Re: [LAD] A small article about tools for electronic musicians

On April 28, 2010 06:05:22 pm Tim E. Real wrote: Just a follow-up about plugins: Wow, man! I just spent an hour playing with Guitarix Distortion (ladspa plugin) + caps C* Amp VTS (ladspa amp sim plugin) in MusE's plugin rack. Gotta tell ya, by the end of the session I had the sweetest, most pleasant sounding, longest yet cleanest sustain, from just two ladspa plugins. Strumming, appegios, pick sweeps, chunka chunka power chords, long sustain, esp with hammer-ons... I don't know what it was about the combination but I can't wait to try tomorrow (it's late). Am I correct in what I thought I heard? 2nd order harmonic 'style' all the way through the chain? I know C* amp is tube and I think Guitarix is as well, am I correct? It seemed to help with the picking. I saw some other quite capable looking tube preamp ladspa plugins as well, can't wait to try them with the C* amp series, which I never realized was so good ! I suppose I've always been looking for a monolithic solution. Been disappointed by one single plugin. Sort of give up looking, you know? But two really is better than one. I learned that from studying pedal schematics, I had built simple two-diode fuzz boxes and began to wonder how they get that 'metal' or 'crunch' sound. So I knew that more than one 'diode stage' was required, but never tried it with ladspa plugins till now. I had also learned a key difference between fuzz and other types - asymmetrical clipping. Rakarrack made it easy to experiment, with its two independent drive stages. Once I tried Rakarrack, I was finally able to retire my analog FX box (Boss SE70) from its send-and-return (insert) loop in MusE. Ramble ramble... Cheers. Tim.