Finally found my IR Sound!

favance

favance

Power User
Thanks to Austin Buddy and a little reading, I think I found my favorite IR Sounds. Here's a quote from Eddie Kramer (Hendrix recording engineer:

When asked about the techniques used to record Hendrix's guitar, Eddie Kramer's response is concise and to the point. "I'd stick a bloody mic in front of it and hope for the best," he jokes. "Nah, generally speaking it was either a 67 or [a Beyer] M160 or a combination of both, which I still use today. It might be slightly different, of course, but the basic principle's the same — a ribbon and a condenser, along with compression and EQ and reverb. All that stuff was always added during recording."
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I'm really surprised after reading this that many other Cab Packs I have purchased do not include the M160. All I had to do was mix the M160 w/a Room IR included in Austin Buddy's cab packs and their it was... Magic!

It would be cool if other IR Packs included both the M160 (in multiple positions) and a Room IR...

Has anyone else tried this combination? Thoughts?
 
If been trying mixes of grill and room mics. using 'The Amp Factory' IRs, using some premixed blends provided with the pack i got.

Works well to take off unnatural edge and proximity from high gain presets.
Of coarse there' no way to move the guitar back to 'closer to the listener' than what's in the IR mix, so you need to be happy with the forward/back in the mix balance if when recording.
 
Interesting that I just found this thread; I spent several hours today auditioning and working on M160 IR's. That mic has long been my favorite mic by far, and it's in every IR mix I use. I find that it invariably sounds the best; full fat mids, a nice high end rolloff, a low end I like better then a Royer 121. You can get by with a single M160 IR in a cab in many cases.

I was experimenting with these Fractal Cab Pack M160 IR's today:
-TV 160 (I like the factory 103 TV mix and wanted to get that general tone with a few tweaks)
-Fractal GB 160 (my main 4x12 cab IR (that I've been using for a couple of years now) is a mix of the Fractal GB 160 IR's and one of the 4047 mics from the same cab)

I'm looking to refine my main mix/cab to have less bottom/boom and more high end/high mid sparkle, and get a custom TV IR. What I've narrowed it down to just use a single M160 IR for each cab. I picked the most balanced/suitable IR of the M160 sets, then uploaded that IR straight into the the AFX. Then, using CabLab, I tweaked the high pass filter in steps of 10Hz starting from 60Hz to 140Hz and uploaded them into AFX.

I'm going to audition them all again tomorrow with various amps and evaluate them further. What I'm finding is that a single IR has a particular low end 'krannnggg' and clean, punchy attack that I seem to lose when I mix IR's, but I really need to spend more time with mixing them I suppose. However, a single M160 IR seems to be coming out on top in my evaluations today vs my existing mixed IR's, particularly in the low end bark.

Having a single M160 IR with various low end rolloffs will work great with amps that are very bassy/woofy to ones that aren't.


So far, I'm liking a single M160 IR and may go back to using just one.
 
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favance said:
All I had to do was mix the M160 w/a Room IR included in Austin Buddy's cab packs and their it was... Magic!
Click to expand...

I'm curious what speaker IR you are using from Buddy's cab pack (I have it too), and for what kind of amps/tones are you using it with?
 
Stratoblaster said:
I picked the most balanced/suitable IR of the M160 sets, then uploaded that IR straight into the the AFX. Then, using CabLab, I tweaked the high pass filter in steps of 10Hz starting from 60Hz to 140Hz and uploaded them into AFX. [...]

Having a single M160 IR with various low end rolloffs will work great with amps that are very bassy/woofy to ones that aren't.
Click to expand...

You can also use the high and low pass filters in the Cab Block for that. This is what they are supposed for. They do essentially the same as the filters in Cab Lab and you would save some Cab Slots for different cabs.
 
dr bonkers said:
My packs include the M160, Crown PZM, and 14 other mics.

In other threads I have discussed why I use the PZM rather than room mics.
Click to expand...

Nice, I bought a PZM years ago to do Kemper profiles, was quite bright so I haven't used it, might need to try it again. M160 set to arrive today...after a shipping delay, it's like Fed Ex is paid to delay it to build anticipation :)

USPS delivered the R121 fast and this is instant Petrucci tone!!! Watch out for this one haha.
 
Lilarcor said:
You can also use the high and low pass filters in the Cab Block for that. This is what they are supposed for. They do essentially the same as the filters in Cab Lab and you would save some Cab Slots for different cabs.
Click to expand...

I've been cutting off the low end at around 120Hz in the Cab block for some time but wanted to experiment with 'baking in' the cutoff in the IR itself to see if that rolloff works a little differently for me. I'm not sure, at this time, if/how the rolloff in Cab Lab is different vs the Cab block so this is all a test. Love having 512 IR slots in any case...:cool:
 
Not wanting to ruin the mood, but what you need here is a Pye compressor, the one Kramer used (and still use I guess). A real one, not the Pie software. There lies the magic, in high end hardware compressors. They thicken the saturations and room reverbs like no software does. Of course an authentic Pye is many times the price of an axe-fx now.
 
speedloader said:
Not wanting to ruin the mood, but what you need here is a Pye compressor, the one Kramer used (and still use I guess). A real one, not the Pie software. There lies the magic, in high end hardware compressors. They thicken the saturations and room reverbs like no software does. Of course an authentic Pye is many times the price of an axe-fx now.
Click to expand...


You sure?
 
There's quite an irony to advocating the need for a real piece of hardware over the software emulation equivalent to use with a device (AxeFX) that is the software emulation of real pieces of hardware. :p
 
favance said:
I'm sure Jimi used a compressor and a bunch of other studio effects while playing live...;)
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Knowing how much of a sonic tinkerer Jimi was, if he could have back then, he probably would have. If he were alive today, I'm sure he'd be messing around with the AxeFX in some capacity.

That said, if you're trying to recreate an authentic live tone, then yes, just go guitar -> pedals -> amp like he did. However, most of our experience with hearing Jimi's sound is through studio recordings so we're accustomed to that layer of production on top, which may sound "wrong" if left out of the signal chain.
 
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