For Those Who Struggle with Traditional IRs

Yes, and no.

The pickups need to match the guitar, you are right on about that. The guitar will tell you what fits, just with what it is producing out of the box. Too bright and harsh and you can't dial it out. Grab a pickup that has a lower resonance to match the most likely bright wood (maple top most times). Of if you have a mahogany guitar with dark pickups, you can put brighter resonant pickups in it. Like the JB/59 combo for instance.

Glad you figured out what was going on. I have a feeling those pickups were just an issue from the get go. The fact that they had either changed the wiring of newer versions of the pickups, or just messed up early on... Say a lot.

P.S. Using a vol pot as a variable resistance is a great idea.

Thanks! For me at least, I was totally able to dial out the harshness. I kept getting more and more ideas as that thread went on, and I'll be playing with it a lot more when I can. The Guitar Nuts 2 thread I point to at the end there just sat with me for a while.
 
I've had a fundamental change of heart about traditional IRs, and I now fully appreciate and love them; I realize the root of the problem was the way I listen to tones. What I realized is that a traditional IR may well sound harsh to me when I first load it, but if I dial through the harshness until it goes away, the resulting tone will be the best I've ever had.

I tend to be too audiophile in a persnickety fanatical kind of way, where any harsh frequency has to be rooted out before I can worry about the character of the tone. So my best tones were about finding something that never sounded harsh in any position, with any setting of the amp I've chosen, then I'd dial in the tone from there. This would lead to tones that sounded great to me out of context, but the moment I'd hear any tone from a recording, an album or a YouTube demo video, e.g., mine would sound weirdly distant and overly soft, for lack of a better term.

So recently I instituted a rule for myself to figure out how others get magical tones from traditional IRs right away. The rule was always to create a tone while comparing to a reference track, usually a YouTube video. What I found most helpful was to find videos demoing an IR pack I own, loading the same IR, and dialing in by ear to match the video.

And this is where I found that an IR that's incredible might sound like garbage to me with almost all amp settings, but there almost always will be one setting where it shines and becomes incredible. And with that, I'll have a present and powerful tone that will hold up in context. So the idea for me is to dial through the harshness to find the gold. If I start with something that's never harsh, it will never be present either.
 
I've had a fundamental change of heart about traditional IRs, and I now fully appreciate and love them; I realize the root of the problem was the way I listen to tones. What I realized is that a traditional IR may well sound harsh to me when I first load it, but if I dial through the harshness until it goes away, the resulting tone will be the best I've ever had.

I tend to be too audiophile in a persnickety fanatical kind of way, where any harsh frequency has to be rooted out before I can worry about the character of the tone. So my best tones were about finding something that never sounded harsh in any position, with any setting of the amp I've chosen, then I'd dial in the tone from there. This would lead to tones that sounded great to me out of context, but the moment I'd hear any tone from a recording, an album or a YouTube demo video, e.g., mine would sound weirdly distant and overly soft, for lack of a better term.

So recently I instituted a rule for myself to figure out how others get magical tones from traditional IRs right away. The rule was always to create a tone while comparing to a reference track, usually a YouTube video. What I found most helpful was to find videos demoing an IR pack I own, loading the same IR, and dialing in by ear to match the video.

And this is where I found that an IR that's incredible might sound like garbage to me with almost all amp settings, but there almost always will be one setting where it shines and becomes incredible. And with that, I'll have a present and powerful tone that will hold up in context. So the idea for me is to dial through the harshness to find the gold. If I start with something that's never harsh, it will never be present either.
All of this! Reference and context play a major role in how a tone sits in a mix as well as calibrating our ears when dialing in a sound. After doing this, people tend to realize that most recorded tones we love are brighter than what we dial in without any reference or context.

For the most natural results, try turning off the high cut in the cab block and use the amp’s middle, treble, and presence controls to tweak the midrange and top end where you like it. I’ve been a live and studio player for over 20 years and have never had an engineer low pass the guitars. We just tweak the amp for the mic-up and it ends up sounding great in the mix.

And yes, certain amp settings will sound bad with an IR if they aren’t dialed in for what the mic is hearing. Brighter IRs tend to like darker amp settings. Darker IRs tend to like brighter amp settings. On top of that, different cabs with different speakers will alter the tone immensely, so be sure to re-tweak your amp whenever you change cabs, speakers, microphones, and even different microphone placements.

I’m glad you’re finding yourself in a good spot now. :)
 
All of this! Reference and context play a major role in how a tone sits in a mix as well as calibrating our ears when dialing in a sound. After doing this, people tend to realize that most recorded tones we love are brighter than what we dial in without any reference or context.

For the most natural results, try turning off the high cut in the cab block and use the amp’s middle, treble, and presence controls to tweak the midrange and top end where you like it. I’ve been a live and studio player for over 20 years and have never had an engineer low pass the guitars. We just tweak the amp for the mic-up and it ends up sounding great in the mix.

And yes, certain amp settings will sound bad with an IR if they aren’t dialed in for what the mic is hearing. Brighter IRs tend to like darker amp settings. Darker IRs tend to like brighter amp settings. On top of that, different cabs with different speakers will alter the tone immensely, so be sure to re-tweak your amp whenever you change cabs, speakers, microphones, and even different microphone placements.

I’m glad you’re finding yourself in a good spot now. :)

Thanks so much Justin! You helped a ton before, but I still had this basic misunderstanding about dealing with harshness, thinking that the right IR would sound fine enough at any setting. But what I didn't understand is how drastically different I could get the IRs to sound just with the standard BMT, MV, Presence, and Resonance tweaks, and that tweaking from an initially harsh sounding IR miraculously sounds so much better than starting from one that is never offensive. The one that's utterly inoffensive also is weird and unusable.

See, I had gotten in the habit, from my pre-Fractal days, of capturing IRs that had an unbelievable bass to them, which helped smooth any harshness mask character. And it was like, too soothing, for lack of a better word. Then I'd listen to others' tones and never be able to get to that level of character, because it was all too smooth and artificially characterless.
 
I've been playing with this today

https://www.threebodytech.com/en/products/cabinetron

It is made by the same team that produced the Kirchhoff EQ which is the same quality as the Fabfilter Q3 VST plugin.

It has a lot of features that I'm looking for such as smoothing and Tone match as well as several others.

The smoothing does take out some of the peaks - I don't know how it compares to the fractal version as only on FM3.

I used smoothing a lot for a while, but now I can't stand it, honestly! I'd rather just do more amp tweaking instead, or put two mics out of alignment to smooth out the top.
 
This video was very helpful for me.



I can't believe you just posted this. I just watched this a couple days ago! I love his thought process here, and I think his idea of looking at a huge slow high end roll off is such a cool approach, at least for metal.
 
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All of this! Reference and context play a major role in how a tone sits in a mix as well as calibrating our ears when dialing in a sound. After doing this, people tend to realize that most recorded tones we love are brighter than what we dial in without any reference or context.

For the most natural results, try turning off the high cut in the cab block and use the amp’s middle, treble, and presence controls to tweak the midrange and top end where you like it. I’ve been a live and studio player for over 20 years and have never had an engineer low pass the guitars. We just tweak the amp for the mic-up and it ends up sounding great in the mix.

And yes, certain amp settings will sound bad with an IR if they aren’t dialed in for what the mic is hearing. Brighter IRs tend to like darker amp settings. Darker IRs tend to like brighter amp settings. On top of that, different cabs with different speakers will alter the tone immensely, so be sure to re-tweak your amp whenever you change cabs, speakers, microphones, and even different microphone placements.

I’m glad you’re finding yourself in a good spot now. :)
Love hearing your perspective Justin.

Frankly, it's surprising to me that all the top end I hear with no high end rolloff works live and loud. I find it painful, and I've been gradually mellowing out my current crop of favorite presets, thinking I was making more "grown-up" and professional tones.

Am I just wrong?

I know I know, I need to play these tones in a full mix, at the volume I'm interested in. Working on it, I'll get back to me.

And also, does this mean my live tones and recorded tones need to be majorly different? What happened to the idea of recording the performance of a band?

Clearly I know less than nothing.
 
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Love hearing your perspective Justin.

Frankly, it's surprising to me that all the top end I hear with no high end rolloff works live and loud. I find it painful, and I've been gradually mellowing out my current crop of favorite presets, thinking I was making more "grown-up" and professional tones.

Am I just wrong?

I know I know, I need to play these tones in a full mix, at the volume I'm interested in. Working on it, I'll get back to me.

And also, does this mean my live tones and recorded tones need to be majorly different? What happened to the idea of recording the performance of a band?

Clearly I know less than nothing.
Justin, in case this came across as critical or skeptical of what you were saying, no, far from it.
It was a genuine expression of my confusion and failure to understand how to approach making professional sounding tones that work well in a mix.
This post was probably unnecessary, but the net's a funny place, misinterpretation abounds, better I spell it out.
 
I also have been struggling with live vs studio IR use. I tend to dial my live tones to dark with to much midrange. (Talking modern high gain here) For awhile i was using Justin's Mesa 2x12 Mix 01 blended 50% with the KW 4x12 mix 01. I think it sounds so full an awesome but it almost gets lost in a band mix. I worry i have to much going on. Then i switch to YA's Mesa 4x12 OS Mix 01 and it cuts more but sounds a bit harsher with less low mids. All band practice is me questioning myself. Am i the only psycho who has like 5 versions of the same live preset all with different IR combos? I switch presets during songs to see what 'pops' more. They're all volume leveled but i'm pretty sure i'm obsessing to much 😄
 
I also have been struggling with live vs studio IR use. I tend to dial my live tones to dark with to much midrange. (Talking modern high gain here) For awhile i was using Justin's Mesa 2x12 Mix 01 blended 50% with the KW 4x12 mix 01. I think it sounds so full an awesome but it almost gets lost in a band mix. I worry i have to much going on. Then i switch to YA's Mesa 4x12 OS Mix 01 and it cuts more but sounds a bit harsher with less low mids. All band practice is me questioning myself. Am i the only psycho who has like 5 versions of the same live preset all with different IR combos? I switch presets during songs to see what 'pops' more. They're all volume leveled but i'm pretty sure i'm obsessing to much 😄

To me this sounds right haha! I mean, a mix completely changes what IR you need. I think you're doing the right thing. I went to a metal show years ago, and all the bands were playing half stacks, a Triple Rectifier, a 5153...I can't remember what else. The guitars sounded massive with the band in tacet, then pure mud. Then a band came up where a guy hooked up and Axe-FX (II I believe), and he cut through the mix just freaking perfectly. It was the only consistently discernable tone all night, and it was incredible. So I think it's a fantastic idea to have a softer practice sound that works like a cab in a room, i.e., not pointed at your ear with a mic, but soft and not ear fatiguing, then another tone with your band mix that you should dial in with everyone in the room together to figure out what cuts through. Then most likely a suite of different ones for recording. Context is king!
 
Love hearing your perspective Justin.

Frankly, it's surprising to me that all the top end I hear with no high end rolloff works live and loud. I find it painful, and I've been gradually mellowing out my current crop of favorite presets, thinking I was making more "grown-up" and professional tones.

Am I just wrong?

I know I know, I need to play these tones in a full mix, at the volume I'm interested in. Working on it, I'll get back to me.

And also, does this mean my live tones and recorded tones need to be majorly different? What happened to the idea of recording the performance of a band?

Clearly I know less than nothing.
No worries. I didn't sense anything negative about your post... just curiosity.

Harshness means different things to different people. For some, it's upper-midrange/presence between 2k-8k while others might view harshness as anything above 10k. A lot of it also depends on the guitar, amp, and listening source that can accentuate these areas.

The idea behind my last post is leaving the high cut off and dialing in your amp to get the tonal balance and top end response you want; just like using a real amp and cab at a gig where the sound guy puts a 57 on your cab and you tweak your amp for what you're hearing through the monitors rather than asking him to low pass your guitar or make specific EQ adjustments.

If you turn your mids, treble, and presence all down to zero, your tone will probably be unusably dark and far from harsh. This means that you have the ability to turn those knobs until you get the right top end without being harsh and without cutting off the amp's natural frequency range. Back when I was using real amps live (usually a Marshall DSL 100 or a Mesa Dual Rec), it was pretty common to crank the bass and mids and have the treble and presence pretty low around 3-4. The tone would have been harsh if I set them higher past 5 or 6. The amps were dialed in for what I was hearing in the monitors while playing with the band.

I used the same technique when I switched to Fractal about ten years ago. I'd dial in my presets using global amp and cab blocks in my studio while playing along to the albums. When it was time to rehearse, I'd have my laptop sitting on top of my cab with Axe-Edit open so I could fine-tune amp settings or try different IRs that suited the mix and save them to all of my presets with a single click.

Trust your ears. Don't be afraid to turn the knobs one way or the other, or try a different amp model if the one you're using has a character that doesn't play nicely with the rest of the band.

Hopefully this makes sense. Sorry for the super long post.
 
I just got another clue: my monitoring has been just lacking in bass. For years now I just don't listen to music; nothing but podcasts. And I use AKG K240 headphones. I just listened to music for the first time in a while with these, and compared them to my wife's headphones, and the difference was staggering. No wonder I've been setting really bassy IRs before this from TH-U and before that, Amplitube 4. I was compensating for thinner sounding headphones, and regular IRs were sounding harsh to me compared to what I expected. I'm an idiot, and I need new headphones.

And in the meantime I'm dialing in my tones with factory York IRs in the Axe to acclimate myself, and the results are glorious. Next, I'll whip into the York packs I own again and go to town.
 
I just got another clue: my monitoring has been just lacking in bass. For years now I just don't listen to music; nothing but podcasts. And I use AKG K240 headphones. I just listened to music for the first time in a while with these, and compared them to my wife's headphones, and the difference was staggering. No wonder I've been setting really bassy IRs before this from TH-U and before that, Amplitube 4. I was compensating for thinner sounding headphones, and regular IRs were sounding harsh to me compared to what I expected. I'm an idiot, and I need new headphones.

And in the meantime I'm dialing in my tones with factory York IRs in the Axe to acclimate myself, and the results are glorious. Next, I'll whip into the York packs I own again and go to town.
This is a major discovery! Your listening source and environment have a tremendous effect on what you hear... especially regarding headphones. If listening to music through headphones or studio monitors sounds harsh, there's a good chance your listening source is imparting the same harsh quality on your tones.
 
This is a major discovery! Your listening source and environment have a tremendous effect on what you hear... especially regarding headphones. If listening to music through headphones or studio monitors sounds harsh, there's a good chance your listening source is imparting the same harsh quality on your tones.

Dude, you haven no clue how hard I'm kicking myself.
 
This is a major discovery! Your listening source and environment have a tremendous effect on what you hear... especially regarding headphones. If listening to music through headphones or studio monitors sounds harsh, there's a good chance your listening source is imparting the same harsh quality on your tones.
Not to jump in here, but along those lines, I'm using a pair of EV PXMs, like a lot of people here.
(My old Dynaudio studio monitors have been out of commission for a while, not the speakers themselves, but that whole chain, long story.)
I'm sure they're not as flat as good studio monitors, but not too bad, and the vibe I'm after down there these days is much more like rehearsal or live than a recording session.

That said, I never go to clubs or concerts any more, so maybe I shouldn't be talking about "live" at all, even if that's the fantasy I'm in while I'm playing -- live, or jamming in a friend's living room.

What I need to do is play some great recordings through the EVs, and play along using my Axe presets, see what I think.
That's the plan.
 
Not to jump in here, but along those lines, I'm using a pair of EV PXMs, like a lot of people here.
(My old Dynaudio studio monitors have been out of commission for a while, not the speakers themselves, but that whole chain, long story.)
I'm sure they're not as flat as good studio monitors, but not too bad, and the vibe I'm after down there these days is much more like rehearsal or live than a recording session.

That said, I never go to clubs or concerts any more, so maybe I shouldn't be talking about "live" at all, even if that's the fantasy I'm in while I'm playing -- live, or jamming in a friend's living room.

What I need to do is play some great recordings through the EVs, and play along using my Axe presets, see what I think.
That's the plan.
I just looked up the PXMs and saw that they have user EQ options. When you're listening to music through them, try tuning them with the EQ to get the music sounding familiar, pleasing, and not overly scooped or hyped. Listen to several different artists and songs you know really well and make small adjustments until you're happy. When the music sounds right, try dialing in a new preset from scratch and see if things start to feel better. I hope this helps.
 
I just looked up the PXMs and saw that they have user EQ options. When you're listening to music through them, try tuning them with the EQ to get the music sounding familiar, pleasing, and not overly scooped or hyped. Listen to several different artists and songs you know really well and make small adjustments until you're happy. When the music sounds right, try dialing in a new preset from scratch and see if things start to feel better. I hope this helps.
The PXMs are very flexible, and you'll find a lot of info in the Amps and Cabs threads about how different people prefer to set them up, both with the EQ and with the initial placement settings in the DSP. What I found was that Tripod mode, Treble at -3, Mids at 99Hz and -3, and Bass at -6 gets me a good tone on stage with relatively little EQ on the AxeFX output needed. YMMV.
 
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