Recommendations regarding amplifier setup

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

5 hours ago, abacab said:

I noticed the BJAM is a sampled Fender Strat. That is probably another guitar to avoid if you are doing metal.

"I may get some hate for this, but Stratocasters are probably one of the worst choices for metal, unless of course you're buying Jim Root's signature guitar. Even then, that guitar is not made like a typical Fender Stratocaster. Most Fender Strats have three single coil pickups, which are almost always more subtle and bluesy than humbuckers, and aren't made to handle a ton of gain.

Their tone is not percussive or saturated, and they don't tend to mix well with high levels of distortion. Instead, think bluesy overdrive and "breakup" instead of heavy power chords and searing highs. 

There are plenty of far better options."

https://www.guitarchalk.com/are-fender-strats-metal/

Apparently the memo hasn't reached Yngwie Malmsteen yet.

[mettelus]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of free plugins, but in most cases the guitar is real (not a VSTi). I just noticed @ChernobylStudios has a video up using all free VST plugins (in SONAR/CbB), and has a nice walk-through of the setup, but the guitar is a real one (Ibanez GRG7221 - budget 7-string). When you start getting into a VSTi guitar that sounds good/great, the term "free" is not often there (demo sometimes though). His video goes through the FX chain in CbB, so is a good resource, but again, the guitar is real. The only VSTis that come to mind for me for low end are AmpleSound's Hell Razor and ThreeBodyTech's Heavier 7 Strings (neither are free). Some folks may have other suggestions, but trying to feed samples that don't meet the genre into an FX chain are going to cause you grief.

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by mettelus

[William Wave]

Actually, for a poor guitar BJAM is doing fine if configured properly. Consistency is still the aspect to work on, and it might be improved by applying certain effects. Setting maximum release solves it, although not entirely.

[William Wave]

Another idea: the sound might be thickened by duplicating the main guitar and giving specific configurations to both versions. Finding the exact configurations is still in progress, so if you have any suggestions (about duplicating), let me know.

[William Wave]

Or maybe do both: duplicate and give a different sound to the copy. The question is how exactly this different sound is given apart of panning.

[mettelus]

One of the reasons not to copy is that you can give yourself phasing issues when altering one against the other.

[William Wave]

Copying the main guitar has actually given a decent result after transposing the copy down an octave and playing around with TH3. Amplifying lower frequencies for all guitars also adds more density to the sound.

However, the composition still lacks expression. Increasing drive in TH3 to the limit doesn't help that much, so there might be some other way to add more drive.

[Starship Krupa]

A couple of suggestions: A|A|S Swatches is a promotional freeware plug-in instrument that contains a dozen or so patches from each of their soundpacks. This includes patches from their virtual guitar, Strum. They're modeled rather than sampled, but IMO, sound pretty realistic.

Also, anyone interested in freeware instruments should check out this forum topic (there is a corresponding topic for freeware FX):

 

[William Wave]

At this moment there is no necessity in other instruments. The current task is to find a way to increase the power of existing instruments, presumably by adding more drive on top of the one from TH3.

[Byron Dickens]

Adding "more drive" is not the solution.

[William Wave]

Yes, seems so (tested with another plugin). Guitar notes still fade away immediately. Making every note sound evenly, without fading away, might be the solution, the question is how.

[William Wave]

This is how the track sounds in its current state: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H0HVCbuuZ5iMFSCHtZhHGTb0ZvP5JwB5/view?usp=share_link . Instruments are likely not going to be changed, so from this point it's rather a matter of processing with effects. The goal is same: achieve deep and emotional sound. By the way, as the lyrics go, the hero tells about his long life in a poor town and recalls what he has been doing there all this time every single day. It's a sad and nostalgic song with a bit of hope, and it has to sound accordingly.

[Starship Krupa]

On 5/11/2023 at 1:55 AM, William Wave said:

Making every note sound evenly, without fading away, might be the solution, the question is how.

Compress the guitar to get a good, consistent level before the signal goes into whatever you're using for an amp sim. Faster release times (under 75ms) will emphasize more of the sustained tail of guitar notes.

For that heavy fuzz sound, Voxengo Boogex is a good freeware amp sim plug-in to check out.

Also, there are sounds in the previously mentioned freeware A|A|S Swatches that will nail that guitar tone without further processing. If it's a virtual instrument, just replace it. Try the Love Lost/Steamroller Filth (key) or Steamroller Scream (key) patches in Swatches. Nice mournful sounds with long fades, and a better distortion tone than that square wave fuzz you're getting now.

Since this is a virtual guitar part, there are some things to examine in your MIDI track. Velocity and note length to start with. You may have just programmed your notes to be too short for the effect you're trying to get. I assume from the description of the emotional picture you're trying to paint that a long, mournful wailing sound is your goal? It's not easy to get a credible guitar sound from virtual instruments, but it can be done.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

Another alternative would be AXP's SoftAmp PSA, which emulates the Sansamp PSA-1 rack preamp. This was once only available as a ProTools plugin (which comes with Intro). I did copy all factory presets from the actual unit for CbB and that plugin, but I couldn't find an appropriate place in the forums to post them.

[William Wave]

14 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

For that heavy fuzz sound, Voxengo Boogex is a good freeware amp sim plug-in to check out.

Checked out, TH3 is still doing a much greater job.

As for wailing, yes, this is the right definition. Something like this might be just fine.

Decreasing release to 50 and increasing velocity also helps a little.

[William Wave]

A little more progress is made: applying a Chorus effect gets the sound a bit closer to what is required. A free sustain plugin is also found, and it works fine ( https://plugins4free.com/plugin/1455/ ). The next step is making smooth transitions between notes. The way they sound now reminds bell ringing because of too much impulse at the start, which has to be fixed.

 

Update.

 

The soluton is found: toning down velocty of certain notes with the articulation map.

Edited May 22, 2023 by William Wave