EQ tips and tricks for amps and IRs?

[steele666]

Good Afternoon

 

Just recently switched to the Helix from the Headrush (both great units). I'm totally in love with the sounds im coaxing out of the Helix. I'm terrible with EQs and was wondering if there were some common settings for the various EQs and what those may be. I also have a ton of IRs from both Celestion and Ownhammer. The Celestion IRs are pretty good on there own, but the Ownhammers seem to need some further tweaking. What are your general IR settings? I always cut highs to around 7 and cut lows around 80 but im not sure what else I could do.

 

Thanks!

[DunedinDragon]

That really depends on a wide range of things from type of music, type of guitar, guitar techniques being used, what mic combinations and placements you're using in your IRs as well as what your output setup is so there's no simple answer.

For example I'm normally playing through a Yamaha DXR12 and sometimes through a QSC CP8 and I use a range of guitars depending on the song and style I'm playing and what technique I'm using.  For example the EQ for a Gretsch hollow body that's being finger picked Chet Atkins or James Taylor style is going to be quite different than a Les Paul doing some Brian May tones on a Queen song.  Normally I use a combination of dynamic and ribbon mics on my IRs and mostly those are MD421 and R121 mics with various placements.  My high cuts can range from around 8 khz up to 10 khz and my low cuts can come up as high as 150 hz but generally are around 80 to 120.  With Tele and Strats I often cut a slice out in the 4.2 khz range to kill a bit of harshness/twangyness if it's more of a rock tune or jazz style, but not so much if it's a country tune.

That's why there's no simple answer and you have to depend more on those things hanging off the side of your head to determine what will work best for you.  What I would strongly suggest is to get as close to the tone you want using the IR mic combinations and placements before you start tweaking EQ as that will sound much more natural and studio quality than a bunch of EQ adjustments.

[steele666]

Awesome, those are still some good tips. I usually try to find an IR that works well for Rock/Hard Rock/ Early thrash stuff. So I find myself always going for the Sm57 mixes, and really havent experimented with much beyond that. What would be some better Mic choices to test out? The problems is the Helix only has 128 spots so I cant just load them all and test them individually. I could do that with the Headrush however.... hmmmm.... May have to link the 2 and audition IRs thats way

[themetallikid]

I find it best, for myself, when testing a bunch of IR's to setup the Looper at the beginning of a preset your mostly happy with.  Even one that you have dialed in well with a great IR.  Something you are familiar with the sound of.  

 

Using the looper to replay a constant set of riffs or such, then I'll use the IR block to scroll through IR slots making note of the slots that stand out to me as ones I like and noting what I like about them (tighter low end, punch mid range, smooth top end....whatever) and after going through however many I'm auditioning, I'll categorize them by the 'sound' they portray.  

 

To help with that, I really only use a handful of IR's at a time, so I've allotted slots 1-10 for my live use.  Slots 11-64 as my keepers to inventory when auditioning new amps (usually divided into categories by their general sound) or looking for new tones...and everything 65-128 as slots to use for auditioning new IR's.  

[DunedinDragon]

1 hour ago, steele666 said:

Awesome, those are still some good tips. I usually try to find an IR that works well for Rock/Hard Rock/ Early thrash stuff. So I find myself always going for the Sm57 mixes, and really havent experimented with much beyond that. What would be some better Mic choices to test out? The problems is the Helix only has 128 spots so I cant just load them all and test them individually. I could do that with the Headrush however.... hmmmm.... May have to link the 2 and audition IRs thats way

 

As far as mic choices, the predominant setup for many, many years in most studios has been a combination of a dynamic mic and a ribbon mic which gives great coverage over a broad frequency range.  I use both Celestion and Ownhammer and on both there are pre-made configurations that are most likely to give you what will most likely work.  The Celestions are a bit more limited but in the main directory they'll have sever common setups such as 421+121 and even ones with room mics.  The Ownhammer collections also have some pre-made combinations in the core mixes quick start.  Most of the time I use their OH1F-5 or OH2F-5 but there's a good range of options in those mixes.  Just read through the documentation to understand what they are.

You'll drive yourself crazy trying to audition ever variation which really isn't necessary.  I normally pick out about 10 likely candidates and load them at the end of list and audition them to select the most likely one or two then discard the rest and load the ones I think I'll tend to use and place them in the first part of the list with my other active ones.  I have over 200 presets, but I only need about 40 or 50 IR variations, and I could probably get by with maybe 25 or 30.

[CraigGT]

Call me crazy but as much as I love my Helix, this was the kind of thing that made me buy a little Boogie so I could just plug in an play when the mood took me!

 

Craig

 

[xmacvicar]

8 hours ago, DunedinDragon said:

With Tele and Strats I often cut a slice out in the 4.2 khz range to kill a bit of harshness/twangyness if it's more of a rock tune or jazz style, but not so much if it's a country tune.

 

How are you doing this in Helix? A separate eq block like the cali eq ?

[DunedinDragon]

2 hours ago, xmacvicar said:

 

How are you doing this in Helix? A separate eq block like the cali eq ?

A final Parametric EQ block for hi cuts, low cuts and precision adjustments anywhere in the normal frequency range. 

 

[willjrock]

6 hours ago, CraigGT said:

Call me crazy but as much as I love my Helix, this was the kind of thing that made me buy a little Boogie so I could just plug in an play when the mood took me!

 

Craig

 

Why can you not do that with Helix?

[CraigGT]

2 hours ago, willjrock said:

Why can you not do that with Helix?

Well you can but you can also spend too much time fiddling with tiny details instead of playing.

Either way it gave me an excuse to get an amp for the lounge :-)

 

Craig

[DunedinDragon]

3 hours ago, CraigGT said:

Well you can but you can also spend too much time fiddling with tiny details instead of playing.

Either way it gave me an excuse to get an amp for the lounge :-)

 

Craig

By "fiddling" you mean selecting a preset and then playing???