IR education

GuyJames

GuyJames

Inspired
Is there anywhere I can learn about the different cab and mics offered? I’ve only ever used basic fender combo amps pretty much and as far as mics go I just know SM57s, which isn’t a bad sound but it isn’t high end either… not even sure how to describe the tone of 57 since I don’t have experience to compare it against with other mics.

I think the last piece of education would be to learn what combinations of speakers and amps and mics altogether are tried and true… I know there’s no rules but there are combinations that are voiced together with intent and widely accepted.

I just had an interesting happy accident. the Dirty Shirley preset has been the foundation for building my my own presets on but I experimented with changing just the amp block and keeping the Dirty Shirley Cab. I found the “58 Bassguy Bright” amp to be amazing at even the stock settings.

From my understanding the Dirty Shirley amp is a Bassman circuit at its core so it would make sense that any cab/mic combo that works well with the DS would compliment the Bassman too.

Anyway… it’s really a rabbit hole when it comes to choosing IR’s but at least if I knew what the speakers and cabs personalities were I’d be able to make bettter informed choices.

If anyone has recommendations, I really like speakers with higher headroom.
 
With all of this, there is no substitute for trying lots of cabs. Even with a good knowledge of microphones and cabs, there is a ton of stuff that goes into EQ and placement. I spent half a day running through all the Brit 4x12 GB factory cab variants and wound up liking a pair of cabs that I would never have chosen otherwise.
 
It’s not that easy, and it’s much easier than that.

You can study speaker construction and cabinetry and how it affects the sound of the speaker, and how multiple speakers in a cabinet affect each other, and microphones and the variety of types of construction and how their construction affects their sound, and how microphones are positioned to capture the sound of the speakers in their cabinets, and then search through a collection of IRs using the speakers in a particular cabinet captured using a specific microphone positioned at your favorite location in front of the cone, and it still might sound different than what you hear standing in front of the same cabinet.

Using the cab picker you can search for speakers and cabs and even mics and their positioning, but at that point it’s smart to pin the picker and go through each cabinet presented and listen to pick your favorite because the sound, not the speaker, cabinet or microphone, can make or break the sound of the preset.

I look for the information about the cabinet and speakers used with a particular amp all of which is in the wiki, then listen to every match. If I don’t like those I look for similar speakers or cabs.

Finding a cab is a good example of “use your ears, not your eyes”.

GuyJames said:
Wasn’t sure if there was something like “yeks guide to drive block” where it’s an informative all in one place source.
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It’s in the Wiki.
 
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