gtrbldr_h

I play in a P&W band in church with a pretty busy band mix (2 guitar, 1 key/pad, often tracks and an acoustic guitar). Many of the tricks in this thread I use as well and it works.

 

Some other ones that work in my experience: 

1. Using the minotaur in front of your amp model, with gain at 1.0, helps to boost the right frequencies. Cutting frequencies is regarded as better, however many OD pedals boost certain frequencies (for instance: a tube screamer)

- don’t cut the highs to aggressive. You need some sizzle to cut. I use celestion IRs, which are a little bright/ mid focused and I cut somewhere at 10kHz

- if using headphones to dial in your tone: use good ones (I use Beyerdynamic DT 770 and could not be happier) and dial your base tone in while playing along with the recording of the song you are playing and make sure you dial the EQ in a way you can pleasantly hear your self, without overpowering the track volume wise. 

Sounds Nice and punchy. Not familiar with the actual foo fighters sound, but on itself it sounds great.

Tnx!!

What mic settings are you using with the cab? I am still trying to figure out the trainwreck, since it accounts for one of the best recorded ‘YouTube tones’ I have ever heared. Every piece of the puzzle helps!

many thanks - out of curiosity, what sort of numbers are you using in the hi cuts???

Lo around 80Hz, high varies, somewhere between 10kHz and 15kHz

Hi - looking for some advice on high end

 

All of the stock amp settings and real world settings are completely unusable to my ears (normally use audio-tecnica headphones) and I have to drop the treble and presence to zero to get anything like a usable tone (especially with gain)

 

No amount of high cuts in eq block and cab settings seem to tame the high end

 

The only way I have found to get a workable sound is to drop the input impedance in the first input block down from auto (normally 1M) to 90k

 

Completely frustrated that all the guys on youtube seem to get amazing tones without even trying

 

Is this OK to do or am I mad???

For starters try an EQ block with hi and lo cut instead of the cut in the cab block. The Q in the hi and lo cut of a cab or IR is so wide, that it has too little effect and the cut becomes unnatural. The Q of the hi/lo cut in the EQ blocks is much steeper. This really helped in my case to tame the high frequencies.

I just upgraded my performance Helix since I didn't want to do it prior to the weekend. And I have to say I totally agree on the Lonestar as a go to medium crunch monster. I haven't had time to play with it too much but I dropped it into one of my Litigator based presets and that thing came ALIVE. Nothing against the Litigator but the Lonestar has this very dry crunchy feel and I can really have some precise control over how my crunch I want. Very professional studio sound going through a Celestion Redback IR with a mix of an R121 and MD421. Good job L6!!

Haven’t tried that IR yet, but that sounds like a great suggestion. #guesswhatiwillbetestinglater :-)

Just wanted to state it. There seems to be much love for the Freedman, but the lonestar should have its own thread. Great addition to have a medium gain USA flavored amp. I feel like this one is going to replace my standard worship patches for driven sounds (used to be a pushed matchless channel 2 with Klon for drive).

 

Tnx for adding it

ok, it appears I have been a little dumb :P. fixed it

 

mods. please remove this topic

Petrucci doesnt use active pickups high output yes but not active

And the tone he reffered to in that video was from images and words back then JP used exactly the same pickups as Jon had in the video Dimarzio Tone Zone And Air Norton but some say he used a Steve Special in bridge postion on images and words.

Actually he was using a Steve’s special, not a tone zone in the bridge position. The SS is a very scooped PU and that contributes considerably to the broad sound with the middy Mesa amps. The aggressive V in the EQ compensates a little, but does not capture the punch the SS packs.

 

Used to have a Ibbie JPM and combined with my MB quad I was able to come close to the JP sound.

No bug, but this is post nr 1000 in this thread, so I went for it :-p

Truth is, we hired a new DSP guy (not on the normal Helix team, so it didn't take away from sustained development) and he needed a project to learn our tools. Porting M-Class models to HX was the clear winner.

I say: great Strategic HR management 😊

I read on the GP that it will be Tuesday or Wednesday, if I remember correctly it was either Frank or DI who gave that estimate and I am too lazy to dig it up 😋

Everything about that was great!

Sounded crazy terrific indeed...

I've owned a Mesa Mark IIc and a Mark III. They were fairly similar in sound, but the Mark III is generally brighter. Even after I exchanged the stock EV speaker with the same Celestion that was in the Mark II, it was brighter. I've never owned a Mark IV, but I've used rented ones on a few gigs and even after a half hour of tweaking, I couldn't get it to sound much like the IIc or the III, at least not the lead channel. It's a different beast. The IIc and the III had some push/pull tone knobs and two of them were mid boosts, one voiced to accentuate low to mid midrange and the other for higher midrange frequencies. That was the secret ingredient to that great lead tone that I loved. And why I was slightly disappointed that the Mark IV was chosen instead of those previous Mesa Mark models. The IIc was my favorite, so yes, I'd welcome a model of it!

Push pull. Forgot about those. Especially pull bright was powerful as I remembered. Haven’t had the quad and the helix side by side obviously, has been over 10 years ago that I owned it, but in my head it is in the same ballpark. Might be wrong though. ;-)

please!! mesa mark IIc+

Would be nice, but somehow I do not see the added value since we already have a very nice model IV, that does about the same trick... I have had a mesa quad (essentially a mkIIc married with a mkIII) and I can get in the same ballpark with the mkIV lead model.

 

If they were going to add another mk model: a classic mk I lead might be nice. That is definately another beast.

Interesting. Timmy and Klon in series I assume? What order? Approximate settings?

 

Correct. The main "drive" is the Klon. The Timmy is added in front for extra boost and gives combined with the klon a "natural" compression. The Matchless is alway just over breaking up and I use a middy sounding IR (celestion 412 creamback hi gain), which nicely combines with the SD'59's in my guitars.

 

Main idea: stack low gain stages. neither of the pedals nor the amp is pushing hard, but the combination works. the timmy is not alway on by the way, only for leads. for crunchy rhytms I prefer just the Klon, providing more dynamics

 

amp matchless channel 2:

channel drive: 1.5

tone: 4

cut, presence: 0

master: 10 (pretty much stock settings, just lowered the gain)

 

timmy

gain: 1.9

bass cut: 5

treble cut: 5

clipping: up

level: 7.1

 

Klon

gain: 3

tone: 5.3

level: 6

.

 

The Klon is awesome. The Timmy is awesome. Both at the same time is freakin' hysterically amazing... into an overdriven Matchless will cause you to collapse giggling from pleasure instantaneously.

 

I could go on, but I'm goin' to lunch...

Funny. Old thread, but that is exactly what I use for every church/worship patch. Came up with it all by myself though, so I guess that is why I consider it funny. :-p. Especially love channel 2.

Sounds great to me! Lots of mids and not too much gain, especially when compared to Joe’s scooped tone. BTW, I would love to wake up one morning and be able to improvise as “mediocre†as Paul or Joe!!!

Of course I was talking about guitar tone, not their abilities ;-)

Paul has had a nice tone the last couple of years, especially since he switched to single coils in stead of high output humbuckers. But truely both Phil and Joe sound on the low end of mediocre in this video, so Paul stands out and seems to be a little louder in the mix.

Headphones are definitely the worst possible way to listen to Helix, or anything else like it. Actual monitors sound much better.

Perhaps not the best way, but I love my helix through my headphones ;-)

Shoot me a private message and I'll share some of my worship presets with you. Also, check out WorshipTutorials.com. They have some patches and videos that may be helpful to you.

 

Same here, use my helix for church as well and have some (in my opinion) usefull patches.

Nope, works fine in my 2.3 helix.

The AA3 does a lot and is amp modelling wise by no means a step down feom Helix, but very limited in terms of effects and routing options. I have one and it is my backup in case my helix goes belly up

Atomic Amplifire. Has some models the Helix doesn’t (Dumble, Conford). Besides that: in the FX loop it makes for a nice extra path and it can be used for dual amp patches. The AA3 has dual SHARCs as well; double processing power ;-).