...sorry to disappoint, nothing's online yet 
but it's coming not too far from now.
Here's a video preview of what I've been working on these two last weeks. Please note that many presets here ( #199, 209, 210, 215, 244, 248 ) are from other users. It's because I wanted to record a video to be used as a reference for myself, it wasn't meant to be uploaded anywhere. Then I decided to put it on YouTube anyway, so yesterday, as soon as I clicked on the "stop" button, I uploaded the full version, which was one hour long, as "unlisted". But that was way too long and unfocused, so today I decided to edit it. Here's that new version, much shorter, which acts as a teaser of what I'm working on : a bank of hi gain presets. I will soon do a real demo of that hi gain bank, which will also show how to edit a preset to customize it (gain and equalizing).
First there's 7 minutes of noodling, the part with my new presets starts at 7:34 :
Presets from that high gain bank are patches #129 to #183 ; that's 53 amp models, and there's also more elaborate versions of the Friedman BE preset (#134). I have plans to do many more (some dual amps presets for example).
If you want to know more about the concept behind that bank, read the following :
This bank is the result of rethinking my method of presets programming. I followed this basic goal : one amp suitable for hi gain playing = one preset. Each preset should have roughly the same volume level, and all of them must meet my requirements for heavy rock/metal playing. Definition of "hi gain sound" is of course subjective ; I'm not a br00tal, 7/8 strings modern metal player (I can listen to it but I don't play it), but not vintage hard rock player either, although I have my roots in the eighties. Let's say that my ballpark is progressive metal à la nineties Dream Theater, although this is restrictive.
Some facts :
All the presets were tweaked for an Ibanez RG520 with a DiMarzio Norton in bridge, tuned in Eb. I tested all of them with the same stupid palm-muting lick on lower strings, then six strings basic chords, power chords, and a little bit of lead playing. It's not always easy to have enough gain to help legato playing (which I uses a lot because of my terrible right hand ) and at the same time no mud in the lower strings palm muting. These presets are for rhythm first, but being usable for leads is a desirable bonus. Of course some amps are better for rhythm, some for lead.
All the presets uses the same cab, without any room level : GuitarHack ThisOne (from a Mesa 4x12 with V30, a standard "metal" cab). Why this ? First, it has been my go-to hi gain IR since almost the beginning, I was already using it in the Axe Standard in 2009 so I know it well . Second, my objective wasn't to find a variety of tones/colors ; it was to find, for each amp model, the best way to achieves a tight, punchy hi gain sound, as detailed below. I tweaked the Low Cut and Hi Cut in the cab block when needed, and often used the new "NULL" mic type to be able to use the Proximity parameter.
Of course, many of these presets sounds very close to each other because of the importance of the cab in a guitar sound. In some rare cases, I had to use radical settings to make the amp work with the IR. I'm aware that using the same IR won't always give an "authentic" sound (many amps don't uses V30 speakers) but I needed that common factor here to really focus on the amps. I will also come with a second version of these presets, each with its own cab model, more faithful to the speaker normally associated with the amp. Maybe that will be for scenes 4 and 5, or distinct presets, I'm not decided yet.
As said above, the key thing there was to find the optimum gain staging for each amp model. So for each amp, I had to test those different scenarios :
- More input drive and no boost (besides the TS808 which already acts as a booster) ?
- Less input drive but boost switch on (or input trim raised, which I like more because I can control it with an expression pedal) ?
- Saturation switch on or off ?
- Bright switch on or off ?
- Master volume at default level or not ?
First I tested all that, and then used the tone stack, Depth, Presence, and Dynamic Presence/Dynamic Depth to fine-tune. I used the Graphic EQ of the amp block only when needed, like the advanced parameters. Many times I tweaked the speaker page Low Res Freq to put it to at 125 hz ; in some cases I left it at default to respect the amp characteristics (especially with very low default settings). I also raised Thunk in most presets ; this is the only parameter I touched in the "Dynamics" tab of Axe Edit. In the "Tone" tab, in some cases I lowered the Bright Cap ; in the same tab, I also discovered that boosting the MV Cap is helpful for brightening dark amps.
I think that preset #134 (Friedman BE) are the only one where I didn't use default in Modeling Mode - not that I needed too, but just for testing purposes. I used default settings for everything else, including Power Tubes, and powerful parameters like Xformer Match and Damping.
I always use a TS808 as a booster, I like how it tightens the sound. So for each preset, the chain was the same : TS808 => amp => cab. The gate/expander was bypassed, because I wanted to hear the noise level of each amp with high gain settings. After the cab, there are parametric EQ, multiband compression, delay, reverb and enhancer blocks, all bypassed. The delay and reverb settings are the same, but the parametric EQ and multicomp settings have been altered in many presets, even if left bypassed afterwards.
In Y of the amp block, most of the time there's the initialized version of the amp, for comparing purposes.
I also tested how each amp "cleans up" when lowering the volume pot on the guitar. Of course the TS808 doesn’t helps with that, but in a typical preset (like #184, see below), I would use the Gate/Expander and lower its Threshold to -100 db with and expression pedal, which would also lower the Drive block Mix to 0 % at the same time.
I also did two "gig ready" versions of the Friedman BE (#134) preset. These presets (# 184 and # 185) has refined effects blocks, and uses various scenes. In addition to all the effect blocks tweaks, the gain changes through the various scenes, with the help of Scene Controllers. Scene 1 = heavy rhythm, 2 = crunch (less gain than 1), scene 3 = lead. Up to now I did that for the Friedman BE only, but I consider doing it for all amp models used in this Hi Gain bank. Maybe I'll do scenes 4 and 5 with alternate cabs.
I'm going to play all of these presets for a while now, and will select my favorites for live use. My existing live presets will then be updated. Up to firmware 12, here's what I used : Friedman BE (my basic rhythm amp model for hot rodded Marshall sounds), Bogner Blue and Red, Fas Lead 2, Triaxis Yellow and FAS Modern (some for rhythm, some for leads) and, for the heavier stuff I cover with my band, Recto or Diezel…
***
EDIT 28/02 : the bank is now available for download
Fremen's guitar blog: Fremen's high gain "starting pack" bank
but it's coming not too far from now. Here's a video preview of what I've been working on these two last weeks. Please note that many presets here ( #199, 209, 210, 215, 244, 248 ) are from other users. It's because I wanted to record a video to be used as a reference for myself, it wasn't meant to be uploaded anywhere. Then I decided to put it on YouTube anyway, so yesterday, as soon as I clicked on the "stop" button, I uploaded the full version, which was one hour long, as "unlisted". But that was way too long and unfocused, so today I decided to edit it. Here's that new version, much shorter, which acts as a teaser of what I'm working on : a bank of hi gain presets. I will soon do a real demo of that hi gain bank, which will also show how to edit a preset to customize it (gain and equalizing).
First there's 7 minutes of noodling, the part with my new presets starts at 7:34 :
Presets from that high gain bank are patches #129 to #183 ; that's 53 amp models, and there's also more elaborate versions of the Friedman BE preset (#134). I have plans to do many more (some dual amps presets for example).
If you want to know more about the concept behind that bank, read the following :
This bank is the result of rethinking my method of presets programming. I followed this basic goal : one amp suitable for hi gain playing = one preset. Each preset should have roughly the same volume level, and all of them must meet my requirements for heavy rock/metal playing. Definition of "hi gain sound" is of course subjective ; I'm not a br00tal, 7/8 strings modern metal player (I can listen to it but I don't play it), but not vintage hard rock player either, although I have my roots in the eighties. Let's say that my ballpark is progressive metal à la nineties Dream Theater, although this is restrictive.
Some facts :
All the presets were tweaked for an Ibanez RG520 with a DiMarzio Norton in bridge, tuned in Eb. I tested all of them with the same stupid palm-muting lick on lower strings, then six strings basic chords, power chords, and a little bit of lead playing. It's not always easy to have enough gain to help legato playing (which I uses a lot because of my terrible right hand
) and at the same time no mud in the lower strings palm muting. These presets are for rhythm first, but being usable for leads is a desirable bonus. Of course some amps are better for rhythm, some for lead.
All the presets uses the same cab, without any room level : GuitarHack ThisOne (from a Mesa 4x12 with V30, a standard "metal" cab). Why this ? First, it has been my go-to hi gain IR since almost the beginning, I was already using it in the Axe Standard in 2009 so I know it well . Second, my objective wasn't to find a variety of tones/colors ; it was to find, for each amp model, the best way to achieves a tight, punchy hi gain sound, as detailed below. I tweaked the Low Cut and Hi Cut in the cab block when needed, and often used the new "NULL" mic type to be able to use the Proximity parameter.
Of course, many of these presets sounds very close to each other because of the importance of the cab in a guitar sound. In some rare cases, I had to use radical settings to make the amp work with the IR. I'm aware that using the same IR won't always give an "authentic" sound (many amps don't uses V30 speakers) but I needed that common factor here to really focus on the amps. I will also come with a second version of these presets, each with its own cab model, more faithful to the speaker normally associated with the amp. Maybe that will be for scenes 4 and 5, or distinct presets, I'm not decided yet.
As said above, the key thing there was to find the optimum gain staging for each amp model. So for each amp, I had to test those different scenarios :
- More input drive and no boost (besides the TS808 which already acts as a booster) ?
- Less input drive but boost switch on (or input trim raised, which I like more because I can control it with an expression pedal) ?
- Saturation switch on or off ?
- Bright switch on or off ?
- Master volume at default level or not ?
First I tested all that, and then used the tone stack, Depth, Presence, and Dynamic Presence/Dynamic Depth to fine-tune. I used the Graphic EQ of the amp block only when needed, like the advanced parameters. Many times I tweaked the speaker page Low Res Freq to put it to at 125 hz ; in some cases I left it at default to respect the amp characteristics (especially with very low default settings). I also raised Thunk in most presets ; this is the only parameter I touched in the "Dynamics" tab of Axe Edit. In the "Tone" tab, in some cases I lowered the Bright Cap ; in the same tab, I also discovered that boosting the MV Cap is helpful for brightening dark amps.
I think that preset #134 (Friedman BE) are the only one where I didn't use default in Modeling Mode - not that I needed too, but just for testing purposes. I used default settings for everything else, including Power Tubes, and powerful parameters like Xformer Match and Damping.
I always use a TS808 as a booster, I like how it tightens the sound. So for each preset, the chain was the same : TS808 => amp => cab. The gate/expander was bypassed, because I wanted to hear the noise level of each amp with high gain settings. After the cab, there are parametric EQ, multiband compression, delay, reverb and enhancer blocks, all bypassed. The delay and reverb settings are the same, but the parametric EQ and multicomp settings have been altered in many presets, even if left bypassed afterwards.
In Y of the amp block, most of the time there's the initialized version of the amp, for comparing purposes.
I also tested how each amp "cleans up" when lowering the volume pot on the guitar. Of course the TS808 doesn’t helps with that, but in a typical preset (like #184, see below), I would use the Gate/Expander and lower its Threshold to -100 db with and expression pedal, which would also lower the Drive block Mix to 0 % at the same time.
I also did two "gig ready" versions of the Friedman BE (#134) preset. These presets (# 184 and # 185) has refined effects blocks, and uses various scenes. In addition to all the effect blocks tweaks, the gain changes through the various scenes, with the help of Scene Controllers. Scene 1 = heavy rhythm, 2 = crunch (less gain than 1), scene 3 = lead. Up to now I did that for the Friedman BE only, but I consider doing it for all amp models used in this Hi Gain bank. Maybe I'll do scenes 4 and 5 with alternate cabs.
I'm going to play all of these presets for a while now, and will select my favorites for live use. My existing live presets will then be updated. Up to firmware 12, here's what I used : Friedman BE (my basic rhythm amp model for hot rodded Marshall sounds), Bogner Blue and Red, Fas Lead 2, Triaxis Yellow and FAS Modern (some for rhythm, some for leads) and, for the heavier stuff I cover with my band, Recto or Diezel…
***
EDIT 28/02 : the bank is now available for download
Fremen's guitar blog: Fremen's high gain "starting pack" bank
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