Getting Extremely Tight Metal Tones

[Soultrash]

is there a big difference between using an eq and an filter in front the amp block!?
i am using the equalizer method and got very good results....tightness, no mud etc.

cheers
S.

 

[mortega76]

The difference with the filter is that it only applies the lowcut when you are "palm muting"... since palm muting adds a whole heap of low end... where as an EQ affects/kills all your low end all the time. Still haven't had a chance to look for those two settings yet.

 

[Soultrash]

The difference with the filter is that it only applies the lowcut when you are "palm muting"... since palm muting adds a whole heap of low end... where as an EQ affects/kills all your low end all the time. Still haven't had a chance to look for those two settings yet.

oh, didn't know it's meant to work that way...so it's some kind of intelligent eq!?
AWESOME!

need to try that out tomorrow.
just did a quick try a few minutes ago (used dave's patch) but i couldn't hear any "effect" :?

cheers
S.

 

[torchlord]

Thanks for the great tip. This weird envelope filter trick finally solved the problems i was having with my old h@k switchblade amp. Now i have that tight palm muting i was trying to find, thanks!

I do think it would be a good idea to have some symbal put on the paramaters in the axe that would let newbs know that there is another menu to find when using the "enter" key on that parameter. Or maybe you could have the parameter blink off and on or something every second so you would know that value has another menu beneath it.

 

[rdomain]

There is a symbol underneath the parameters which can have a controller assigned to it by pressing the Enter key. < >

 

[m lebofsky]

NICE !!! Thanks Cliff.

 

[D20]

Nice!!!! Can't wait to try this tonight!!!!!

 

[mortega76]

For me, this isn't as much of an issue with 9.0... also, I'm not sure that I hear that much of a difference using 9.0... also (also ) since I'm (we're) tuning so low, I'm not sure what settings we need to adjust to compensate?

 

[ENDITOL]

Andy Sneap posted a similar tip on his forum, this is from the recording side but could be applied within the Axe, which is a narrow multiband compressor in the 'mud' zone, same idea that when palm mutes go 'whoomp' the MB kicks in and brings down the lows a bit.

 

[D20]

I tried this last night and I really like the outcome! Thanks for the tip Cliff!

Question: what freq is everyone have it set to?

Andy Sneap posted a similar tip on his forum, this is from the recording side but could be applied within the Axe, which is a narrow multiband compressor in the 'mud' zone, same idea that when palm mutes go 'whoomp' the MB kicks in and brings down the lows a bit.

So is this basically putting a MB comp in front of the amp? Mud zone = 850-800hz?

 

[AlbertA]

I tried this last night and I really like the outcome! Thanks for the tip Cliff!

Question: what freq is everyone have it set to?

Andy Sneap posted a similar tip on his forum, this is from the recording side but could be applied within the Axe, which is a narrow multiband compressor in the 'mud' zone, same idea that when palm mutes go 'whoomp' the MB kicks in and brings down the lows a bit.

So is this basically putting a MB comp in front of the amp? Mud zone = 850-800hz?

D20, the frequency is adjusted by the modifier. It doesn't matter what you are setting it to in the filter page.

 

[stevehollx]

So is this basically putting a MB comp in front of the amp? Mud zone = 850-800hz?

No, it's way lower than that. 850 is straight up midrange.

Mud occurs in the low end. I find with guitars, at least on recordings, that the mud is usually around 120. I'd say you need to keep an eye on anything below 200, though. Typically on recordings I high pass around 80-100, and use a MB compressor somewhere in the 120-150 range. My goal is always to high pass up until the guitar tone starts to suffer in the mix, and then use the MB comp to tame whatever leftover muddy low end I need to leave in there for tone reasons so that it doesn't overpower the mix.

Here's Andy's preset. It probably doesn't carry over to live guitar as much as it does for recordings, though.

 

[stevehollx]

BTW, I like how this sounds, but I am able to hear the EQ turn on and off on some chords. It is most noticeable on a ringing power chord at the 14th fret in drop C (so a D3 power chord I guess), and sounds like someone is flipping a 'deep' switch on my amp from off to on. I tried playing with the offset, and it smoothens it up around 70ms but that's too slow for it to tighten up the low end on palm mutes.

It would be cool if we could have the attack of the envelope come in instantaneously, and then release slowly, over the course of 100ms or so. Is there a way to do that? Does the envelope modifier have an attack and release delay?

 

[Bakerman]

Does the envelope modifier have an attack and release delay?

Yes, envelope page of the controllers menu. Raising the low (and possibly mid) value of the modifier so the filter freq. doesn't drop as much on the decay might also help.

 

[D20]

D20, the frequency is adjusted by the modifier. It doesn't matter what you are setting it to in the filter page.

Thanks!

No, it's way lower than that. 850 is straight up midrange.

Mud occurs in the low end. I find with guitars, at least on recordings, that the mud is usually around 120. I'd say you need to keep an eye on anything below 200, though. Typically on recordings I high pass around 80-100, and use a MB compressor somewhere in the 120-150 range. My goal is always to high pass up until the guitar tone starts to suffer in the mix, and then use the MB comp to tame whatever leftover muddy low end I need to leave in there for tone reasons so that it doesn't overpower the mix.

Here's Andy's preset. It probably doesn't carry over to live guitar as much as it does for recordings, though.

Cool thanks for the pic and the info! I'm going to try this out tonight for sure!!

 

[Stratoblaster]

Here's a cool trick to get very "tight" toanz:

1. Put a filter block before the amp block. Set the type to Highpass.

2. Attach the Envelope controller to the Frequency parameter. Use default settings for the Envelope parameters.

3. Set the Scale to 40%, Offset to around 22%.

4. Go nuts.

I was playing with this tonight and found that attaching the Pitch controller to the Frequency parameter gave interesting results as well.

By using the Pitch to control the cutoff freq., as single notes increase in pitch they are less affected by the filter since the cutoff is dropping as pitch increases. The result is that, after approx. the E on the second-fret-D-string (for my guitar/setup, etc.), the filtering gets less aggresive and single notes retain more body. As you get up to the higher registers there is almost no filtering. Chords will raise the cutoff enough so they get the benefit of a tightened low end.

I tweaked the controller parameters as follows:

Source Pitch
Start 100%
Mid 50%
End 0%
Slope 50%
Scale 34.3%
Offset 0%

Increasing the Scale will remove more low end (the filter cutoff freq swings higher for lower pitches) and can be used to fine tune the behavior. Too high of a Scale setting will give strange results, so be careful ;-)

This thread is an interesting application of the controllers...as others have mentioned in other threads, the dynamic low end cut before the amp works well to focus the low end and how the amp bass control has a different 'feel' to it after...fun stuff. I suspect you'd need to experiment with this a little more to make sure it works for general use and there are no 'surprises'.

 

[reverweb]

Very cool tips! I use the first one (Cliff tip) to make the rhythm tone more brutal and the stratoblaster tip to upgrade nicely the lead sounds. Cool! Thanks!

 

[rjpilot]

Bumped for informational purposes.

 

[Stratoblaster]

Very cool tips! I use the first one (Cliff tip) to make the rhythm tone more brutal and the stratoblaster tip to upgrade nicely the lead sounds. Cool! Thanks!

Ahhh good idea, as it would seem using the Pitch to control the filter benefits single notes more than chords and would be a better fit for a lead patch... :ugeek:

 

[afxwinter]

I just tried this with a dual-amp setup and think I might've done something wrong.
I have the filter after my drive and then feeding my two amps.
I set it up as Cliff suggested but have a bit of an issue.
It doesn't attenuate fast enough, I will start PM'ing my e string and it will slowly start taming the bass but the first second or so is overpowering and unusable in my recording. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?