Why Do I Always Struggle With Cabs?

[Perdikament]

Of course it's important!
What I meant is that I don't want to buy 200 cabs, and start filtering them out.
I don't want a 57 IR and a 421 IR and a 121 IR and all of those endless possibilities, I'm looking for an IR that just sounds good and full, don't even tell me what speaker and mic it has.
It's as if I'm looking for an IR that has a specific tone rather than a specific realistic mic/speaker combination.
Hopefully this makes sense outside of my head.

I've been doing the "DIY" thing for years and I'm getting tired of it.
Also sometimes you want a tone that is not possible to tone match.



Like I said, it's not a single preset.

Well that’s quite a frustrating answer.. how could you ever find the IR that you are hearing in your head, (the one you’re after) if you are unwilling to do any leg work & go through a bunch till you find it? Then once ya know the characteristics of each speaker type, and mic and mic combos and even IR maker for that matter you’ll be able to narrow down your search real quick. Not to mention with CabLab you can take a few IR & mix em together to create exactly what you’re hearing in your head. I almost always use my own creations now. But I put in the time, & I now know when I’m looking for a G12-65 or a 12L or C90 etc.. or if a certain IR is lacking a little high end sizzle but everything else is killer, then bring it into CabLab and mix in an IR with the Sweet highs.
I think you’re selling yourself short & missing out on a HUGE & powerful & important potential here. To be quite frank, I’m a little flabbergasted with ya Birdy.. we’ve talked before, & I know you know what you’re doing & I know ya know you’re way around a studio and all this stuff.. I would have figured you’d be all over the IR game.

 

[80sMetalDude]

Bear in mind that IRs are not everything to your tone, if the data up the chain is dialed in poorly or bad for the particular amp chosen etc... perhaps no IRs will solve those issues.

If I use myself as an example. I've owned maybe 8 real amps in my life and have little knowledge of the real amps modelled other than what I read or see on tutorials so I tend to stick to the amps I know how they behave right now.

That said, I found that the Mark series output EQ or output passive 5 band EQ solves the boomy for me something you may want to mess with. I usually cut instead of boost on the output EQ. Saw a few vids recommending this (Leon Todd has shown this in his vids, and a Van Halen brown sound tutorial no link right now to that) and it has really helped my sound a lot.

Ever since discovering this the bass really punches you in the face but in a way that is awesome vs. boomy.

 

[Randall d]

"Doesn't sound good" could mean about anything. But if it is just tightening up the low end you are looking for: turn on the Bass Cut in the Preamp, turn down the Bass control on the Preamp, and add some Dynamic Depth on the Dynamics tab for some good, tight low end (this advice came from Cliff, and I use it to good success on all of my presets).

 

[squealie]

I always hated my IRs (factory, 3rd party, whatever) when i would endlessly flip through them on a patch.

It wasn't until i just settled on some, that I started loving them. I know that sounds dumb...but there is something that happens to your ears when you scroll through 30 cabs while looking for a sound. Your brain starts to 'dial in' on the resonances and it all sounds like crap.

 

[Jason Scott]

I always hated my IRs (factory, 3rd party, whatever) when i would endlessly flip through them on a patch.

It wasn't until i just settled on some, that I started loving them. I know that sounds dumb...but there is something that happens to your ears when you scroll through 30 cabs while looking for a sound. Your brain starts to 'dial in' on the resonances and it all sounds like crap.

If you spend any length of time with a preset or mix, your ears will adapt. This can be both good and bad.

 

[HarrySound]

I moaned and scratched my head for a long time with the factory cabs. None of them worked for anything but cleans. I bought cab pack 13 Bulb and tried to shoehorn that into my presets but I only had a very small amount of success. Then I went to the cheap side of things and got a few 3sigma IRs and used them for a little while. During that time I had purchase ownhammers heavy hitters 1 collection and didn’t quite gel with it. I then went back and found a cab and speaker combo that really works for me and since then I e never had to look eleswhere

 

[Perdikament]

I can't seem to get good sounds (at least for my ears) from the factory cabs.
99% of the factory cabs (I've tried all of them many times) just give me a very boomy and phasey tone.
Not clear, not tight, not punchy, it barely even sounds like a starting point.
I feel like I should note that I'm really looking for (distorted) mix-ready sounds, those that you hear on records.
But still it doesn't make sense to me (maybe it's just me) that I always have to resort to tone matching and get started from there.

Any insights on that? Maybe I just have to find 3rd party IR's that are more of my style?

Cheers!

What kind of “distorted” tone are you going after? That’s casting a pretty wide net, that could be anything from a Hendrix type tone to Opeth & everything in between with multi-layerings.
And what Amps do you gravitate towards the most?
Would also help in recommending a Cab Pack or two so you can make a better informed decision should you decide to go ahead and purchase them.

 

[Billbill]

always have to resort to tone matching and get started from there.

What's wrong with tonematching and exporting that as your IR? Are you doing the tonematch correctly? What sound are you going for that you're tonematching? If you're tonematching and it's still not sounding at least close to how you want then tonematching is obviously not working. How about a sound sample of what you're hearing or the sound you're after? Need more info

 

[GotMetalBoy]

I was thinking about buying IR's but the thing is I don't want to go through another list of 100 cabs only to figure out I barely like 2 of them.
And there's not much demo/trial as in this field as far as I know.

I agree and I've had similar issues and created a thread a couple weeks ago about it. I wish there was a way to demo IR's or listen to more sound clips and I wish some of the sound clips were recorded with a low and medium priced guitars with stock pickups like an Ibanez RG421.

I recently bought an Axe-Fx III and most of the factory presets are usable and don't have the muddiness I experienced with my Axe-Fx II. There's over 2000 new IR's and all 189 Legacy Axe-Fx II IR's included with the Axe-Fx III, so I've been comparing the new ones to the Legacy and I've found a few that get me the tones I've been searching for. A good example is the first factory preset 59 Bassguy. The new IR used makes that amp model come to life. I've even been able to use a lot more gain with high gain amp models and retain note clarity.