Impulse Responses captured from Helix

[Hillman1312]

Hello forum,

 

I recently watched a video on youtube from Steve Sterlacci where he explained more on the POD Go and what he missed in that device. One of the things he mentioned was that the POD Go apparently is not capable of processing dual cabs. The obvious alternative to me seemed to use multi-mike or or multi-cab or even multi-mic-multi-cab impulse responses, as most of us (I assume) have the Helix, POD or any other device for the reason of not having to own multiple amps and cabs. There are many free IRs available from around the internet some of which are pretty good. The downside I see is in trying to find the good ones which often involves a lot of trial and error. This made me thinking for those of us who have both a Helix (Full, LT, stomp or native) and the POD wouldn't it be great if we could make an impulse of the cab section in our Helix, bake an IR from that and then import the same into the POD...... So I did some research and it appears that making IRs is actually quite simple. So, I set up (pretty quickly) a cab section with added EQ and made my own impulse response. Next, I imported the IR in my Helix and A/B-ed it to see if it worked... and luckily it did. At least over headphones and except from a few dB difference in volume I did not notice any tonal difference.

 

So I'm attaching this IR for you to test and use as you see fit. I'm very curious to understand what you think of the tones you can get. The cab section is a mix of the Greenback 25 and the 1960 T75 models. I added some shelve EQ (the Jason Sadites "betteriser" as he sometimes calls it) , an EQ high cut at 12 KhZ and and EQ low cut at 100 Hz. Reason for doing that is that this should make the IR pretty usable in a live situation without needing a further EQ block. The IR works pretty nice with the Marshall amps in the Helix.

 

Let me know what you think (either positive or negative, as long as it is constructive of course ;-))

HXIR 412 Dual test.wav

[TheStratman67]

Im using it and I think its spot on. Good job and thanks!!

[voxman55]

+1 - I really like that.  I have a nice 'Park' amp patch and I thought I'd try it with that.   It's a very nice blend of the cabs adding some T75 top end and clarity to the Greenbacks whilst retaining the Greenbacks warmer characteristics.   The cab mix has a nice airier quality so although the patch has Plate reverb set at 35% mix I had to reduce that a tad to 30% to compensate.  What mic and distances were you using? 

 

Please do share any more you put together.   

 

 

[Hillman1312]

Thanks, glad you like it.

I need to admit that I saved another patch over the one I used to create the IR. From the top of my head I believe the Greenback had a SM57 at 1" with about 10% of early reflections and the T75 was mic'd with a Royer 121 ribbon mic pulled back 3.5" and about 35% early reflections. Both cabs had different low cuts and high cuts and I used 2 additional EQ's to get the tone where I wanted it to be (using the amp settings i selected at that time). I believe the mix was 50/50 (note that the T75 was a bit lower in volume because the mic was further away from the speaker). 

 

I'm not sure if this IR includes it, but I also made one (just for fun) with an additional GB 25 mic'd up with a room mic pulled back to the maximum (low in the mix). This also gave nice results but it lacked a bit " bite" if that makes sense.

 

Anyway, options are endless and with HX Native one could combine as much cabinets/mics/eq's etc as one would like.

 

Let me know what you'd like and I can give it a try .... no guarantees, this is all just for fun. The IR also depends on the amp that it is to be combined with of course obviously ...

[AlexKenivel]

Sharing Helix's internal IRs seems like it could be illegal.

 

That aside, you can shoot an IR of any linear effects chain including cabs and EQ blocks. 

[datacommando]

13 hours ago, AlexKenivel said:

Sharing Helix's internal IRs seems like it could be illegal.

Does this mean that you would consider this IR capture is in the same realm as “sampling”, like the drum beat from “When The Levee Breaks” and a possible copyright infringement?

 

That would make for some very interesting court cases, I think.

I can almost hear the lawyers “Oh, yes, there’s lots of money to be made now!”

 

;-)

[Hillman1312]

Interesting thought. I'm not copying and redistributing any software but I'm capturing a "model of a model". However the model (the IR) is not a 1:1 copy of the original model (hehe, gets confusing right ...) but rather a model of something that I created using my own creativity, i.e. I modelled my own model. I don't think the IP rights of Line 6 stretch that far. 

 

Now the interesting question arises if it would be possible to (by way of example) shoot an IR of an Ownhammer IR and a Redwirez IR mixed together and with some EQ applied.

 

Anyway, back to music making and getting creative with the tools. I'm in IP for a living while making music for a hobby ... I prefer to keep it like that.

 

[Hillman1312]

Here's another one that sounds pretty good to my old ears, now also including a preset for demonstrating the possible sound you can get. 

 

The IR was made from 2 parallel dual-cab blocks and an EQ (so, effectively this means 4 cabs in parallel).

 

Cab 1: 4x12 Greenback 25/ 30 Dynamic/ 1"/ 11% reflections

Cab 2: 4x12 Cali V30/ 160 Ribbon/ 3"/ 50% reflections

Cab 3: 4x12 1960 T75/ 57 Dynamic/ 2"/ 34% reflections

Cab 4: 4x12 Mandarin/ 87 Condensor/ 7"/ 71 % reflections

 

After joining the paths the combined signal was sent through a Cali EQ:

 

80Hz + 1.5

240 Hz +1

2200 Hz -0.6

6600 Hz -1 dB

 

All other settings for the cabs and EQ were stock.

 

The preset is based on the Plexi Brt model with some modulation pedals if needed. The chorus after the cab works pretty well to get somewhat close to sound of the STP song Plush (not saying it is the same, just brings you close ... feel free to disagree). 

 

Tones were dialed in with my Epi LP so if you are using a single coil guitar or a superstat with bright pickups you may need some tweaking either on the amp or on the EQ block. I left the high cut on the IR block at 7KHz. You may want to lower or higher this depending on your application. For live sounds probably you want to cut a little more.

 

I'll post the tone on Customtone as well.

 

Have a nice weekend and let me know what you think.

 

 

 

HXIR_412_4Cabs.wav HM_Plexi.hlx

[Hillman1312]

And here's one more. This time I include also the full Helix preset where you can see the actual cab models. I called it Whorse V30 as the majority of the cabinet models are based on V30 speakers. The preset contains 8 snapshots. Also uploaded to Customtone.

 

The IR was captured by simply switching off all the blocks except for the cabs and the EQs. 

Hope you like it....

HM_WhorseV30.hlx HM_WhorseV30c.hlx HXIR_412_V30_3Cabs.wav