My tone was so good on Saturday...

[zappazapper]

I played my first gig in a year and a half on Saturday. It was an unpaid gig to help out my favorite local BBQ joint scare up some much needed customers. Me and my girlfriend play 90s rock tunes with a couple friends of ours just for fun (we're all in other bands) and we never planned to do gigs with this band but it was a good opportunity to help out a business that is really hurting because of the pandemic restrictions. We played well, lots of people showed up, everybody had fun and the bar made a ton of money, but most importantly...

 

MY GUITAR TONE WAS INCREDIBLE!!

 

90s rock is a lot of fun to play because you get to have vicious heavy metal tone but you don't have to play heavy metal, which is convenient since I'm not that good. 

 

Here's my rig: 

Helix LT

Mesa Boogie .50 Caliber Plus

Avatar 4x12 cabinet with Vintage 30s

 

So a little about the Boogie. It's kind of one of those great amps that nobody really knows about. It's basically a poor man's Mark III. Same basic controls except none of the push/pull pots on the tone controls, no separate gain control for the lead channel, and just a straight 50-watt 6L6 power amp instead of the Simul-Class thing. Mark IIIs are going for $2k+ on Reverb while you can still get a .50 Cal+ for under a grand, which is a better value IMHO. There aren't many better amps for heavy distorted tones, and while its sister amp the Studio .22 might be more suited to blues and country players with its pair of EL84s, its preamp is versatile enough to get me close. 

 

About the preamp. About Mark-series preamps in general. Everybody who's ever played a Mark-series amp for the first time has the same problem - "I can't make it sound good". The tone controls don't do the same thing as most amps. They aren't for equalization. That's what the 5-band equalizer is for. The tone stack on a Mark-series is like having 3 frequency-dependant gain controls, since they are pre-gain. Depending on how you set them, you can get anything to super tight metal tones to crunchy rock tones to thick blues tones to fat fuzz-box tones. Then you can use the 5-band to add bass content or scoop the mids or make it sizzle with high-end or whatever you want. It's an incredibly versatile design and I recommend that everybody here delve into the Mark IV model on their Helixes just to get a feel for this very unique preamp design because the model is very close to how my amp works.

 

I use it in 4-cable method with my Helix LT. 4CM has until recently been a source of frustration for me. It's my own fault, due to my own lack of understanding of the electronic relationship between all the elements in my rig. When I first tried 4CM, I was using an X3L. At first I was blown away by the ability to put certain effects before the .50 Cal preamp and some after, but after a while I started to notice that it didn't sound the same. It had a "screaminess" to it that wasn't there when I just plugged straight in. I tried to research what was going on and found out about impedance. Impedance WAS the issue but my understanding of it was off. The FX SEND of the X3L was line-level, and my amp expected an instrument-level signal, so that must be it. So I got a reamp box and put it in between my X3L and my amp's input. In one way it solved the problem, in that the screaminess was gone, but it wasn't until I got the Helix that I realized that I was thinking of the issue incorrectly. Like many of you, I read the manual thoroughly before buying the Helix, and was excited to see that there was an option to have the FX Loop operate in either line- or instrument-level. It seemed to me that L6 had acknowledged an issue and addressed it. Well, they had, just not the problem I was having. It didn't matter what setting I used, my amp still sounded "screamy" to me, so I went back to using the reamp box. But I kept thinking that I must have something wrong, so I started asking questions on this forum about impedance and thankfully some users who are much more knowledgeable than me chimed in. In short, the issue wasn't with the impedance between the multi-fx and my amp, but between my guitar and my multi-fx. Guitar pickups are inductive, and as such are affected by the impedance of the device they're plugged into. In the interest of compatibility, the X3L was designed with a 1M input impedance, whereas my amp's input impedance is somewhere around 400k. I'm still not sure how the reamp box was affecting the interaction between the multi-fx and my amp, whether it was risking damage or not, but the point is that whatever it was doing to dull out the screaminess of my guitar signal, it was also doing that to any effects I was putting before the loop. On the X3L, it might have been the only solution, but the Helix has variable input impedance, and setting it to 230k (next step down from 1M) immediately solved the problem. My tone doesn't sound screamy when I'm using just the Loop block, and when I put effects before the loop I'm not having to crank the tone control to compensate for the reamp box dulling it out. Plus it's one less piece of gear to carry and one less cable I need.

 

Now, because of the pandemic, this 90s rock band hadn't jammed in almost 10 months. When we were jamming regularly, I was trying to build presets that mimicked the actual rigs of the artists we were playing, so most of the time I was using models. Really, the only time I used the .50 Cal preamp was for the Nirvana stuff: Kurt's live rig, and the main amp for Nevermind, was a Boogie Studio Preamp into a PA power amp. The Studio Preamp, like my amp, is a simplified version of the Mark III concept. So the .50 Cal preamp was set to what I could find were Kurt's settings on his amp, with a Deez One Vintage in front of it. And all my other presets used amp models. It was a lot of fun researching the gear these guys used and trying to mimick their rigs and tones, but I knew that trying to navigate 20+ presets after 10 months with no rehearsal would complicate things and potentially cause a catastrophe, so I decided to simplify. 

 

I did the whole show with 4 presets, all using the .50 Cal preamp. I should mention that the secret weapon in all this is an AMT FS2-MIDI. It's a 2-button footswitch that both sends and receives MIDI CC messages. See, the EXT AMP feature of the Helix doesn't work with my amp. It only half defeats the 5-band. Anyway, it allows me to control the amp with my Helix, gives me 2 additional dedicated buttons to control my amp without taking up Helix footswitches, and also allows me to also engage certain blocks when I switch to the lead channel on my amp, which really helps with not having a separate gain control for the lead channel on the .50 Cal. I set the gain control at 3 to get a nice clean tone, but setting the gain at 3 doesn't give me nearly the amount of gain I needed for the distorted tones, so I used Distortion blocks and set them to be engaged when I engaged the lead channel on the .50 Cal. By using different pedal types I was able to approximate the tones of the songs we were playing without having to use the exact rigs.

 

I had one preset for the Nirvana stuff. Deez One Vintage and Cali Q for the basic tone (yes, it's a model of the same 5-band equalizer I have on my amp, but Kurt set his EQ in a particular way that isn't particularly compatible with anybody else's sound, not to mention I didn't have to worry about the sliders on my amp getting knocked out of place during transport). The Snapshot feature really helped. I was trying to emulate the sound of the albums, not necessarily their live sound, and I was surprised at the number of combinations of clean, distortion, chorus, and reverb there were and how quick the transitions were. Without Snapshots I would never have been able to turn off the distortion and engage the chorus and reverb between the intro and verse of Smells Like Teen Spirit, and if you watch them live, Kurt never could either. He needed a Helix!! Oh, and also I had a Poly Capo set to -2 for Come As You Are, Lithium, and Drain You, as those songs were all tuned to D Standard on the album and made them easier to sing. 

 

My second preset was for Smashing Pumpkins stuff. Bighorn Fuzz. Actually I had two distortions running in parallel using a Split A/B on a switch so I could go to something that approximated Billy's straight JCM800 tone, like in the chorus of Cherub Rock. For the solo I used a Simple Pitch to emulate an octave pedal and used an Octavia and a flanger. Then for the solo for Zero I used a Whammy with a +6 pitch shift at 50% mix. We discussed using Poly Capo again to tune to Eb (bassist has a Helix Stomp) but decided that would complicate things unnecessarily. 

 

The third preset was for Guns and Roses stuff. I felt like the guitar tone was distinctive enough to warrant its own preset. I think I just used a Tube Screamer to get the gain I needed, and a Cali Q to get that mid honk. Poly Capo set at -12 and 25% mix for the intro to You Could Be Mine. 

 

The fourth preset was my "everything else" preset. Parallel distortions on a Split A/B on a switch depending on whether I needed thick fuzzy tone or tight palm muting. A wah (Man In The Box) and a whammy (Killing In The Name Of) also in parallel on a Split A/B on a switch so I could select which one to engage with the expression pedal toe switch. A switch to disengage the Cali Q for that middy honk of Big Bang Baby.

 

The other thing that really helped the show go smoothly was that I could set the clean/dirty balance using the volume controls on the amp during the show rather than try and guess while building the patches in my living room. As long as my distortion tones were somewhat consistent between presets, and same for the clean tones, I could quickly adjust the balance between them during the show in a way that would apply to all presets.

 

Apart from all the convenience and simplicity of using only 4 presets and just using one preamp for the whole show, one thing I will say is that it had a definite benefit on tone in general. I'm not one of these guys that thinks digital modeling is inferior to real circuits: I use my Boogie because it's the amp I have and when I wanted to simplify my rig, I decided to go with the Boogie preamp because it's the one I know the best and I just had to reach over and grab a knob if there were problems. It would have sounded just as good had I used an amp model. But it was limiting myself to the settings on the Boogie and using distortion pedals to color the tone that was an eye opener. I'm not one for distortion pedals much - I use tube screamers all the time to increase gain and attack, but beyond that, I'm generally looking to get my tone from an amp or a model of an amp. And so putting high-gain distortion pedals into a sort of lower-gain lead channel setting is not something I've really ever done, and boy is it cool. I was getting the kind of compression that I associate with power amp distortion (like the electronics are buckling) at bedroom levels, and then when it was time to play and the amp volume was at 8, things got really nuts. Even when I used settings to give me really tight palm muting attack, there was an underlying fuzziness that I would have never thought could work with that kind of tone, and again, the sound of the volume dipping ever so slightly every time I hit a chord was addictive. And the funny thing is that everybody in the room said they thought it wasn't as loud as they figured it would be. But to me it felt monstrous. I don't know if I won't go back to having more presets in the future, but I definitely have to reconsider being so rigid about emulating the exact rigs used in the songs, because even if it sounded closer to the record when I did that, I didn't sound as good. 

 

Sorry for the long post. 

Thanks for reading. 

Comments welcome. 

 

 

[zappazapper]

3 minutes ago, MGW-Alberta said:

As soon as I read what you wrote for the gear in your rig I thought, there's a combination with a ton of potential.  The .50 Calibre has some great clean tones in it and it takes FX extremely well.  I used to have a .50 Cal combo and it served me well for a long time until it failed.

 

Ya I have the combo. It's great but I find the 1x12 to be too directional. Have to turn it up too loud to be heard, and then if you find yourself in the crosshairs it'll kill you. It needs the 4x12 to be usable, especially for the kind of music we played the other night.

 

The only other gripe I have is the lack of a separate gain control for the lead channel. There really isn't a setting that works for both channels unless you're playing blues (master volume at 10, set the clean level with the gain control, set lead volume to balance). But I'm far past the days of using the amp on its own anyway, and the Helix is the prefect tool to make the .50 Cal preamp work on its own, even if all you're doing is using it to set different FX send levels between channels. 

[DunedinDragon]

3 hours ago, zappazapper said:

 

Ya I have the combo. It's great but I find the 1x12 to be too directional. Have to turn it up too loud to be heard, and then if you find yourself in the crosshairs it'll kill you. It needs the 4x12 to be usable, especially for the kind of music we played the other night.

 

^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^ is the key reason I finally abandoned using traditional cabinets a decade or so back.  I think sometime back in the 80's I started to get frustrated with the directionality of cabinets.  Of course this was back in the day when it wasn't really necessary to mic cabinets, so we generally didn't except in studio work or larger venues.  It started to frustrate me that the stage sound and even the overall sound of the band could be so affected by cabinet placement and where you stood on stage or what area of the venue you sat in.  In all fairness, most PA systems of the time were pretty limited as far as performance, so there weren't too many options.

At some point in the late 90's is when there were some important changes that started to take place with club level powered speakers, subs and mixing boards.  I was doing a solo classic rock show at the time using backing tracks and MIDI controlled lights and took advantage of the advances and it totally changed my perspective on the possibilities when I crafted the entire show without any cabinets, just the PA system.  Rolling forward a few years better modeling options became available, but they were mostly housed in modeling amps, so I went back to cabinets mic'd through the PA and began to experience the same old frustrations with the on stage sound.  Finally with the appearance of high end modelers along with the appearance of next generation DSP driven powered speakers the stage was set to abandon all cabinets on stage for all instruments and go direct through a digital mixer and achieve a polished, studio quality sound both on stage and across the entire audience.

It sure seems like a long journey to get here but I'm constantly thankful I stuck with it until the technology finally caught up with what I always envisioned it could achieve.

[zappazapper]

See for me it's kind of the opposite problem, where I can't stand guitar coming from anything but speakers designed for guitar when playing live. Part of it is the type of music - when playing punk rock or metal or something like that, I'm not really going for a "studio quality" sound. Quality is less important than intensity and there's something about actual guitar speakers that I've never been able to replicate. In fact, on Saturday I brought a second Marshall 4x12 to put on the other side of the stage so the bassist could hear me better, but I didn't end up using it because the owner of the bar had the genius idea that the two bands' tables should go ON THE STAGE for social distancing reasons and I just didn't have the room to set it up. But ever since I learned of the Greatful Dead "Wall of Sound" PA, which was basically a separate PA system for every instrument, I've always thought that the only way to do sound properly for guitar is to take a line off the amp, to a channel on the mixer that's not being fed to the main PA speakers, direct or submit out to dedicated power amps designed for guitar, and into guitar cabinets flown like PA speakers. Which is part of why I find the Powercab thing so interesting, because it's attempting to model JUST speakers without being miked. Imagine flying half a dozen of those babies and linking them up to the Helix.