What have I done?

M

mogvinda

Inspired
Since moving to FW 13.07, most presets where I use my LP sound really bad. My goto stock 'heavy' presets were the Herbie3 and JVM OD1/2. They instantly sounded great, and I could tweak them a bit for whatever I wanted.

Now they sound really harsh and never fit into any mix. The decay is awful too, there's a sort of weird pulsating/wave thing that sounds almost like a bad combination of a tremelo effect with the noise gate kicking in. So far I've:

1) Reset the input levels for the axe
2) Re-installed the firmware
3) Re-imported the v12 presets
4) Switched of the noise gates and reverb

The various clean and ambient presets sound fine, much better in fact than previously.
 
Thanks. I think in the end it may actually be my guitar!

I recorded it plugged in directly with no amp, cab or effects at all, had a look at it in Reaper and can see visually there is a fairly noticeable fluctuations as the note decays. I did the same with my Tele and the wave form seems much 'smoother' (sorry, don't know the correct terms here).

I think I need to take my guitar to get set up again.
 
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Before you take it somewhere do some trouble shooting of your own. Does it happen with all 3 toggle switch positions? Bridge only? Neck Only? Middle position? If so, then it could be a bad ground coming from the switch to the output jack or something. Does the sound change when you are touching the strings and when you remove your hands from the strings? Does it change when you use the volume or tone controls? Try a different cable too (I'm not assuming you used a different cable when switching between your LP and Tele).
 
Can you press the "bypass" button on the axe frontpanel once when you're on the grid? This will bypass the entire preset and you will only hear the raw guitar signal. Does it still have that wave-type pulsation?
 
Thanks everyone, I'll give these a go. I used the same cable for LP and Tele so it can't be that.

It happens in all 3 positions, the pickups are passive. Also this guitar has a G3 polyphonic pickup on it. It's a lot closer to the strings than the other pickups, could this cause a problem??
 
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Do you have a compressor on the patches? If it is a subsonic or really low freq noise then it could be triggering the compressor and causing that pulsing kind of action? Reaching here. Doesn't explain what the noise is though.
 
No I mostly don't use the compressor. Last night I removed the polyphonic pickup and put a new set of strings on. Didn't get a chance to test it unfortunately. I'll post an update as soon as I do.
 
So after removing the polyphonic pickup and changing the strings, this is me hitting a power chord through one of the JVM presets with the delay and reverb turned off. Only amp and cab.

The pulsating thing I'm talking about becomes very noticeable after around 5 seconds.

 
Can this just be the way the guitar naturally resonates? Having very little knowledge of how the sound is formed it's difficult to judge how ridiculous this question is!
 
Sounds lke an intonation problem to me ... but I am listening at work on crappy headphones. Worth checking though ... also as noted, the pickups pull the strings if the magnets are too close. Measure how high they are now, crank them lower, and see if there is a change.

But I would check your intonation anyway, if you haven't done that in awhile.
 
Where does intonation come into it? I thought that was just to do with tuning??

I did a test and thr guitar was in tune when the strings were played open, at the 12th fret and at the 15th. Does that mean intonation is fine?

(going onto Amazon now to get a book on guitar setup basics :s)
 
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