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Might be looking into an effects processor. Need help choosing.


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For over a year or so now I've owned a Line 6 Spider IV 120 guitar amp and I've miked it with an sm57 and a sennheiser 421 on each 12" cone with the 421 dead center on it's cone and the 57 on axis just to the right of the center of it's cone. Along with EQ (in and out of the box between my amp, mixer and Waves EQ plug-in) I've tweaked the living shit outta my sound.

Of course, the longer you've been recording over the years the more you notice certain things about your sound that you don't like.

For instance, I play with some heavy distortion and there's this staticky sound that keeps annoying the crap outta me and it seems to originate between 4k and 8k. I've tried eliminating it by peaking the Q and dropping the gain around that point, but it takes away a particular presence. I tried adjusting all my EQ's or even eliminating the use of some or all of them. I've tried repostioning the mics on different parts of their cones and going off and on axis for each. For the life of me I just cannot seem to find a great, warm timbre in this thing.

My conclusion is that I've raised my standard for what I'm suppose to sound like and require better gear. Line 6 has givin' me a great ride, but i've noticed that I haven't grown much between my Gearbox and the Spider IV. Both are Line 6 gear. And the sounds they provide are just no longer what I'm into.

Now, before I go crazy and spend over 3000 american dollars on a JVM or a Mark V amp/stack, I wanna find a more cheaper solution. So I went shopping online and discovered the Boss GT-10 effects processor and the Boss ME-70. Heard some demos of each and they sound pretty good. But I'm curious to hear if there are any other recommended brands or other solutions to my ego problem. Thoughts?

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Best thing to do is grab your guitar and head to a music store that has a lot of different options available. Plug your guitar in and test each one out.

I used a Digitech RP200 for years and loved it's versatility, but I've recently switched to using Guitar Rig.

Just know that you're not going to find a magic pedal that gives you the tone a JVM or MesaBoogie amp is going to give you.

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I used a Digitech RP200 for years and loved it's versatility, but I've recently switched to using Guitar Rig.

Just know that you're not going to find a magic pedal that gives you the tone a JVM or MesaBoogie amp is going to give you.

I demoed guitar rig without the hardware it comes with and I had huge latency issues. I'm assuming it's BECAUSE i didnt have the hardware it comes with. Although I have upgraded immensely since then so maybe it might be a viable solution.

And yeah I figured there's no such thing as magic in this area of the music world and some pedal wouldn't give me the same quality as a JVM or Mark V. But I'm sure I can find better than what I've got for a more affordable price.

SO far the GT-10 is winning me out. But not jumping to anything just yet.

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The Rig Kontrol isn't an audio interface, and doesn't replace having a low-latency audio interface. With a proper interface, you'll have no problem using it live; I do this with my keyboard rig (though, to be fair, I'm using electric pianos in Kontakt, not a hardware EP running through my laptop for effects).

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The Rig Kontrol isn't an audio interface, and doesn't replace having a low-latency audio interface. With a proper interface, you'll have no problem using it live; I do this with my keyboard rig (though, to be fair, I'm using electric pianos in Kontakt, not a hardware EP running through my laptop for effects).

Yeah I didn't have my Mackie 820i or maxed out RAM back then. The machine I have now is probably 10 times more powerful.

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Tried it. It has some awesome clean sounds and effects. but when it comes to distortion, it feels weak. and when I try to bump the gain it gets too mooshy. however, if u use this for metal on a regular basis and have a sample of a preset you use then i'd love to hear it. cause with what i just went through it feels like it doesnt make the cut. yet i hear about others raving about guitar rig so i'd like to be proven wrong here.

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Tried it. It has some awesome clean sounds and effects. but when it comes to distortion, it feels weak. and when I try to bump the gain it gets too mooshy. however, if u use this for metal on a regular basis and have a sample of a preset you use then i'd love to hear it. cause with what i just went through it feels like it doesnt make the cut. yet i hear about others raving about guitar rig so i'd like to be proven wrong here.

Try putting a Skreamer pedal then a Van51 amp with control room pro on it.

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Tried that. I've been toying with this thing for hours. It seems the more I tweak the more of a mess I make and I start all over. And the cycle continues.

I don't understand how you get tones like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1JXIvIE4U0

clearly you can get a tone like this with the rig. This guy even offers his tone for free but i can't import it without buying the god damn thing! And no I don't need that tone EXACTLY but that quality would be nice.

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Make sure your gain settings are correct. Having a little too much gain will end up making the whole thing sound like buzzy mush. That's the issue with amp sims.

If the Skreamer doesn't give you the results you desire, try the Cat before a Van51 with a Van51 cab (mostly mic B). Turn down the treble on the Van 51, up the distortion and filter on the cat.

You can get brighter, metallic hard/heavy rock sounds like that. Turn the mids a bit on the amp and boost the bass.

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http://www.darangen.com/music/GuitarRig.mp3

That's my latest metal tone which is basically using a blend of a few presets that come with Guitar Rig 4 (haven't upgraded to 5 yet).

The guitar you're using will play a part in how your tone is coming out too, I mainly use Ibanez guitars. This one I used an Ibanez SZ320, tuned down to B.

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That sounds great!

Well, it got better.

http://soundcloud.com/soleparadigm/grig-demo

A little ways through I realized i needed more gain. But before I could adjust it, it shut down because it was in DEMO mode. Time ran out. Damnit! Now I gotta start over. I should wrote this shit down.

I'd also like to note that My guitar is in great shape. I got a liquifire and crunch lab pickup setup and the action and tonation are spot on. So Im pretty sure my axe aint the prob.

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The big reason I went with guitar rig in the long run is because I can go back and change the sound later on if it ends up needing tweaking without having to re-record the track. Since you just record the straight guitar signal into your DAW you can change settings like any other plugin.

Really? Cause I have Guitar Rig in pro tools setup on an instrument track and sending it through a bus to a couple audio tracks and playing two instances of the riff and panning left and right. SO Im recording audio. I can still change the sound post-print?

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Really? Cause I have Guitar Rig in pro tools setup on an instrument track and sending it through a bus to a couple audio tracks and playing two instances of the riff and panning left and right. SO Im recording audio. I can still change the sound post-print?

Depends on your recording method. DAW's usually just record the audio coming INTO the track (not what comes out) so all of the effects are still processed in real-time during playback.

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I've put a lot of thought into this. It came down between Guitar Rig 5 or the Boss GT-10. And honestly, the GT-10 is winning because if I want to play live with my sound some day, it'd be easier to do with a hardware-based effects processor. That and the sound quality seems a bit better with the GT-10. I'm gonna have to go with the GT-10.

Don't get me wrong. Guitar Rig has a vast amount you can do with and some awesome clean tones and effects that even John Petrucci would go crazy for. However, when it comes to distorted/crunch tones, it feels rather thin to me. Call me an audiophile, but there just seems to be something missing no matter what combination of mics and cabs and amps I use in GRig. And I've spent the last 2 or so days in my room messing with the damn thing.

With the GT-10 I can either plug into my mixer and have at it or go through my amp and mic it up to see what effect it has. So there's more I can to with it than with GRig.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

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I've put a lot of thought into this. It came down between Guitar Rig 5 or the Boss GT-10. And honestly, the GT-10 is winning because if I want to play live with my sound some day, it'd be easier to do with a hardware-based effects processor. That and the sound quality seems a bit better with the GT-10. I'm gonna have to go with the GT-10.

Don't get me wrong. Guitar Rig has a vast amount you can do with and some awesome clean tones and effects that even John Petrucci would go crazy for. However, when it comes to distorted/crunch tones, it feels rather thin to me. Call me an audiophile, but there just seems to be something missing no matter what combination of mics and cabs and amps I use in GRig. And I've spent the last 2 or so days in my room messing with the damn thing.

With the GT-10 I can either plug into my mixer and have at it or go through my amp and mic it up to see what effect it has. So there's more I can to with it than with GRig.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

I would always recommend hardware over software for live use. I'm more of a studio musician, so such a thing is not a consideration for me.

Especially since the GT-10 doesn't even require a computer.

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I would always recommend hardware over software for live use. I'm more of a studio musician, so such a thing is not a consideration for me.

So why make a blanket recommendation for something you don't really do, and then not back it up? Are you trying to be helpful or just get your post count up?

Reasons to use hardware live:

1) You generally get better hands-on control (or footswitches in the guitar case) - Doesn't mean that you can't et the same level of control with software by using the right MIDI controller(s), but that takes more work to set up and...

2) Simpler is often better; the fewer things that can fail, the less likely you are to actually have a gear failure.

Reasons to use software live:

1) The sound has the potential to be better (more true with samples than guitar effects)

2) Upgrading your sound is easier - you can't upgrade the GT-10 but you can upgrade Guitar Rig

3) If you need to do anything else, like play some keyboard parts or add a backing track or even clicktrack to stay in sync, you probably can't do that with hardware.

4) Simple is better, but sometimes isn't good enough; you can usually do more complex things with software because you're not limited to a single unit with fixed capabilities, and you can combine software to do what you want.

For me, as a keyboard player, I'm going the software route because the sound is so much better and there are so many ways to control things that you just can't do with hardware (running my EPs, and optionally piano sounds, through Guitar Rig controlled by a Line6 FBV Shortboard controller pedal to stomp things on and off). In my rig, I process all the incoming MIDI through a program called Bome's MIDI Translator that adds all kinds of special behaviours (controller buttons that can do different things at different times, or things like a button to reset all the modifications I've made to a sound by adding effects, playing with cutoff and resonance, or even changing the base sample), then send the MIDI through Cubase (it's the most stable VST host; not great for live use on its own, which is why I use Bome's) rewired to Reason (to get easy access to good synth engines, that make it easy to change the sounds loaded into Reason at the start of a song). Complicated, yes, but powerful.

For you, the big thing I'd ask is how you would record clean guitar tones. I strongly recommend recording dry(or both dry and wet at the same time) as Darangen suggests, so you can tweak your sound later. It's easy enough to record clean with a hardware effects modeller, but it's not as easy to *hear* the wet signal.

One solution is to get a splitter pedal (some tuners do this; I'm not enough of a guitar gearhead to know what else works) and put that in your signal chain immediately after your guitar; send one signal to your DAW, with monitoring turned off for that track, and record it clean, and send the other signal through your effects and either out to an amp or through your DAW on a second channel, this time with monitoring turned on, so you can hear the guitar the way you'd expect.

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Guitar Rig does have a pedal you can purchase and use via MIDI, and I think you can use a few other MIDI foot controllers with it too which makes it completely viable for live performance.

When I play live I use a combination of Guitar Rig, a Boss DD-3 delay pedal, and an A-B switch. I don't have the Guitar Rig MIDI foot controller, but I have the A-B switch going to two separate inputs on my sound card which go to two different Guitar Rig settings - usually heavy and clean sounds. Then I tap on the delay if needed.

At the end of the day it comes down to personal choice really, purchase what you want and what gives you the tone you're looking for. I used the Digitech RP200 for over a decade and it did pretty much everything I needed it to do, so I know the draws of an all-in-one pedal.

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