Question about Vox style amps and IRs

sick pickle said:
This is great thank you. Do you find yourself gravitating to a particular preamp type?
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I seem to prefer the Transformer type. Can't give any technical reasons why though, I just like how it sounds, no idea what it was modeled after. I keep the drive quite high (usually just before clipping) and the saturation quite low (the saturation knob controls the ratio between even and odd harmonics IIRC, the wiki has more info).
 
If there's one thing about the Class A 30W TB model in the axe, it's not dark, it has an aggressively icepicky top end. There's some honky/boxiness in the lower mids, but I tend to just EQ them out, they must be a quirk of the HW Head model Cliff has. I find lowering the cab resonance can help a bit with the honkiness.

There's so much variation in Vox AC30 models and speakers over the last 60 years it's bit like chasing ghosts most of the time.

I find the 2x12 Class-A 30W Dynacab sounds stellar with the TB model, if you want a biting cutting tone keep the mic close to the centre of the dust cap and use a dynamic mic.

One other thing I find helps is altering the input impedance which can change the resonant peak of the pickups to tame the top end a bit. Oh and lowering the bright cap. This tends to keep the top end open as using the treble and cut controls can just make it sound muffled.

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/replicating-long-cable-capacitance.145783/post-1723696
 
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FWIW, I've found the combination of the 1x12 Carol-Ann 57 E (Factory 1 #178) and 1x12 G12T 57 A (Factory 1 # 323) sound really good, very balanced with vox type amps. Currently using this combination in stereo with the AC-20 EF86 Treble model. Also use it with the Class A 30W and Matchless D-30 models as well.
 
strabes said:
Apologizing in advance if this info is obvious, just not sure of what people may or may not already know. In the analog world you record a guitar cab with a microphone. That mic requires a preamp. Some preamps are super clean like those on most modern audio interfaces, whereas some add quite a bit of harmonic distortion / saturation to the signal which is intentional because of the way it smooths out the signal and helps it sit in a mix. That harmonic distortion from the mic preamp is part of pretty much every legendary recorded guitar tone you've ever heard and cannot be captured in an impulse response because it's nonlinear. Anyone can test this with a sine wave, saturation plugin, and an EQ/RTA plugin.

In the digital world when running direct we recreate the amp > cab > mic chain with an amp model and impulse response, but as far as I know Fractal is the only modeler that also includes the mic preamp section to recreate that harmonic distortion of various mic preamps. It's one of many things that sets Fractal apart from the competition. Prior to Fractal I'd add a saturation plugin to my recorded guitar tracks, but now that's unnecessary because I can just print it when recording with the mic pre section in the cab block. It also allows me to get that juicy preamp harmonic distortion when playing live, since most modern stage box preamps are pristinely clean/clinical. Does it make a huge difference on a single guitar track? No. But watch the saturation video I posted above to hear the dramatic difference it makes when applied to each track in a mix as would have been the case when recording everything to tape through "colorful" mic pres in the old days.

These days we have the best of both worlds: the character of vintage mic pres with either hardware mic pres or plugins, and super clean and low noise inputs on our interfaces.

Hope that helps, lmk if you have any other questions.
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I’m a hobby player. This is news to me. So thank you for taking the time to post this.
 
strabes said:
Apologizing in advance if this info is obvious, just not sure of what people may or may not already know. In the analog world you record a guitar cab with a microphone. That mic requires a preamp. Some preamps are super clean like those on most modern audio interfaces, whereas some add quite a bit of harmonic distortion / saturation to the signal which is intentional because of the way it smooths out the signal and helps it sit in a mix. That harmonic distortion from the mic preamp is part of pretty much every legendary recorded guitar tone you've ever heard and cannot be captured in an impulse response because it's nonlinear. Anyone can test this with a sine wave, saturation plugin, and an EQ/RTA plugin.

In the digital world when running direct we recreate the amp > cab > mic chain with an amp model and impulse response, but as far as I know Fractal is the only modeler that also includes the mic preamp section to recreate that harmonic distortion of various mic preamps. It's one of many things that sets Fractal apart from the competition. Prior to Fractal I'd add a saturation plugin to my recorded guitar tracks, but now that's unnecessary because I can just print it when recording with the mic pre section in the cab block. It also allows me to get that juicy preamp harmonic distortion when playing live, since most modern stage box preamps are pristinely clean/clinical. Does it make a huge difference on a single guitar track? No. But watch the saturation video I posted above to hear the dramatic difference it makes when applied to each track in a mix as would have been the case when recording everything to tape through "colorful" mic pres in the old days.

These days we have the best of both worlds: the character of vintage mic pres with either hardware mic pres or plugins, and super clean and low noise inputs on our interfaces.

Hope that helps, lmk if you have any other questions.
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Do you happen to know which mic press were modeled or what the preamp names are equivalent to?
 
JoKeR III said:
FWIW, I've found the combination of the 1x12 Carol-Ann 57 E (Factory 1 #178) and 1x12 G12T 57 A (Factory 1 # 323) sound really good, very balanced with vox type amps. Currently using this combination in stereo with the AC-20 EF86 Treble model. Also use it with the Class A 30W and Matchless D-30 models as well.
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Got ya! I'll have to check some of that out! I usually use York Audio Its and haven't messed much with the factory cabs.
 
Andrew Male said:
If there's one thing about the Class A 30W TB model in the axe, it's not dark, it has an aggressively icepicky top end. There's some honky/boxiness in the lower mids, but I tend to just EQ them out, they must be a quirk of the HW Head model Cliff has. I find lowering the cab resonance can help a bit with the honkiness.

There's so much variation in Vox AC30 models and speakers over the last 60 years it's bit like chasing ghosts most of the time.

I find the 2x12 Class-A 30W Dynacab sounds stellar with the TB model, if you want a biting cutting tone keep the mic close to the centre of the dust cap and use a dynamic mic.

One other thing I find helps is altering the input impedance which can change the resonant peak of the pickups to tame the top end a bit. Oh and lowering the bright cap. This tends to keep the top end open as using the treble and cut controls can just make it sound muffled.

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/replicating-long-cable-capacitance.145783/post-1723696
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Interesting! While I hear chime in it, clips I hear of people demoing the real amps have more sizzle and chime than what I can usually get out of the models, and the honk is much more apparent in the models than in the demos I've watched. Almost like I have a blanket on mine a bit in comparison, whereas the demos seem to have a higher end extension and low end extension. I've also found the dynacab version much darker and smoother than the York Audio IRs.
 
Thenewexhibit said:
Interesting! While I hear chime in it, clips I hear of people demoing the real amps have more sizzle and chime than what I can usually get out of the models, and the honk is much more apparent in the models than in the demos I've watched. Almost like I have a blanket on mine a bit in comparison, whereas the demos seem to have a higher end extension and low end extension.
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One thing I do to get more "chime" is adjust the Speaker Impedance Curve. The settings I've been using with the current IRs are:

Speaker Imp. Curve=2x12 Match Chief
High Freq=780 Hz
HF Reso=10.0
HF Slope=5.0

Play around with these settings to get the high end response you're looking for.
 
On another note, here is another fantastic example of what what I think is great vox tone. DISCLAIMER, this is a JMI, but I feel like I still hear people on the forums here get fantastic tone just like this with the Vox models, but mine always sounds inherently hi and lo passed/murky with strange resonances in the honkey area or whistle-ey high end. Check out all of the tones, but check out when he uses the 335. I personally love these tones, and while they have that "boxy" quality, it gets completely evened out by the low and high end, and somehow no one frequency jumps out of proportion but stays nice and even sounding across the board. I know there are many factors, but check it! :)

 
Thenewexhibit said:
On another note, here is another fantastic example of what what I think is great vox tone. DISCLAIMER, this is a JMI, but I feel like I still hear people on the forums here get fantastic tone just like this with the Vox models, but mine always sounds inherently hi and lo passed/murky with strange resonances in the honkey area or whistle-ey high end. Check out all of the tones, but check out when he uses the 335. I personally love these tones, and while they have that "boxy" quality, it gets completely evened out by the low and high end, and somehow no one frequency jumps out of proportion but stays nice and even sounding across the board. I know there are many factors, but check it! :)

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This one was a little more challenging but I think I got pretty close. Hard to duplicate that papery (and IMO unpleasant) AC30 high end with the Fractal models. Cliff says on the wiki that that sound is sort of a flaw in the design of the circuit so maybe it was partially addressed in the newer handwired production models as compared to the JMI versions. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s9y3...mped.m4a?rlkey=izd8i1cvahtca0r5epldavc73&dl=0

Here's the preset, again default settings on everything except drive, bass, mid, treble. In the video he shows that the channels are jumped so I added both the normal and brilliant channels in parallel and put them at the same settings. On the cab block's other channels I have a few of the other AC30 cab options.

IMO this is also quite a bright tone, wouldn't want to be in the audience with this guitar sound going for 2 hours.
 
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strabes said:
This one was a little more challenging but I think I got pretty close. Hard to duplicate that papery (and IMO unpleasant) AC30 high end with the Fractal models. Cliff says on the wiki that that sound is sort of a flaw in the design of the circuit so maybe it was partially addressed in the newer handwired production models as compared to the JMI versions. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s9y3...mped.m4a?rlkey=izd8i1cvahtca0r5epldavc73&dl=0

Here's the preset, again default settings on everything except drive, bass, mid, treble. In the video he shows that the channels are jumped so I added both the normal and brilliant channels in parallel and put them at the same settings. On the cab block's other channels I have a few of the other AC30 cab options.

IMO this is also quite a bright tone, wouldn't want to be in the audience with this guitar sound going for 2 hours.
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Man! Thanks for doing these! I hear what you mean about "bright". I think the one in the video has more sizzle and fullness in the lows making it sound a little warmer and less prominent in that bright sounding area, but you got mega, mega close, and I think that's so cool how you can dial these things in quickly! You've got good ears!
So, this brightness in your clip, would you consider that upper mids or treble? I feel like my tones tend to get closer to your clip, but murkier and uneven sounding across the board, where yours sounds still very controlled in all frequencies. I wonder if it's an IR/Speaker/mic thing too regarding the 335 clip above?

Also, how do you dial these tones in? What is your monitoring setup like? I have trouble with my guitar and studio monitors because the transient response from my guitar strings in the room tends to sound brighter, so I darken things more. When I listen back, it's not exactly where I like.
 
Thenewexhibit said:
Man! Thanks for doing these! I hear what you mean about "bright". I think the one in the video has more sizzle and fullness in the lows making it sound a little warmer and less prominent in that bright sounding area, but you got mega, mega close, and I think that's so cool how you can dial these things in quickly! You've got good ears!
So, this brightness in your clip, would you consider that upper mids or treble? I feel like my tones tend to get closer to your clip, but murkier and uneven sounding across the board, where yours sounds still very controlled in all frequencies. I wonder if it's an IR/Speaker/mic thing too regarding the 335 clip above?

Also, how do you dial these tones in? What is your monitoring setup like? I have trouble with my guitar and studio monitors because the transient response from my guitar strings in the room tends to sound brighter, so I darken things more. When I listen back, it's not exactly where I like.
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Thanks. The cab is a huge part of the overall sound, I spent more time messing with the cabs than with the amps but again it’s all stock cabs that come with the fractal, I’ve never felt the need for 3rd party IRs on this platform. Don’t know if there’s an objective line that separates upper mids and treble but the first tool I’d reach for is the treble knob if I were using this live.

In this case I recorded the riff dry in my daw and reamped it through the fractal on a loop while messing with the amp and cab settings in the editor.

I have Hedd type 07 mk2 monitors, some DIY 6” safe n’ sound panels, and some carbon panel bass absorbers and a cloud, both from Acoustic Fields. But you could easily do this with good headphones. All the gear I use is on the gear page on my website.
 
Thenewexhibit said:
On another note, here is another fantastic example of what what I think is great vox tone. DISCLAIMER, this is a JMI, but I feel like I still hear people on the forums here get fantastic tone just like this with the Vox models, but mine always sounds inherently hi and lo passed/murky with strange resonances in the honkey area or whistle-ey high end. Check out all of the tones, but check out when he uses the 335. I personally love these tones, and while they have that "boxy" quality, it gets completely evened out by the low and high end, and somehow no one frequency jumps out of proportion but stays nice and even sounding across the board. I know there are many factors, but check it! :)

Click to expand...

For the Strat tone at the beginning, two keys, at least for me, is rolling off the volume on the guitar to 8 or 9 It sounds way too forward, mid-heavy or "bold" if the guitar is at full volume in a strat's 2nd position (bridge+middle). Rolling off the volume just to 9 drastically changes how the pickups react and sound.

The second key is using a compressor at the beginning of the chain. I like the JFET Compressor with moderate compression, @ 4.0. You can get decent tones without the compressor, but it really helps get a more uniform level across the strings.
 
@strabes preset sounds really good! Here's a preset that is a tweaked version of the Nameless Streets factory preset with the factory cabs mentioned above. The compressor is added and the drive is changed to the Nobellium OVD-1. I also swapped the Delay block positions, I preferred the dotted 8th after the Amp block in this preset. Scenes 1 and 2 are the only ones I tweaked.

Again, for the strat U2 type tone, use position 2 and roll the volume off to 8 or 9.
 

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