I'm mainly playing along songs from different genres of metal even using Digitech Drop pedal.
I started using 3Sigma IR first because I was not used to the stock cab but after a year I finally switched to stock cab. The main difference is that I don't need to do a lot of heavy EQ tweaking to sound close enough to the band I'm playing along with as the stock cab gives more flexibility with the different combination. Selecting the right combination in the cab is probably the most difficult part.
Some things I've done to improve my usage of the HX Stomp:
- I've always found a bit of harshness (my ears or my headphones) which I fixed by cutting 4khz with 10 Q and -3db in the global eq.
- don't stick with using 808 in front of amp, try ToneSovereign ( set first gain stage to 1, change second stage to boot if there's too much distortion, use presence to add brightness), try StuporOD. To tight a sound try Klon. My go to OD is probably ToneSovereign now when I'm using Digitech Drop, but again it depends on style of music. Try several combination some just do not work even with low gain
- try the Metal Zone without and amp, suprisingly good
- always use a separate block with dual cab. Find the correct combination of speaker type and mic. In 90's/2000 era it seems they generally used a combination of V30 and G12T75. Start with Dyn57 on both, try to change the distance, sometime it's needed to set at 4 or 5 on both. Depending on the type of amp you may brighten the sound using the XXL cab and a dyn57. If you need a less "defined" sound you may choose UberV30 and Cali.
- try Meteor, 2204 Mod, Fatality, Badonk. I usually use Meteor with just more treble than the preset and I cut cab at 95hz or more to remove some bass
- post eq the cab with a cut at 390hz 4Q -3db, gives punch for palm muting. Add some db at 1.6khz, for brightness add at a freq between 6/8khz
- to simulate dual track guitar add a Tile reverb, decay at 2 and mix at 35% it gives more "presence"
