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Chris Buck tube screamer trick in Helix?


GingerLefty
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Hi there. Was watching a video from Chris Buck on Youtube (link below) where he details how he gets the tone for his videos using NI Guitar Rig. If you don't know anything about CB definitely check him out. He's a superb guitarist from Wales, who has played with Slash amongst others, and has appeared on That Pedal Show and Andertons. His strat tone is a bit legendary at this stage.

One of the things he does in his Guitar Rig setup really intrigued me, and got me wondering whether this would work in Helix, or has anyone actually done this and can give a thumbs up or down to the results.

He puts a tube screamer model running at its cleanest setting in between the amp and the cabinet. Anyway, his tone is spectacular, and the tube screamer thing really makes a huge difference. What do you guys think? His patch description starts at 1.54 in the video.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, VirtualGuitars said:

That's what so great about the Helix.  You can insert any effect between the amp and the cab.  The possibles are endless!

Oh I know it CAN be done in Helix. I was more wondering whether anyone had done that and could report back. If nobody has, I'll fire up the beast myself and report back, but alas I'm nowhere near it now, unfortunately.

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44 minutes ago, GingerLefty said:

Oh I know it CAN be done in Helix. I was more wondering whether anyone had done that and could report back. If nobody has, I'll fire up the beast myself and report back, but alas I'm nowhere near it now, unfortunately.

 

Helix Native can always be with you.  :)

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Running a Tube Screamer at a clean setting before the amp is actually a fairly common technique many guitar players use. It's then used to drive the amp harder by adjusting the output. Putting it between the amp and cab is an interesting take on that. I'll have to check it out.

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You can do pretty much anything in a computer simulation or Helix etc.  Just as long as nobody is daft enough to think they can do this with a real amp, Tubescreamer, and cab.  Putting the output from a power amp into a pedal would be disastrous!

 

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5 minutes ago, gbr13697 said:

You can do pretty much anything in a computer simulation or Helix etc.  Just as long as nobody is daft enough to think they can do this with a real amp, Tubescreamer, and cab.  Putting the output from a power amp into a pedal would be disastrous!

 

Obviously!!!!

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7 hours ago, Kilrahi said:

I messed around with this setup last night as I watched the video. I thought it had some cool sound. Great to get new ideas. 

Here’s my 2 cents. Tried this technique tonight with the tube screamer with my strat and wasn’t mad about the results. But when I stuck the kinky boost in the same position, with no drive, boost on and bright off, holy moly what a tone. 

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27 minutes ago, GingerLefty said:

Here’s my 2 cents. Tried this technique tonight with the tube screamer with my strat and wasn’t mad about the results. But when I stuck the kinky boost in the same position, with no drive, boost on and bright off, holy moly what a tone. 

 

Yeah, I didn't get the same results he did immediately either, though part of the challenge is that we simply aren't using the exact same setup he did (I'm not familiar with his software program, but it at least felt more basic - either way I was only guessing at how the HX parameters matched his setup). 

 

Initially I tried to dial in all of the dials exactly the same and it wasn't impressive at all. However, when I started adjusting the pedal settings, as well as the other amp/mic settings, different auto filter settings - eventually it started to sound really good.

 

Perhaps tonight I'll try other distortions. That's a good idea. 

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  • 3 months later...

Whether this works or not depends a lot on the amp and cab/IR model you're using. For example, it will almost always work well with a Fender style amp, but not as well with Marshall. The reason is that Scream808, Minotaur and similar TubeScreamer inspired pedals have quite a bit of bass cut and mid boost. This works well with Fender Starts and amps because they both have quit a bit of mid scoop. Mid scoop sounds good by itself, but can get muddy and piercing as your get loud enough to cut through the mix. A mid boost on the other hand is warmer and more vocal sounding. A TubeScreamer in front of a Super Reverb adds some of that warm mid boost back.

 

Kinky Boost doesn't have that same amount of mid hump, so it could sound better depending on the amount of mid boost in the amp model. For example, Derailed Ingrid is a pretty mid focused amp. Kinky Boost works well in front of it, but Minotaur doesn't, there's a bit too much mid boost and not enough low end anymore.

 

Another thing Chris Buck does is use a lot of overdrive pedals, none of which is clipping that much. Different ones have slightly more or less clipping, and might have the tone set to voice the distortion different. Then he stacks these to increase the saturation. This way no particular pedal is clipping that hard, keeping the buzzy high-end odd order harmonics down, while providing a lot of flexibility with different combinations of stacking. 

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