Ballad of John Hammer

ownhammer

Power User
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Okay, so, first off - don't take this overly serious as an attempted tone clone.

Tonight I received an email from a friend asking about a Bonamassa type tone, so I thought this would be a fun chance to ignore every other responsibility I have and just mess around with my Axe-Fx for a couple hours. The bummer, I didn't install FW18 before doing this, so, FW 17.00. I'll get there eventually. :)

So the guitar in this first clip is my Godin Icon 3 P90 with the pickup selector in the 2 position (bridge + middle), straight into the Axe-Fx II Mark II. The details are as follows.

The sound with P90's:


The amp settings:

Ballad-of-John-Hammer-Amp-P90.png


In this patch that I just made up tonight, I use the Boost, Input Drive, and the Dynamic Presence ONLY to control the sound, and adapt to different guitars and/or pickups.

The cab IR setup:

Ballad-of-John-Hammer-Cab.png


These are V3 Mix Library IR's of the "412-GTR MAR-CB" FOUND HERE. If it's a little too percussive and you want it a little rounder, swap out the M-BB-55 for the M-PR25-75.

If the low mids are a little wooly for the mix, suck out a little 400 Hz:

Ballad-of-John-Hammer-EQ.png


That then sounds like this:


Did it again (though a few hours later in the wee hours of the morning) with an '85 Gibson Explorer with a 498T in the bridge, and flipped on the Boost and bumped the Dynamic Presence to goose it:

Ballad-of-John-Hammer-Amp-HB.png


That sounds like this:


Then with the same 400 Hz mini-cut:


Anyway, you may think it sounds like crap, or nothing like Bonamassa (especially the humbucker one, that was just for grins), or that I need a helmet for not spending 5 minutes to install FW18, but I still had fun, so there. Hope this helps somebody out there. :)
 
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...and then he decided "You know what, I want to butcher some Killswitch, because why the f**k not?!?!" And then it happened, and the song abruptly cut off before the biggest train wreck of f**k ups in songs not tracked with a usable backing tempo device ever.


I seriously need to start playing my guitar more than 10 minutes a month... Just, yikes. :)

Same patch as the humbucker one above except Dynamic Presence is at 10. If anybody says you can't play metal with a Silver Jubilee and a Marshall cab with EVM's and vintage G12M's, you tell them I said they can go straight to hell. :lol

...oh my goodness this would make so much more sense if I actually drank alcohol...
 
Great....I'm speechless Kevin... for 10 minutes a month playing you're bloody great guitarist and thanks for the sound samples...I think I can learn quiet a bit on ton tweaking...:encouragement:
 
Same patch as the humbucker one above except Dynamic Presence is at 10. If anybody says you can't play metal with a Silver Jubilee and a Marshall cab with EVM's and vintage G12M's, you tell them I said they can go straight to hell. :lol

...oh my goodness this would make so much more sense if I actually drank alcohol...


Marshall's is when it all began. The birthplace of metal.
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Thanks guys! :D The sleep deprivation had me loopy, glad that stuff was mostly coherent. :lol

***** ***** ***** *****

Yup, everything at 10 with the presence and depth low is how I start with every amp, this in both the analog and digital realms (and I did it this way first in analog, so doing so in digital is just following along hoping to get similar results). With most tone stacks, especially anything in the Marshall family, this is the "neutral" or "off" position, as tone stack controls are subtractive EQ with nothing being cut at 10, and more being removed the further you turn the given control downward. As everything at 10 is the amp circuit in its natural state (not everything at "noon" like most assume), you get to hear the choices the circuit designer made in the frequencies to be amplified throughout the gain stages and the true character of the sound. Like a Trainwreck, the amp is also usually extremely responsive at this setting and also really shows the differences in your guitar, and the nuances of your playing. From there, typically the first thing to be lowered, if necessary, is the Bass, then the Mids, but it depends on the amp. Power amp controls are the opposite. They are feedback loops that start with the least amount of alteration at 0, then add boosts moving the knobs upwards, most having the vast majority of their swing from 7-10. So having them low to start is again the amp at its most natural state.

My Friedman HBE, JCM800, and Cameron CCV patches are all three at 10 as well. VH4 is Bass between 1 and 5 depending on the guitar, Mid and Treble at 10. Cameron Atomica is all on 10 for P90's and Bass 4, Mid 7, Treble 10 for humbuckers if I recall off the top of my head. I also really like what the Dynamic Presence and Depth do (haven't read the manual to know what these actually are, may or may not as I know what the sound is by twisting the knobs and listening, haha), so most of them I have those both around 5 or so with the traditional Presence and Depth starting off low and coming up if necessary.

Something else of note is that in the analog world, this is a common practice for me and the sound I get is one that in the Axe-Fx most times I have to have the Bright switch on to get that same sound in terms of the amount of gain coming back and the overall frequency response of the real world amp. There is this alive, spongy thing going on that without it many times (but not all), I am just not getting without that engaged. I do not like using pedals if at all possible, so this Bright switch and the Boost switch come in very handy for me with the AFX. For example, I recorded this today, which is an analog replica of a DC30 preamp into a VST power amp:


If you are morbidly curious, the signal chain for the above is detailed HERE. No pedals, no post EQ, just crank the crap out of most of the knobs and get that spongy, touch sensitive lovely goo all up in my ear holes. :)
 
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Now take the 5 minutes and update to FW 18.1. You've got some nice recordings for comparisons, but the irony is that you won't be able to put the guitar down. Sorry for that in advance.
 
Hehe, I actually did the update today and did some playing around. Definitely a marked improvement for the FAS magic black box, they should all be proud. :)
 
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