Newb First Impression an Q's - Using IRs, building patches etc...

[Garhel]

Well, I finally picked her up this morning, but she sat in the car all day while I had to work. The guy in the shop was chatty, loved the Helix, wants one when he's got the cash together, warned me the presets were sh*t (his description!). I also picked up one of the new Alto TS speakers - the logic being that our PA has the same speakers, and if I can make the Helix sound good through this one, that should hopefully make translating to gig sound a bit easier. Who knows.

 

Finally got home about 6pm, unpacked the speaker and Helix, switched them on, found the Helix was on an earlier firmware version, got the Mac, downloaded the updater, updated the Helix, Used the editor to squirt in some IRs I've been downloading over the last few weeks, connected everything together, and grabbed a guitar! This might seem like a fairly laborious start, but I was surprised at how easy and seamlessly this worked - it was all done in 15 mins...

 

I wasn't expecting a lot from the presets, so I wasn't disappointed. After spending 15 mins scrolling through one anaemic preset after another, I thought sod it, let's just get on with making one of my own. I was aiming for something clean and sparkly, but a few wrong amp choices later i accidentally found myself with a really nice edge of break up Fenderish tone, which I loved, and couldn't resist adding a few more bits and pieces. I experimented a bit on this one patch, and found that moving cabs, IRs into different paths seemed to make a huge difference. I was enjoying myself so much I forgot to have dinner!

 

I then struck upon the idea to see how others piece their patches together and came across a great YouTube tutorial by Glenn Delaune, that took you through block by block how he put together a Gilmour patch. If i was the Lord of Helix I would almost make this mandatory! By following every step I learned a huge amount of things, from setting multiple function switches, max and min parameter settings, multiple amps, a great trick for a clean boost, some nifty tricks with reverb, some ideas on using the expression pedals creatively. And most importantly it sounded awesome. I've used a variety of Mesa, Orange, Blackstar and a long gone Engl as my gigging amps for the last few years, but I'm pretty sure this unit is going to work beautifully in their stead. I called it a night a little after midnight, with 3 patches under my belt that I'm really pleased with, and I did manage a great funky clean patch. This thing sounds awesome, and the Alto is surprisingly great.

 

Now, my question - I've noticed that some people use IRs in between an amp and cab, some after the amp in the loop, returning to the output stream after a cab, and some just don't use a cab at all, and just take the IR straight to an eq. Mis there an accepted "correct" way to use IRs, and are there any pros and cons to each approach? Just from my experimenting tonight I found it made quite a difference :-\

 

Tomorrow nights mission is a good rock rhythm tone and lead tone. Highway to Hell, and Rebel Yell here we go ;-)

 

Cheers, Gary

[Garhel]

Maybe that post was too long for people to get through...

 

In summary the question was is there a "best practice" for using IRs? I've been downloading customtones and notice that people place them in different places - before cabs, after cabs, and sometimes with no cabs at all. I'm not really clear on how they're supposed to work, and any guidance would be wonderful.

[silverhead]

An IR is another option for a cab/mic combination. I would not use a cab with an IR in series just like I wouldn't use two cabs in series. Using them in parallel is fine, both after the amp generally.

[njglover]

I agree with the above, but with a caveat. Generally, IRs are replacements for cabs, as mentioned above. You would use them instead of a cab or in parallel with another cab (maybe you want to blend the sounds for a specific tone or maybe you want one panned left and the other panned right). However, there are some IRs that are acoustic guitar impulses and are intended to make your electric guitar sound more like an acoustic, in which case you would probably use those by themselves with no amp or cab.

[Garhel]

Great - thanks for the response and help - the more I play with it the more I'm getting it!