Making a convincing double track effect with the Axe II

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Luca9583

Inspired
I've discovered some interesting ways of simulating a double track effect that doesn't sound like a chorus, short milisecond delay or enhancer.

Split your signal into two identical amp and cab blocks panned hard left and right and the try either of these:

1 Place an Octave Distortion block before one of the amps only and set it to 100% wet with very moderate gain...all of a sudden you get a different harmonic character for one side of the stereo image, and it sounds like a pretty good double track effect, although it works much better for leads than chords.

You'll notice that if you try the same with any of the other drive blocks, the stereo image is not as wide but of course tracks better

OR

2 Place a Ring Mod block in front of one the amps only and set it to 100% wet with tracking on and with the FMULT to either 12 or 6 o clock. It is a little glitchy at times and doesn't track well for notes in the bass guitar octave or chords in general, but again this really sounds like a real time double tracked sound for single note stuff.


This leads me to think that a dedicated real time Double Track Axe II block or even a hardware stomp box could be possible if some kind of polyphonic harmonic creating algorithm could be created that can track bass guitar also. It seems clear from the two examples above that somehow duplicating a signal with harmonics rather than with variable delays/chorus etc makes it sound like two guitars are playing.

I've also tried applying modifiers to delay block times but it doesn't have the width of the stereo image created with the above examples.

Try these examples out and see how it sounds
 
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would their be a way to use the enhancer toward the end of the chain to widen it up more on the drive models that don't widen as much? Didn't the enhancer just get re-tooled in 5.0 to not have the phasing issues?
cool ideas, i will try some of these once i get all my patches re-dialed in. thanks for the ideas, this actually got me thinking about some other things to try, i'll give them a shot and if any sound good, I'll add them here as well.
 
wake911 said:
would their be a way to use the enhancer toward the end of the chain to widen it up more on the drive models that don't widen as much? Didn't the enhancer just get re-tooled in 5.0 to not have the phasing issues?
cool ideas, i will try some of these once i get all my patches re-dialed in. thanks for the ideas, this actually got me thinking about some other things to try, i'll give them a shot and if any sound good, I'll add them here as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah you could try that right at the end to widen both sides of the stereo image. I haven't upgraded to 5.0 yet as i'm currently using a patch for recording but i'm sure we can come up with something.

I'm trying to think if there are other effects with similar qualities that could be placed before one of the amps to achieve similar results. I also tried it with the Pitch block but that just sounds like a short milisecond delay.
 
I just use two amps and set the tones controls a bit different and then EQ them a bit different as well. I never really liked the sound of the enhancer. At least not for heavy stuff. I haven't tried it in 5.0 yet.


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For a simulation of double tracking I use 2 amps each feeding the same cab block in stereo. Each amp is hard panned left and right (as well as the stereo cabs). Amps will be EQ a bit differently just as if I was double tracking.

In front of one amp, put a null filter and attach a modifier to the level. Use the random for modifier and adjust damping and the modifier curve to taste. This is supposed to simulate the random amplitude variations. After the null filter add a flanger with zero depth (basically use it as a micro delay, mix 100%) attach a modifier to the dry delay again selecting random with some damping. This is to simulate the time variations.
 
AlbertA said:
For a simulation of double tracking I use 2 amps each feeding the same cab block in stereo. Each amp is hard panned left and right (as well as the stereo cabs). Amps will be EQ a bit differently just as if I was double tracking.

In front of one amp, put a null filter and attach a modifier to the level. Use the random for modifier and adjust damping and the modifier curve to taste. This is supposed to simulate the random amplitude variations. After the null filter add a flanger with zero depth (basically use it as a micro delay, mix 100%) attach a modifier to the dry delay again selecting random with some damping. This is to simulate the time variations.
Click to expand...

Cool. What do you mean by "random" here? What are you using as a modifier source?
 
AlbertA said:
LFO with Random type waveform. This is on an Ultra, I don't know about the Axe-FX II.
Click to expand...

Similarly, could you also apply a delay to each side with very short delay times attached to random LFOs to make it so that the two sides aren't perfectly synced? Making it so that the attack on the two sides isn't *quite* at exactly the same time might add to the illusion of there being two separate instruments.
 
orpeus said:
Similarly, could you also apply a delay to each side with very short delay times attached to random LFOs to make it so that the two sides aren't perfectly synced? Making it so that the attack on the two sides isn't *quite* at exactly the same time might add to the illusion of there being two separate instruments.
Click to expand...

That was what the flanger dry delay was used for (time differences), since it has more granularity than the delay block. You don't need to do the two sides, only one is enough.
 
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Very cool ideas here. I'll have to experiment. I've always used short delays for this, but it doesn't always sound realistic. Thanks!
 
AlbertA said:
For a simulation of double tracking I use 2 amps each feeding the same cab block in stereo. Each amp is hard panned left and right (as well as the stereo cabs). Amps will be EQ a bit differently just as if I was double tracking.

In front of one amp, put a null filter and attach a modifier to the level. Use the random for modifier and adjust damping and the modifier curve to taste. This is supposed to simulate the random amplitude variations. After the null filter add a flanger with zero depth (basically use it as a micro delay, mix 100%) attach a modifier to the dry delay again selecting random with some damping. This is to simulate the time variations.
Click to expand...

wow this sounds cool and complicated, care to post a sorta skeleton preset with this in action? I have no idea what a random modifier is but again if you wouldnt mind posting would be awesome.
 
AlbertA said:
That was what the flanger dry delay was used for (time differences), since it has more granularity than the delay block. You don't need to do the two sides, only one is enough.
Click to expand...

So the delay time is modulated such that you don't get the Haas effect?; i.e. a fixed delay to only one side makes the sound appear to be localized on the non-delayed side.
 
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