It's Time to Face the Truth: I'm an IRaholic :(

Scented Meat

Scented Meat

Power User
How did it start? How do these things always start...slowly, insidiously. At first, I didn't even notice I was using them, so focused was I on the amps. Then I started buying in bulk: Redwirez, Ownhammer...oh, did I get Ownhammered!

Pretty soon I moved on to the harder stuff: mixed IRs. I even started coming up with my own insane recipes; hell, I bought a whole lab for mixing them. The more I mixed, the more different ones I had to try. I started out sampling them in the evenings, but pretty soon it was mornings, too. And when I was alone. There were a few lost weekends....

Now I've really hit the skids: Ultra-res IRs have taken over my life. It doesn't even matter any more what's on the label: Fractal, Amp Factory, Ownhammer...I use them all! If they're for sale, I buy 'em. If they're free, I download 'em. I can't even tell them apart any more!

I know I'm in too deep, beyond redemption...not even Superman can help me. I've gone to meetings, even tried to step outside into the warm summer sun (but kept my smartphone with me in case a new Ultra-res pack was announced!). My marriage, my job...everything hangs in the balance. But I hope my cautionary tale will serve as a warning to others before it's too late....


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As funny as that was after today I kind of feel like I need an intervention too.

I've been buying just about every pack out there and I hadn't even had time to play most of them. I just blew everything out last night and started completely fresh and I have no idea what I would have done without AxeFXSend. I got through about 300 IR's yesterday and cherry picked and started feeding the beast.....then today frickin' Andy releases a new IR pack and sure as shit I end up buying it. :) Get everything converted and start going through it a bit and realize that I want to mess with a Silver Jubilee patch and that new Lexster cab would be really neat....oh yeah I bought that damn FAS cab pack 5 and hadn't even unpacked the frickin thing from the zip file yet. :) I stopped myself just short of firing up CabLab today for that one.

I mean I'm a 5-6 preset guy to be honest, but with the new factory presets I started really digging a lot of these other amps and as of right now I tweaked about 30 factory presets to taste and most have 3rd party IR's. All have at least 4 scenes set up. Many of them have X and Y amp settings and some even have X and Y cabs. If I ever got into the effects in depth I don't know if I'd ever see the sun again.
 
shasha said:
As funny as that was after today I kind of feel like I need an intervention too.

I've been buying just about every pack out there and I hadn't even had time to play most of them. I just blew everything out last night and started completely fresh and I have no idea what I would have done without AxeFXSend. I got through about 300 IR's yesterday and cherry picked and started feeding the beast.....then today frickin' Andy releases a new IR pack and sure as shit I end up buying it. :) Get everything converted and start going through it a bit and realize that I want to mess with a Silver Jubilee patch and that new Lexster cab would be really neat....oh yeah I bought that damn FAS cab pack 5 and hadn't even unpacked the frickin thing from the zip file yet. :) I stopped myself just short of firing up CabLab today for that one.

I mean I'm a 5-6 preset guy to be honest, but with the new factory presets I started really digging a lot of these other amps and as of right now I tweaked about 30 factory presets to taste and most have 3rd party IR's. All have at least 4 scenes set up. Many of them have X and Y amp settings and some even have X and Y cabs. If I ever got into the effects in depth I don't know if I'd ever see the sun again.
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Buying new IR packs when you haven't even opened the last pack you bought? I don't have to tell you what that makes you now, do I? ;)

I know...I've done it too.


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Hi... my name is swass... and I'm an IR-aholic... it's been three months since my last "mix/IR" purchase. We're here for you brother. A good place to start is the twelve step program and memorizing and meditating on the serenity prayer,


serenity_prayer.jpg


:encouragement::)
 
I'm with you,....
I sit down to play, and find another pack to buy.... I then spent the night loading IRs...choosing my favourites....saving them... And moving to the next lot.... Suddenly... Times up.... Time to go... And I've played little....

Pauly


Scented Meat said:
How did it start? How do these things always start...slowly, insidiously. At first, I didn't even notice I was using them, so focused was I on the amps. Then I started buying in bulk: Redwirez, Ownhammer...oh, did I get Ownhammered!

Pretty soon I moved on to the harder stuff: mixed IRs. I even started coming up with my own insane recipes; hell, I bought a whole lab for mixing them. The more I mixed, the more different ones I had to try. I started out sampling them in the evenings, but pretty soon it was mornings, too. And when I was alone. There were a few lost weekends....

Now I've really hit the skids: Ultra-res IRs have taken over my life. It doesn't even matter any more what's on the label: Fractal, Amp Factory, Ownhammer...I use them all! If they're for sale, I buy 'em. If they're free, I download 'em. I can't even tell them apart any more!

I know I'm in too deep, beyond redemption...not even Superman can help me. I've gone to meetings, even tried to step outside into the warm summer sun (but kept my smartphone with me in case a new Ultra-res pack was announced!). My marriage, my job...everything hangs in the balance. But I hope my cautionary tale will serve as a warning to others before it's too late....


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Click to expand...
 
Here's a personal tip I'm sharing with you all, I just wrote that on my blog :

These last days, while working on the firmware 15.02 presets, I found a recipe that works for me almost all of the time for high gain sounds. A classic combination of two mics on a cab is Shure SM57 for brightness+Royer R121 for fatness ; for authenticity, the logical step is to combine two IRs from the same cab, but it doesn't always works for me, specially when the provided R121 doesn't deliver the lows/low mids I want.

So a few months ago, I started to use a Redwirez IR from a Mesa V30 or an ENGL V30 cab. It wasn't the Royer but the Beyerdynamic M160 then (in cone position, 0 inch or 1 inch), as I wanted to add low mids warmth, not lows, to some free IRs from Alu or GuitarHack which were a little too scooped for me. It works very well, and some of those IRs are still in my Axe (#017, #023, #35, #36...).

A few days ago, I tried using a Ownhammer R121 IR from the High Gain Essential cabs (either OH MES-ST V30-EN 5881 121 HG or OH DZL-RL V30-EN 5881 121 HG) and it was a revelation. Instead of combining a SM57 and a R121 from a Ownhammer V30-CH8, for example, I use the SM57 from the CH8 but the R121 from the EN cab, which is darker/warmer sounding. The end result is less scooped and more pleasing to my ears, it's the best of both worlds ! In fact, I liked this so much that I tried the Ownhammer R121 with a SM57 IR from various sources (free IRs, FAS cab pack 5 IRs...) and it works very well with them too. So it seems I have a winning combination here, and much more tonal options than before for my high gain sounds !
 
Yeah, I'm very much in the SM57/R121 camp myself. And yeah, I have a mental hurdle to overcome every time that I think about mixing different cabs. Not sure why that is, but it's just the way I'm wired.
 
shasha said:
Yeah, I'm very much in the SM57/R121 camp myself. And yeah, I have a mental hurdle to overcome every time that I think about mixing different cabs. Not sure why that is, but it's just the way I'm wired.
Click to expand...
good thing is, the more Kevin builds up the HGE/MGE/LGE libraries, you can stay with the same cab and use different speakers instead. kinda beats the slight ocd attacks :)
 
shasha said:
Yeah, I'm very much in the SM57/R121 camp myself. And yeah, I have a mental hurdle to overcome every time that I think about mixing different cabs. Not sure why that is, but it's just the way I'm wired.
Click to expand...

I am in the U87 camp. *LOL* Love that mic in real life and what it does in the Axe-FXII as well.
 
Damn, thanks for the heads up as i'm barely looking into IR's to purchase and try and mix in my own sound. Cab-Lab has been on my mind for a cool while now and choosing which packs to invest in... High gain in particular with mid scooped sound with warmth in it... Sounds so good to my ears :D lol
 
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