Good Metal Effects Settings

[Arseth Ivarsson]

So I have downloaded Cakewalk by Bandlab, and I am a bit of a noob when it comes to guitar equipment. I have been looking to find if someone has posted a list of metal guitar amp/pedals/settings that have been used in TH3 (just in TH3, without anything external) to produce certain sounds and have thus far failed.

If anyone here has any advice, or knowledge of such a list, that would be greatly appreciated.

[Byron Dickens]

Use your ears.

Considerably less gain than you might think.

Considerably more midrange than you might think.

WAY less effects than you might think.

[Lord Tim]

^^ Good advice.

And if the amps still sound kind of meh after that, delete/bypass the cabinet sections and use an IR loader and a good Impulse Response.

I personally use NadIR: https://www.igniteamps.com/#nadir

And here's a good place to start researching IRs: https://makemusicwith.me/best-impulse-responses-for-metal/

EDIT: Not sure what genre of metal you do, but if it's extreme metal, you can certainly get some pretty brutal sounds out of TH3. This is all entirely TH3, including the cabs:

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Lord Tim

[Glenn Stanton]

thanks! reminded me that i have the "emissary" bundle and a ton of IRs. such a wonderful combination.

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, Ryan really knew what he wanted when he got Ignite to make that sim - it's actually really similar to his real amp in his studio, in fact. That said, there's a few genres that it doesn't suit that well without a bit of tweaking. He recorded a black metal band that I produced the first couple of albums here at SLS Studios and while the amp sounded fantastic as its own thing, it was much too... good? for that style. The tone needed to be quite a bit uglier than what he pulled up IMO. But for death metal or any djent or tech stuff, it's superb! Sounds pretty good backed off for rock styles too, actually.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Lord Tim

[mettelus]

Unfortunately, Overloud removed the free TH3 packs from there website (though THU has more free than TH3 ever had). You may try contacting Overloud and see if you can get the old TH3 ones (their support has always been good for me). This site has a TH3 archive, BUT it looks like most are custom presets... take those guys with a massive grain of salt, since they tend to be inundated with FX. A Google for TH3 preset sites may help, but if custom so much depends on who made them. However...

If new, Byron's advice is spot on... more is often destructive. In any FX chain you want to KNOW what the signal is out of one FX/component that is feeding the next, and internal to a VSTi this may not always be obvious. Time-based FX (chorus, delays, reverbs) should almost always be at the end of the chain (simple reason is you do not want to apply FX to the tail, but a tail to the output). A basic approach is clean up signal, compress if needed, amplify and FX chain. Also, a great learning tool is to take a pre-made chain, then do extremes on controls (minimum/maximum) one at a time to see how they affect the sound. Some of the presets that came with TH3 are fine to start with, and is easy to swap out components to see the changes that result. Be judicious with use and know what each component is doing (to the next one)... simple chains are best to start with.

Amp sims also have a tendency to create unrealistic harmonics, so a LPF on the signal set to 8KHz (+/-) before it goes into anything (the clean up the signal step) will keep you from passing that into the final output.