Clean tones without a cab?

C

claxor

Power User
I noticed something interesting using an Axefx. I would setup a nice clean amp tone (JC120 w/ thick chorus, parallel detune, circular delay, hall reverb, stereo enhancer) and some appropriate cab ir between the amp and effects. Out of curiosity, I would completely bypass the cab ir, and try listening with good headphones... and it sounded huge! Added the cab ir back... and it sounded tiny by comparison. Any speaker that was full range and not a guitar speaker sounded fantastic for cleans.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomena?
 
A carefully crafted clean tone can sound big and glassy without a Cab block. It's not unheard-of to play a guitar straight into the mixing desk.
 
Yeah, I do this - or blend the cab block 50/50 with the dry signal. Pretty sure Tesseract/Monuments do this for their signature clean sound.

Sounds great with the Triaxis clean.
 
Liam Thompson said:
Yeah basically setting up like the classic 80's LA clean sounds straight to the desk ala Dann Huff. Sounds great
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What about guys that would want that sound live with traditional rigs? After effects, etc., What would they do? Use a DI box which goes to the FOH?
 
claxor said:
I noticed something interesting using an Axefx. I would setup a nice clean amp tone (JC120 w/ thick chorus, parallel detune, circular delay, hall reverb, stereo enhancer) and some appropriate cab ir between the amp and effects. Out of curiosity, I would completely bypass the cab ir, and try listening with good headphones... and it sounded huge! Added the cab ir back... and it sounded tiny by comparison. Any speaker that was full range and not a guitar speaker sounded fantastic for cleans.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomena?
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Yes. There guidelines to sound, but every rule is meant to be broken so if it sounds good, no matter what you are using or configuration, it will sound good.
 
I'm in the process of setting up a triumph patch where I will need to mix some clean in with my crunch sound. What is the standard procedure when going direct without an amp or cab? I was planing to try some compression and detune maybe but just curious what is typical for the direct to console signal path
 
Maybe to answer your question and AdSense to what you say. The speakers from JC 120 or really flat almost full range speaker, it could make sense to you to use no cab sim to achieve the result of a really clean sound
 
My mate is a bassist primarily. I’m of course telling him about the axe fx and all that stuff and he’s like yeah ok.
He uses logic drums for example and goes direct for his bass tone. He plays disco or really retro 70s dance music. He records his strat funky tones with nothing but a compressor. No amp no nothing, just a compressor and it’s sound great....
 
HarrySound said:
My mate is a bassist primarily. I’m of course telling him about the axe fx and all that stuff and he’s like yeah ok.
He uses logic drums for example and goes direct for his bass tone. He plays disco or really retro 70s dance music. He records his strat funky tones with nothing but a compressor. No amp no nothing, just a compressor and it’s sound great....
Click to expand...
Hey... It worked great for Nile Rodgers! ;)
 
Heavy overdrive and distortion not only adds nasty highs to the sound that needs to get filtered out again by a cab (that's something that a lowpass or an eq could fix as well), it also flattens natural dynamics and character of the instrument which makes it sound boring and lifeless. That's why you need an interesting IR to add back some life and voice to your sound.
With all uncompressed and undistorted sounds the dynamics and charakter of the instrument don't get lost, so there's no logic need to add artificial acoustic colours with a cab.
It's just that listeners got used to the sound of certain cabs.
 
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