30 Apr
2010
30 Apr
'10
8:18 a.m.
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.
Hi Tim :)
so you do play guitars directly to the mixing console too?!
I had the most satisfying result when I used a Hughes & Kettner 19"
tube-device, borrowed from a friend.
When I need sustain for clean sounds, e.g. for bottleneck, I still use a
Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer.
Did you get deep basses for the guitar's sound by using guitarix? I
guess this is the biggest problem, so when playing directly to the
mixing console I often use a drop D, unfortunately this leads to
Badmotorfinger like compositions.
But I do agree that some Linux (to be fair and Windows) plugins do
produce good sounds and even if playing without a real stack has some
disadvantages, I like to have the option to listen to distortion and amp
simulation, while I just record the clean guitar signal, so I'm able to
change the kind of distortion and amp simulation later. Btw. instead of
an amp simulation I sometimes use early reflection reverb, for this I
prefer hardware effects from the 80ies, because of their limited
frequency response and OTOH better early reflection simulations they're
a kind of amp simulation.
Rakarrack is very good, excepted of the deepness for the bass sound of
the guitar. I guess playing Rakarrack to a stack would enable to abandon
all other effect devices, as long as somebody e.g. won't simulate the
original sound of Jimi Hendrix, e.g. like Randy Hansen does. Some
effects can't be replaced.
Compiling Rakarrack for outdated distros sometimes doesn't work :(, but
an outdated distro might be a stable recording system ;).
Cheers!
Ralf