Do you like the stock cabs

[mastodonrules]

  When I first bought my Helix I didn't understand it and how it worked and tried to use it like one of the many cheap multi effects units I've owned in the past. But after research and tinkering I fell in love with it and look forward to using it every day. But I kept trying to use IRs believing what I was reading about the stock cabs. After getting some IRs that I found to not be to my liking I started tinkering with the stock cabs more and found that I now live them and have been creating and using presets with stock cabs. They sound amazing to me. Was wondering if this is the case with others.

[spikey]

I use the stock cabs 99% of the time.

[Kilrahi]

I am mostly a stock cab user.  I think you can get great sounds from them. 

 

I feel like I get the strength of IRs - you find one you like - one and done.

 

As a Stomp user though, any way you can save blocks is a plus and the dual cab blocks, whenever possible, are too tempting since you take 2 blocks and make them one.

[DunedinDragon]

Being a person that uses a LOT of different presets, I have a set of around 35 IRs I use exclusively in all my various presets.  It's just so much easier to select the one that best fits the preset and have no further tinkering with it.

[MLSoundLab]

Your guitar tone consists mainly of 1) guitar 2) amp and 3) cab and out of those three the cab is actually the most powerful tool in shaping your tone. You don't need to dislike the stock cabinets to be interested in IR's. After all the option of loading in IR's is what took all modelers to the next level as far as realism goes.

 

With a good IR you'll spend under 5min tweaking a preset and it'll sound a lot better than tweaking a preset with a bad cabinet section for hours. That's the simplest way I can put it. :)

[mastodonrules]

Thanks for the replies I like being able to look at things from another perspective and that is why I am on this site everyday.

[silverhead]

4 hours ago, MLSoundLab said:

....

 

With a good IR you'll spend under 5min tweaking a preset and it'll sound a lot better than tweaking a preset with a bad cabinet section for hours. That's the simplest way I can put it. :)

 

While that's true I find that I spend the hours anyway, searching for the 'good' IR. The sheer number of IRs with all the different baked-in parameters that are available to tweak in a stock cab is a huge disincentive for me. I have experimented with different IR sets that I have purchased but it took me a long time to go through them all. In fact I never finished the task (and that's exactly what it felt like). 

 

I have a few presets that use some good IRs that I found during that exercise but now I mostly use the stock cabs for new presets.

[AlexKenivel]

I've got a large collection of impulses that I'll pull a few from, tweak and mix into one single file for a good half hour, import into Helix. Then for kicks I'll try to tone match with a separate amp/cab block and nail it within minutes. 

[Kilrahi]

3 hours ago, silverhead said:

 

While that's true I find that I spend the hours anyway, searching for the 'good' IR. The sheer number of IRs with all the different baked-in parameters that are available to tweak in a stock cab is a huge disincentive for me. I have experimented with different IR sets that I have purchased but it took me a long time to go through them all. In fact I never finished the task (and that's exactly what it felt like). 

 

I have a few presets that use some good IRs that I found during that exercise but now I mostly use the stock cabs for new presets.

 

2 hours ago, AlexKenivel said:

I've got a large collection of impulses that I'll pull a few from, tweak and mix into one single file for a good half hour, import into Helix. Then for kicks I'll try to tone match with a separate amp/cab block and nail it within minutes. 

 

This is my experience as well.  I love having options and so the ability to do IRs, which I do use from time to time, is awesome. I'll keep looking for new ones too.

 

BUT I think that getting good with stock cabs is a skill. It's not a crazy hard one either - but you do have to practice with them to figure out what you're doing. For an IR someone else has done the vast majority of the work. For a stock cab you have to learn how to do it.  However, once you DO figure it out it doesn't take endless eons to get something you like, and you keep getting better and better at it over time.

 

It's like any other skill. Take delays. I'm a loser here. The VAST majority of the time I'm just using a simple delay with a dotted eighth repeat. There are people who chain delay after delay up and create some amazing things going on. You have to work up to that point though. So it is with stock cabs (though in my opinion they're far easier to figure out than complex ambient guitar stuff).

[gunpointmetal]

I like the stock cabs, I just wish we could "dual-mic" a single cab without having to use two blocks. I find I like them best when I can mix a bright dynamic mic with a fuller-sounding condenser/ribbon mic. It's the same with IRs actually, but most IR packs have a lot of really good pre-mixed selections so you can do it one block.

[codamedia]

I like the stock cabs, and I like some IR's... 

 

For my live tone(s) I found an IR that reminds me a lot of my old Fender Deluxe I used live for many years. Since I am comfortable with my tone I have little desire to change. Techs like my tone, crowd likes the music, musicians like my tone... why mess with it?

 

For my studio tones (home studio and full studios) I prefer to experiment with the cab blocks more than IR trial and error. The cab blocks get what I am after every time.

[njglover]

This topic comes up a lot. I think my experience mirrors many others. Initially, I was not getting what I wanted with stock cabs, so I got frustrated and downloaded a bunch of IRs. I demoed them for hours until I found a few I really liked and then used those pretty much exclusively. But when the Stomp came out, I wanted to see if I could get sounds I like with the stock cabs (in the interest of making my setup Stomp-friendly). I ended up not getting the Stomp, but I learned a lot about the stock cabs and came to find that they are really just about as good in most settings. With headphones on I can definitely tell the difference between the two, but through an FRFR or in the context of a mix, there's virtually no difference, so I've moved to mostly stock cabs these days (for DSP savings). Just depends what I am feeling.

[litesnsirens]

I’ve spent a decent amount of money on various IRs.   As of now I’ve gone back to the stock cabs.  if you spend a bit time tweaking you’ll figure out some basic concepts that tend to correlate across the various cabs.  But at the end of the day, I find a get a more defined tone than with the IRs after your done dialling out the fizz on both.  I’m definitely loving them and being able to set up dual cabs with one block opens up a lot of flexibility. 

[fftu]

Going into the stomp, I thought I was going to have to go exclusively 3rd party irs based on some of the things I had read.  I’m glad to report that’s was entirely wrong.  The stock cabs are excellent, and the extra tweaks available give you a ridiculous amount of options.  I like running dual cabs, using the same cabs but different mics. Great times.

[craiganderton]

From a practical standpoint, I'm glad I use only stock cabs because then anyone can use my preset packs.

 

From an aesthetic standpoint, my main use for the Helix is multiband processing, so the final sound is a composite of multiple cabs. Between that the editing options for each cab, so far I've been able to get any sound I wanted.

 

This isn't a diss on IRs at all, there are some great custom IRs out there. But for me, there are only so many hours in a day, and the stock cabs do what I want.

 

One final point: Some of the stock cabs have a resonant quality that I don't like, but putting a parametric stage afterward and tuning it out solves the problem.

[Lachdanan0121]

I mainly use IRs for my guitar tones these days, but the stock cabs are still plenty good. Case in point I use only the stock cabs when designing bass guitar presets on the Helix.

[spikey]

On 2/21/2019 at 10:04 PM, spikey said:

I use the stock cabs 99% of the time.

 

Updated: I have since then bought a pair of PowerCab +'s and use their cabs now.

[Heavyville]

I like both and use whatever sounds good to my ear. 

 

IR's imo, are/were tailored toward the sound engineer who is most likely re-amping / DI's / working in the box,. That's where this all started, but there is also a market share for the modelling world obviously.   Although there are a tonne of files as there should be. All these files are different mics and positions some of even added folders of mixed mics and OH as one example provides a quick start folder to get you up and running ( i'm sure other companies do this too).  IF you have a good understanding of the  Guitar/Bass (paper speaker) recording process, you can manage the IR files potentially better.  If not, its going to feel like a giant rabbit hole.    Each and every one of those mics and positions carry good and bad qualities.  This is where EQ comes in handy as mentioned by other members.

I have a great understanding of IR's and the use of them, in fact I generally shy away from the companies that just release 1 IR.  Sure it may be good but your getting a snap shot in time of what someone else thought was a gold standard.  No single IR is the same due to the nature of how its captured. 

Now I use whatever sounds best for the application i'm doing.... live, most of my patches are stock cabs, but in the studio where I do the most with a helix, it's been IR's....and some of the IR's I thought that sounded awful by themselves sounded amazing as a stating point for a track to punch through musically.

 

IR's and even stock cabs----> the more knowledge you are armed with, the better that experience gets.   

 

I personally like what L6 did with the cabs, i'd like to see more cabs added.  That is where i'd like to L6 put some time in on.    New amps are fun and obviously sell units better than IR's/Cabs, but as an example, in the high gain world, in a mix they (amps) all start to sound relatively the same as you pile the white nose on top of each other, Cabs is where you can make the sound vary imo.    

 

I'm not disappointed in what I currently have in the helix.   IT has provided more value back to me in 1 year  since I've had it than I could ever imagine. 

in fact the ROI on one slays the other competitions units and price...imo.