HX Stomp - where do EQ and COMP go and other recommendations?

[estikei]

Hi guys, 

 

just bought the HX Stomp and couldn‘t be happier. 

I let go of almost all of my pedals and now i literally only own a couple guitars, a Fender 57 Custom Deluxe, the HX Stomp and a few pedals like looper etc... 

Mostly, i use the HX Stomp to go into my Studio Headphones or into a Laney LFR112 FRFR Speaker. 

 

I‘ve been spending time on finding out how to get great tones out of it and it seems there are some general recommendations like adding low and high cut, filtering out fizzy frequencies, etc.. 

I do that and it helps, but i don‘t know where to put the blocks. Most guys like Jason Sadites explain by using Helix, which has two signal paths. On the screen it looks like mostly the put AMP+CAB in the upper path and then all the effects in the lower one, which seems to be AFTER Amp and CAB. 

This is completely beyond my understanding. How can you add effects AFTER the cab? 

I get that in a mixing environment this is also what happens, but in a traditional guitar & amp setup? My 57 deluxe doesn‘t even have an effects loop ;) 

 

So, please help me understand: why are these guys doing it like that and what are the differences in putting EQ & COMP in different places of the signal chain? 

 

Also: Amps like the Twin Reverb sound magical out of the box. Others Ike the JTM45 i find myself struggling with. Can‘t get it to sound right. It always sounds like a recording of an amp that I’m hearing out of a box, rather than a great replication of the actual AMP & CAB behavior I’m hearing out of my FRFR Box. 

What are the best practices in getting great tone out of Helix in general? 

 

Sorry for the rather basic questions, but this stuff is both really overwhelming and great at the same time. 

 

Thanks

Stefan from Germany 

 

[amsdenj]

Stefan, great questions. Starting from the end and working back - HX Stomp (and Helix) amp+cab models sound like a recording of an amp because that's exactly what's happening. The cab (and IR blocks) are based on impulse responses of guitar speakers in a cabinet mic'd with a microphone, just like you would in a recording studio or live. These won't sound like an amp in the room because they're not. They're more like an amp in a room with a mic played back in another room - you get the room sound twice.

 

You might be able to get a sound more to your liking by moving the mic a little closer to the speaker, and adding a bit more low cut to compensate for the proximate effect (enhanced bass from a mic close to its source). Also try adjusting the early reflections to see if that helps get the tone you're looking for. Early reflections add more room sound. Ultimately the solution is to use speaker models in Powercab as that is an amp in the room.

 

Regarding the position of EQ and compression - these can, and often do go both before and after the amp+cab blocks. Compression before the amp provides more sustain into the distortion and can effect the pick attack/transients. Compression after the amp block, and usually following all effects at the end of the chain can help glue together the guitar and ambient effects. EQ before the amp might be used to establish the tone of the guitar into the amp. EQ after the amp might be used to adjust the voicing of the amp distortion. Its not unusual to cut bass before distortion to reduce mud, and cut treble after distortion to reduce ice pick and fizz. This is how the Teemah! block works.

 

Addressing your first question: in the old days, all the effects had to go into the front of the amp, or between the preamp and power amp in the case of Fender reverb and tremolo. So all effects were essentially pre-distortion if the amp was driven hard enough to cause power amp distortion. This has the effect of "ducking" things like reverb and delays - when the guitar is being played hard, and it's driving the power amp into clipping, so there's no gain left for the reverb and delay. So you don't hear them much while you're playing hard. But as soon as you stop playing, all that backed up gain is now available to amplify the reverb and delay tails and they jump out, often in a pretty extreme way. In some cases, that's just what you want, and you can certainly reproduce that in Helix by putting reverb and delay before the amp model.

 

But that was essentially a compromise that a lot of players wanted to avoid. So reverb and delay was often added in the studio after the guitar amp in order to provide better control and avoid the ducking. So you can do that with Helix too. I generally put anything that adds ambience or modulates frequency (not tone) after distortion in my signal chain. I think these effects sound better adding ambience to the distorted signal rather than distorting the ambience. Its more natural too, more like a guitar amp in a stadium would behave. This also seems to help keep the tone from becoming too complex, indistinct, or muddy so it doesn't cut through the mix well. 

[estikei]

Thanks for that tremendously detailed answer! 

 

Going through the paragraphs

 

- I get that the way helix is built is that it emulates a cab that has been mic‘d up. I just feel that some Amp + Cab configurations sound more realistic than others. As i said, the twin reverb and also the 57 Deluxe seem to be extremely good. I even switch I/O between the Deluxe in Helix and my real 57 Deluxe. It is just tremendously close! With others, i don‘t know how to describe, but they feel fake. 

However, if i get your suggestion right: If playing with Headphones i would need to add a little room reverb to make up for the fact that i don‘t have any room in my headphones. If i plug the helix into my Laney LFR 112 Cab i can leave the reverb off as I‘m in a real room. Then move the mic closer to the virtual cab so emulate that „real“ sound and compensate the low frequencies a little. 

 

I might also try switching on the 1x12 and 4x12 cab simulations in the Laney and switch off the CAB simulation in Helix altogether. 

 

Interesting points about reducing mud going into the amp. As mentioned i currently only use EQ to filter out „hissing“ frequencies. Also I lower bass a little bit when playing at lower volumes.

 

Reverb, delay, etc.. after the Cab - got your points. Pretty clear and also very interesting from a technical point of view! 

 

Any thoughts on IR packages that are worth buying? 

[lou-kash]

21 hours ago, amsdenj said:

These won't sound like an amp in the room because they're not. They're more like an amp in a room with a mic played back in another room - you get the room sound twice.

You might be able to get a sound more to your liking by moving the mic a little closer to the speaker, and adding a bit more low cut to compensate for the proximate effect (enhanced bass from a mic close to its source).

 

Also an important factor to consider:

The mic model on the Cab block.

 

From my lengthy experiments thus far, I'm usually starting with 87 Cond, because if the modeling is to be trusted, then that's the kind of mic with the flattest response, meaning "what you hear is what was there". When I'm somewhat satisfied with my sound using 87 Cond – along with Distance, Low Cut and High Cut parameters – then I'd eventually check out other specific mic models to alter the sound even more. For what it's worth, for guitar I'm usually using quite aggressive Low/High Cut, often like 150 Hz / 5 kHz, sometimes also assigning these parameters to snapshots depending on Drive/Master parameters of the respective amp.

 

1 hour ago, estikei said:

Any thoughts on IR packages that are worth buying? 

 

I haven't bought any yet, I don't see any reason whatsoever why I should. The Cab block choices do anything I need, be it for bass or for guitar. And if not, there's enough EQ models to the rescue.

 

However, I have downloaded a free collection of acoustic guitar IRs from somewhere, don't remember where. Those alone don't sound very good with my Les Paul (with a 6-way switch modified for parallel scheme), but with the addition of the Acoustic Sim block, they turned out to be useful after all, helping to shape the "acoustic" sound even more.