Thanks for the kind words, fellas. Personally, I am not a huge fan of uploading large quantities of IRs and hacking away feverishly at the tone chasing. I tend to take a more controlled approach and decide on where my sweet spots are going to be.
What I did to find this tone was choose the Jensen speaker, and started with something that I knew right off the bat I was going to like: An SM57 through the T1 preamp. From there, I just kind of poked through combining one more IR with it to fill out what I thought could use a little bit more to thicken the tone. Something that I've found with this particular cab IR, with my particular guitar and pickups, is that the R121 is really bass heavy. I have to blend in very small amounts if I'm going to use it at all, because it kind of gets the tone a little muddy. In this case, I ended up finally settling on blending in the T1 CND-70 IR at equal volume in a stereo cab, both mics panned center.
From there I adjusted some simple things in the amp until I started really getting the shape I was looking for. Nothing fancy. Input drive up to 6, Bass at 5.27 with Cut activated, Treble at 4.75 - bright switch off! Thunk up to 5 and Motor Drive at 4. Those two parameters make or break a patch for me. It seems that post 10.0 the thunk parameter has so much to do with the way the percussive nature of the cabinet evolves, and the motor drive has so much to do with the way the notes bloom and manages the tightness of the low end and mids... Then add a touch of chorus, some delay, and verb. Voila! Job done! I did set up a highpass filter at 60 Hz, and a lowpass filter at 7000 Hz. I think I then used a high shelf (if I remember correctly) at 20,000 Hz until I got a little bit more top end back without the hissy stuff that can come.
The amp set this way is extremely touchy - just like a really loud Fender. So unforgiving. Keep in mind, also, that this is a 7 string guitar with Bareknuckle Painkillers in it. This guitar wasn't built for pretties. It is meant to provide cutting guitars for really heavy rock and way, WAY down-tuned metal. But I'll be damned if while using Kevin's IRs I haven't been able to find some ridiculous cleans on this guitar. I cannot wait to try the Bogner 12M mixed in with this cab's 12M. I'm probably going to freak out.
The reason I love OwnHammer's new cab processes is because plainly... they just sound damn good right out from the get-go, but still provide enough creative headroom to push the sound in the direction I want to go. Sometimes with other IRs I just found that no matter what I did to it post-cab, I just couldn't shake the fact that I felt like I was stuck with a one-dimensional sound. It's partly my work flow, of course, as there are others who have made great sounds with just the simplest stock cab set ups. But, for example, another INSANE combo that I found for some vicious hard rock guitar tone was really super simple stereo cab panned center:
MAR-CB V30-CH T1 DYN-57
412 MEs V32 SM57 UM 1
Want a little more tube-like deep tone? Change this to:
MAR-CB V30-CH T1 DYN-57
MAR-CB V30 with the G12T-75 blended to taste
Mes V32 SM57 UM 1
Mes V32 R121 BM blended back a bit (somewhere between -4 to -6)
That'll rip your head right off. These both work for everything from a modern mid-gain tone all the way up to just before you hit death metal stage (and it will probably be convincing enough for that too). I'm tuned in drop Ab, and the first combo I mentioned gave me the willies when I played a double tracked part I've been working on. When mixed in it just cuts and fills, but doesn't overpower. Adding in the other mics does require a little more work on getting rid of some frequency humps here and there, but just combining the Marshall and the Mesa fills the tone in so much. Lovely. I guess you could say he's made a lifelong fan of me! Thanks again, guys!