Can an IR make my violin sound like a guitar?

Alex Kerezy

Inspired
Hi,
I've had my Axe for a year now. It's uhhhmaazing.
QUESTION - sometimes I want my violin to sound more like a guitar. And by guitar I mean, say a PRS plugged into an Axe with no (=zero) effects.

Could an IR somehow help me "morph" the violin sound more into a guitar sound?

P L E A S E - don't tell me to go buy a guitar and just plug it in and play. Hahahahaha.

Toneless in Toledo
 
Interesting question. I mean... we have some presets out there to help the guitar sound more like a violin... so.... I'm not so quick to say it can't be done. The key to your phrase is "more" like a guitar.
So... hit it with some distortion, and a maybe a really tight gate and a compressor to give it more attack... then rip off some Paganini ala Yngwie... and see what you get! I doubt you will ever be able to emulate a picked sound ... but I'm not sure what you are chasing exactly. Like... an e-bow sound?
But ... more specific to your question...I don't see how an IR can help that.
 
IR's are basically just really detailed EQ curves. You could make a tone match between the violin and guitar to make the sustained frequency response more similar, but it will not alter the note envelope of the instruments at all. Guitar has a defined transient attack and a natural decay downward from there. Bowed violin is a more continuous mechanically sustained note, so its note envelope is quite different. A plucked violin string is much more similar, but I doubt that's what you hand in mind.
 
IR's are basically just really detailed EQ curves. You could make a tone match between the violin and guitar to make the sustained frequency response more similar, but it will not alter the note envelope of the instruments at all. Guitar has a defined transient attack and a natural decay downward from there. Bowed violin is a more continuous mechanically sustained note, so its note envelope is quite different. A plucked violin string is much more similar, but I doubt that's what you hand in mind.
What if we use an impulse response that’s not really a response to an impulse. We may not call it an IR anymore but we could still convolute it with the input signal?
 
The instrument size, tamber, string material, string size, the way the strings are played... I don't think it's at all nearly possible to

A piezo into something like a fishman/lrbraggs/even a Boss AC-3 I don't think will get you there, and certainly have that top end that makes an acoustic sound like an acoustic.
 
Eric Johnson's guitar sound has been likened to a 200lb violin many times, so that might be your starting point, however, there are major differences between the sound of a violin and a guitar. At the most basic, a bowed violin generates a sawtooth waveform whereas a guitar is a sine wave. The two sound different. A plucked violin string is more like a picked guitar string but it lacks the sustain.

Back to Johnson, he uses a lot of distortion for his lead sound, so his dynamics are smoothed out, which is similar to a bowed violin. Heavy compression or distortion will help a guitar there. A distorted signal is a square wave, not a sawtooth so the basic sound will be wrong.

But will an IR do that? No. It might make the guitar body sound more like a violin body but your playing and the sound of the strings won't be like a violin.
 
So when is the Axe Fx iii module coming out that changes timbre, that changes the transients, that changes the subharmonics and resonant sounds ----- to help truly shape sound???
[please - don't tell me to get you the schematic and then you'll add it; where's the INNOVATION here?]

Timbreless in Toledo
 
As someone using the FM3 with a violin... it will never sound Exactly like a guitar due to the differences in mechanics and natural timbre between the two instruments. You can get very close to the timbre of the sustain of a guitar on the violin with experimenting with different amp models and settings as well as some creative eq (use the looper trick and your ears ultimately to dial in the sound). Really they are two different instruments though but affecting a violin in a similar was as guitar is a very cool unique sound in my opinion.
 
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I've tried amps and cabs with my gf's violin and it sounds pretty close, but still like a violin at the same time.

Ive noticed that the fretted violins like the vipers sound VERY much like a guitar

It's much harder to get a guitar to sound like a violin 🎻
 
So when is the Axe Fx iii module coming out that changes timbre, that changes the transients, that changes the subharmonics and resonant sounds ----- to help truly shape sound???
[please - don't tell me to get you the schematic and then you'll add it; where's the INNOVATION here?]

Timbreless in Toledo
A faster path would be to use a guitar synthesizer. They already exist, and they generate the right waveform, and they simulate the timbre relatively well.
 
An actual guitar synth might serve getting a bowed sound faster yes, something like the sy100 would work well no?
 
Greg - can you give me the names of some of these? Is it (are they) like the Pog or Pog2?
The synthesizer block can probably get you started with a sawtooth waveform too, but you will have to program all the parameters and it’s not like using a synthesizer with a dedicated hex-pickup which can be polyphonic.
 
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