will fight the bass guitar at some point. It also depends on whether it's distorted subs being allowed into a preamp, clean DI subs via a crossover in parallel to the preamp, or crossover'd subs post preamp going to a dedicated sub cab.

A cool technique to dial back in some clean fundamental into a hardware high gain amp would be to run the guitar through a crossover and run the bulk of the frequencies into the preamp, and the subs into an eq and then into the fx return of the amp, allowing you to send the desired amount of clean subs to the power section, summed with the high gain preamp. As far as i know, you can't insert a signal into the "power amp only" section of the Amp block, but this would be a cool feature in itself, allowing you to model real life fx loop behaviour (eg different modelled preamps all routed into one modelled power amp section). To get around this you could run the subs from the DI crossover into an EQ and then directly to the Cab block or FR hardware power amp, so that they are summed with the post power amp signal of the Amp block.

A band that executes this concept really well is Death From Above 1979. They run a 30" scale bass into two heavily distorted solid state amps with a big low cut in front of the preamps, but also send a clean DI of the bass to FOH, so the engineer can dial in a sub signal to get that low end to sit with the midrange of the growling amps. It's all achieved with one instrument which ends up working better than an ERG fighting a bass guitar for low end territory.

Thats very intense with the pitch follower request,

But I guess a manual way is to perhaps run modifiers to band on an EQ and maybe just intuitively engage or deactivate a multi-band compressor or switch in its settings or apply some modifier, or rely on an expression pedal to control eq,bands... depending on included strings in playing, or sounds you go for for whatever part of the song, or maybe even expression assigned to filters or crossovers. But thats a lot of work.

Or also maybe just run a parallel signal to the amp with crossover low pass for sub lows to run through clean in parallel to the amp (or drive block), But I think it would be better for the amp block it self to be able to do such parallel filtered clean crossover capability for lows (or mids or highs or whatever a person wants to shape it as.
So this way, one can retain the amp's mean character rather than just a shaped parallel DI signal from the guitar. Analog color is always neat to have!

But this is a second topic. So mainly, a switchable input eq to 10-band parametric or 32-band graphic to the amp circuit, and a switchable parallel clean 10-band parametric (or 32 band graphic) circuit parallel to the circuit of any amp or drive blocks with filters or band filter type switching capability to the various bands like the low pass or high pass or bandpass would be something that would be unparalleled in the industry.

 

[Luca9583]

Thats very intense with the pitch follower request,

But I guess a manual way is to perhaps run modifiers to band on an EQ and maybe just intuitively engage or deactivate a multi-band compressor or switch in its settings or apply some modifier, or rely on an expression pedal to control eq,bands... depending on included strings in playing, or sounds you go for for whatever part of the song, or maybe even expression assigned to filters or crossovers. But thats a lot of work.

Or also maybe just run a parallel signal to the amp with crossover low pass for sub lows to run through clean in parallel to the amp (or drive block), But I think it would be better for the amp block it self to be able to do such parallel filtered clean crossover capability for lows (or mids or highs or whatever a person wants to shape it as.
So this way, one can retain the amp's mean character rather than just a shaped parallel DI signal from the guitar. Analog color is always neat to have!

But this is a second topic. So mainly, a switchable input eq to 10-band parametric or 32-band graphic to the amp circuit, and a switchable parallel clean 10-band parametric (or 32 band graphic) circuit parallel to the circuit of any amp or drive blocks with filters or band filter type switching capability to the various bands like the low pass or high pass or bandpass would be something that would be unparalleled in the industry.

Yep..i'm convinced the Axe III's pitch follower is capable of so much more range. If the tuner can read a 5 string bass, surely the pitch follower can too but i suspect that Cliff wasn't happy with the level of latency from those low pitches (pitch follower ends at E2 and the synth block tracks down G1)

Yep exactly, basically you would want the amp to have a crossover routing junction at the input stage so that you can dial in which lows, mids and highs get distorted and which subs and lows remain clean, with the option of then running the clean freqs to either the power stage or the eq section only of the preamp to keep the overall tone shaping consistent. Or just have a dedicated fx loop within the amp block so you'd just run a crossover DI into the amp block's power stage.

I think you can achieve the Input parametric request with two Eq blocks, but the switchable parallel clean thing would require the amp block itself to allow for custom virtual routing.