guitar tone purchase, opinions needed

Marcus' JSX ones sound the most 'natural' to me, without fail. The Recto ones are voiced in a way I don't personally like, but that doesn't necessarily speak ill of their quality. Just not my thing.

Impulses still have a way to go. If you want to go down the impulse path, Joey, you're better of just mic'ing a real cab, because it'll get you the other 20% of missing tone. Nebula at the moment isn't handling the job too well, so we have no viable alternative for using real cabs at this moment in time.

The Axe-FX fails to really make an impact on me. It constantly creates these new-age, flat, 2 dimensional tones that all the metalcore and djent-lovers seem to dig, but I'm in another camp. I'd sooner grab a Dual Rec head and run it right into impulses.

Personally, I believe the near future lies in the hybrid approach. All the best non-linear aspects of a tube head combined with the realistic cab depiction of convolution modeling. Convolution has a way to go before it can adequately model the cabs, but for the time being it does the job somewhat convincingly. It's the best compromise I've found short of actually mic'ing a real set-up. Though I'll always do the latter if possible.

I think I've maybe been spoiled by the plethora of amazing amps I've had the pleasure to work with over the last few years. I've come out on the other side simply not being able to tolerate the deficiencies of impulses, nor the sound of digital modelers. None of it does anything for me that a well-constructed tube amp running through a great cab would.

If you're digging the Line 6 approach, then maybe stick with them. They certainly make the best emulation product suited for professional productions, IMO. They don't sound the most realistic, nor the most organic, but they have this way of 'sitting' in the mix just right with the appropriate EQ treatment. Beside that, Revalver 3 has some amazing potential, but I've yet to hear it pulled off convincingly in a pro mix. I'd sooner use a real head with impulses there once again!

All of this.
 
Marcus' JSX ones sound the most 'natural' to me, without fail. The Recto ones are voiced in a way I don't personally like, but that doesn't necessarily speak ill of their quality. Just not my thing.

Impulses still have a way to go. If you want to go down the impulse path, Joey, you're better of just mic'ing a real cab, because it'll get you the other 20% of missing tone. Nebula at the moment isn't handling the job too well, so we have no viable alternative for using real cabs at this moment in time.

The Axe-FX fails to really make an impact on me. It constantly creates these new-age, flat, 2 dimensional tones that all the metalcore and djent-lovers seem to dig, but I'm in another camp. I'd sooner grab a Dual Rec head and run it right into impulses.

Personally, I believe the near future lies in the hybrid approach. All the best non-linear aspects of a tube head combined with the realistic cab depiction of convolution modeling. Convolution has a way to go before it can adequately model the cabs, but for the time being it does the job somewhat convincingly. It's the best compromise I've found short of actually mic'ing a real set-up. Though I'll always do the latter if possible.

I think I've maybe been spoiled by the plethora of amazing amps I've had the pleasure to work with over the last few years. I've come out on the other side simply not being able to tolerate the deficiencies of impulses, nor the sound of digital modelers. None of it does anything for me that a well-constructed tube amp running through a great cab would.

If you're digging the Line 6 approach, then maybe stick with them. They certainly make the best emulation product suited for professional productions, IMO. They don't sound the most realistic, nor the most organic, but they have this way of 'sitting' in the mix just right with the appropriate EQ treatment. Beside that, Revalver 3 has some amazing potential, but I've yet to hear it pulled off convincingly in a pro mix. I'd sooner use a real head with impulses there once again!



thanks for the tips, i've decided to avoid the axefx and purchased the pod farm platinum, with intentions on trying out some cab impulses or cab simulations...

im just looking for some different range of sounds, instead of having to rely on like... one

thanks everyone for the awesome replies!
 
Wait wait :lol:, no iLok for the demo, but you need to install the PACE drivers... never had a problem with this protection system, but some guys hate them because it seems to be pretty "invasive"...
TH1 has been out from November 2008 iirc!

Not as good as Revalver? Try it and decide yourself... personally I've switched from RVMKIII to TH1 and never looked back (I think it has more dynamic, needs less tweaking, has better low-mids, a lot less CPU usage, better Tube Screamer), but this is just personal taste/feeling, I don't want to argue about which sim is better, I don't care...
Try everything you can and draw your conclusions...

If you're curious to hear it, this is a metal sample I've made some days ago using Keregioz DIs (just TS + 5150 model + GH impulse, don't remember which exactly, maybe "FinalV2!"):
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/432451/keregiozTH1Reamp.mp3

Okay, I thought it needs an iLok as well. Rightedirightright ... downloading ... again :D
 
Nope... Cynic was a Krank.

Yep. from what I can gather the distorted sounds were definitely Krank.

I'm guessing a lot of the clean stuff was the Axe - it seems to excel at that.

They definitely used both on the record.

Check out the new Exivious stuff that Tymon posted, that's 90% Axe from what he said.

-Joe
 
Yep. from what I can gather the distorted sounds were definitely Krank.

I'm guessing a lot of the clean stuff was the Axe - it seems to excel at that.

They definitely used both on the record.

Check out the new Exivious stuff that Tymon posted, that's 90% Axe from what he said.

-Joe

I'll concede aha.
I'm sure I'd seen Tymon say it was Axe-FX on Traced In Air but I probably read it somewhere in a half awake stupor and ended up completely mistaken.

Doesn't sound very Krank to me, and I'm not usually a fan of them, but goddamnit that is one of my favourite tones in recent years.
 
Did you get Pod farm yet?

Was just curious how it was working out for yea....

yes, and i love it / the idea of it

tricky though, if you wanna have total reversability (be able to rebuild the tone from the ground up) along with having pretty much no lag on the pc, you gotta build another input in the vst connections (input 1 = rme 1, input 2 = rme 1)

then load pod farm on the input of one, and leave it off the other, record both, mute the one that's di. this way you record the actual sound of the amp and the di, and you can go back later and run pod farm again as a output insert and change the tone, re-bounce

other than that, it rocks! not sure how to record a stereo signal from pod farm yet (in this fashion), but i havent tried yet, really...
 
i've downloaded the demo and toyed with it in the studio. im recording a pretty big band right now and the guitarist and i were pretty impressed (yes the amps sounded as if those amps were sitting in my booth mic'd up... but THAT sound isn't good enough for a final product).
:erk:

huh?

How is a amp sim sounding like a real miked amp not good enough for a final product?
 
Joey: a tip with impulses, I have found using two different impulses on the same tone helps a great deal. Not on top of each other, but the amp signal sent to both at the same time. In ReValver it's easy with the Signal Split feature, it splits the amp signal into two impulse modules with a different impulse loaded into each, then gets summed back into a single mono signal. Much like how all the Line6 stuff offers dual tones, only IMO impulses made by users around here are much better than the Line6 sims.

~006
 
Joey: a tip with impulses, I have found using two different impulses on the same tone helps a great deal. Not on top of each other, but the amp signal sent to both at the same time. In ReValver it's easy with the Signal Split feature, it splits the amp signal into two impulse modules with a different impulse loaded into each, then gets summed back into a single mono signal. Much like how all the Line6 stuff offers dual tones, only IMO impulses made by users around here are much better than the Line6 sims.

~006

But I find that RIR sounds terrible in comparison to a dedicated plugin such as LAConvolver.
 
LINE 6 until death it is the best IMO for the amounth of money
BTW can you share some of your presets? cheers
 
I've been using pod farm + impulses for a while now. Got revalver as well but I seem to get lots more flexibility and choice with the farm. Sometimes one wouldn't want to be stuck up with just peavey sims you know. I use it whenever I need it :p otherwise, the farm.

I like this impulse I made, and people seem to like these :) (though I prefer the first)

Eh never came across that before. Gonna try it out.:p
 
well crap. i dont want to invest 2000 dollars into something that could be dissapointing...

My buddy just did a clinic for the AX-FX in chicago
he played and did examples for 2 hours with it
it was all over the site
if you need any info on it or have questions about it just send me a PM or email
I could get you any info about it you may not read about