Setup for British/Indie/Britpop sound

[loydall]

Hi - recently bought an HX Stomp and yesterday bought the Ownhammer IR core tone bundle which, from what I've played around with so far, is excellent.

 

That said - there are loads of possible settings on the Stomp and then hundreds of IR files from the Core Tone Bundle so I could do with some pointers as to patch set-up for the sounds I'm looking for.

 

So - Stone Roses first allbum, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand to name a few. Many of the Helix samples I've seen on youtube focus on heavy distorted/thrash guitar but I'm looking for the less heavy sound - more indie style.

 

Any reccomendations on amp/IR choices to achieve this? I'm playing into a FRFR active speaker.

 

One sound I'm really trying to nail is the guitar on She Bangs the Drums from the Stone Roses first album.

 

Cheers.

[antonio1961]

John Squier used a Fender twin reverb in the early days ,his effects included an Ibanez Tube Screamer and a Boss CS-1 Chorus ,so You’d be looking at the Helix versions which are the US Double Nrm amp model, along with the scream 808 and 70’s chorus ,probably throw in some reverb for good measure, this combination should get you near to the tone on She Bangs the Drums.

[DunedinDragon]

I'll give you my take on how I'd approach building that particular sound for 'She Bangs the Drums' in hopes it gives you some general ideas for how to approach these kind of things.

First, that's a fairly clean and compressed guitar sound with some rather heavy reverb and phaser/chorus effects to my ear.  There are a number of amps that would likely work with for this sound such as the HiWatt, Twin, Interstate Zed, Soldano Clean. Archetype or Placater Clean, but the one that jumps out at me would be the Matchstick Channel 1 with a fairly low gain setting around  2.5 to 3.0 to give it a small amount of bight.  I think that amp combined with an Alnico Blue speaker from the Ownhammer VC30 set of IRs in your Core Tone Bundle would give you the traditional BritPop sound or close to it.  Most likely you'd want to start with the IRs in the QuickStart set.  This is one area you'll have to play by ear.  I'm a particular fan of ribbon and dynamic mic mixes so I'd start with the OH2F-07 or OH2-07 in that group.  If that's too dark for what you want you can always go over to the Mixes directory and try out the same OH2F or OH2 with the mic's closer to the cap (03 - 05) and see what suits you best.

Once you get the base guitar sound right, then I'd start adding the effects.  I'd first focus on the compressor probably at the beginning of the signal chain using the Deluxe Comp.  To my ear it sounds like it's moderately compressed, but present enough to be noticed.  After that I'd play with some different reverbs (heavy on the mix parameter) and phaser/chorus...both after the amp and IR.  Since you're working with the stomp if you have to sacrifice a block due to the Stomp's limitations you could probably lose the compressor if necessary.

At least that might give you some ideas of where to start.

[loydall]

19 minutes ago, DunedinDragon said:

I'll give you my take on how I'd approach building that particular sound for 'She Bangs the Drums' in hopes it gives you some general ideas for how to approach these kind of things.

First, that's a fairly clean and compressed guitar sound with some rather heavy reverb and phaser/chorus effects to my ear.  There are a number of amps that would likely work with for this sound such as the HiWatt, Twin, Interstate Zed, Soldano Clean. Archetype or Placater Clean, but the one that jumps out at me would be the Matchstick Channel 1 with a fairly low gain setting around  2.5 to 3.0 to give it a small amount of bight.  I think that amp combined with an Alnico Blue speaker from the Ownhammer VC30 set of IRs in your Core Tone Bundle would give you the traditional BritPop sound or close to it.  Most likely you'd want to start with the IRs in the QuickStart set.  This is one area you'll have to play by ear.  I'm a particular fan of ribbon and dynamic mic mixes so I'd start with the OH2F-07 or OH2-07 in that group.  If that's too dark for what you want you can always go over to the Mixes directory and try out the same OH2F or OH2 with the mic's closer to the cap (03 - 05) and see what suits you best.

Once you get the base guitar sound right, then I'd start adding the effects.  I'd first focus on the compressor probably at the beginning of the signal chain using the Deluxe Comp.  To my ear it sounds like it's moderately compressed, but present enough to be noticed.  After that I'd play with some different reverbs (heavy on the mix parameter) and phaser/chorus...both after the amp and IR.  Since you're working with the stomp if you have to sacrifice a block due to the Stomp's limitations you could probably lose the compressor if necessary.

At least that might give you some ideas of where to start.

Wow - thanks for that. That's excellent advice. I'll give this a go when I get home tonight. That's also interesting putting the chorus and reverb after IR as, instinctively (maybe wrongly), I've been putting them between amp and cab/IR.

 

Really appreciate the detailed feedback/advice.

 

Thanks

[DunedinDragon]

44 minutes ago, loydall said:

Wow - thanks for that. That's excellent advice. I'll give this a go when I get home tonight. That's also interesting putting the chorus and reverb after IR as, instinctively (maybe wrongly), I've been putting them between amp and cab/IR.

 

Really appreciate the detailed feedback/advice.

 

Thanks

 

Actually I'd probably try out the chorus/phaser in all sorts of places and see what fits best.  That's one of the hallmark of those type of effects.  They can go pretty much anywhere and each position will have a little bit different effect.

 

[loydall]

@DunedinDragon - followed your advice and set up a patch using blocks as per your instructions and yup - sounds fantastic. I pushed the gain slightly more than 3 which gave it a little more "life" but might dial that back down when playing with my frfr at volume.

 

One other question - I'm using the Headrush FRFR - I know there are better quality FRFR options out there but it's within budget and I'm impressed with it so far. The only thing I haven't yet done is crank up the volume on it to really get an idea of how my patches sound. Are there any considerations when listening to patches at low volume that you should take into account for louder volume? As in, something like, "the high ends sound nice at low volume but they will need to be cut/increased at higher volume" that sort thing - so, building patches with higher volume in mind.

 

Thanks again.

[DunedinDragon]

The key thing to remember with dialing in a preset at low volume is that mids will sound more prominent and lows and highs will be less emphasized.  As the volume goes up, the lows and highs become more prominent which can make the mids seem less prominent and things may sound more boomy and harsh.  It has less to do with the speaker than it does the simple characteristics of human hearing and is referred to as the "Fletcher Munson effect".  Where the speaker comes into play is based on how the speaker is placed.  When a speaker is positioned as a floor monitor bass frequencies tend to accumulate due to it's interaction with the floor.  This is known as "bass coupling".  This is the reason some speakers have a DSP contouring setting that allows the speaker to compensate for such things.  Unfortunately the Headrush doesn't have this type of setting.  It has two contour settings.  One setting accentuates lows and highs, while the other one sets the speaker flat.  This is one of the reasons why many Headrush users place the speaker on a stand behind them like a normal backline setup to avoid the bass coupling.  The value in the Headrush contour setting is that you can ideally use the setting that accentuates the lows and highs at low volume to give you a better representation of what it will sound like at a higher volume with the contour button dis-engaged.

 

Bottom line, this is one of the reasons you'll hear advice about building your presets at performance level volumes so you're not surprised when you turn up the volume.  I don't personally own a Headrush so I can't speak to how accurate the contour button is in helping to compensate for the Fletcher Munson effect.  I personally build my presets at performance volume levels for a couple of reasons.  One being the Fletcher Munson effect, but the other being that I need to equalize or normalize the different volume levels between all my patches so that they're consistent.  One other thing that most of us do is to set our FRFR speakers volume knob at unity  (12 o'clock position) so that we can control our volume levels from the Helix master volume knob rather than having to reach behind the speaker to change it's volume.  Because Fletcher Munson is an artifact of human hearing, it makes no difference whether the volume is controlled on the speaker or on the Helix, it's just more convenient that way.

[loydall]

Fantastic - thanks. Thought this might be the case. Think I might hire a rehearsal room for an hour or so myself and get these patches right... that or seriously annoy my neighbours.