Ultra Compressed (but clean'ish) Lead Tone

[skezza]

Hi,

 

First post, please be kind :) 

 

I've been playing guitar for years and to be honest, I've always been a little luddite'ish in my behaviour. I purchased a Helix which sat in the box for over 12 months as I favoured my existing Pod XT Live which was already setup for gigging in bands. I also own a GuitarPort and owning those two products gave me all the flexibility of experimenting with tones and then firing them onto the board in quick fashion only when needed. I spent years mucking around with tones and found a bunch that suited me for every scenario, clean, pop rock, rock rock, hard rock, shred solos etc.

 

I switched to the Helix when the Pod XT Live suffered a malfunction the week leading up to a big gig. I threw a bunch of tones onto the Helix which sounded incredible and from then I've not really looked back. Two years later and I'm still experimenting though.

 

One thing I've struggled with is re-creating a certain tone that I created on my Pod XT and that is an ultra-compressed, ultra responsive but relatively clean, lead tone that I had. Think Yngwie first album. I did a lot of experimenting with this tone on the Pod XT and while it's limited in it's use cases, I've had a lot of enjoyment and success in using this tone, mainly shred solos that don't require tonnes of gain/distortion.

 

Right now, I feel like I just have too much distortion on my lead and I would just like to clean it up a bit. When I wind back the drive, I lose a lot of the feedback in the notes and the sound becomes thin and wispy... lost if you will. When I add gain pedals to heat up the signal, I lose that clean lead. 

 

I hooked up my GuitarPort tonight and quickly/lazily tried to recreate the tone (I don't have the Pod XT Live with me currently). This is probably the closest I could get and the two most important aspects, I think, are the use of two compressors that are set very aggressively and probably the Noise Gate. Problem is, when I try to recreate this tone on the Helix, it just becomes utter noise. Either the sound begins to pulse, bounce around volume wise, starts to scream wildly, or it sucks absolutely everything out of the tone and just turns into mush.

 

However, through the GuitarPort, what this tone gives is a really nice amp driven lead sound but that is also insanely responsive and brings every note played into the forefront. It's a bit too thin for rhythm perhaps although I've never tried... maybe? Unlike the Helix and all the problems with pulsing and tone madness, this leaves enough vibrancy there to work with and I've gigged with this sound many times. Light touching of the thinnest strings gives a punchy and noticeable response. Great for ascending licks, tapping, sweep picking and what not. No need to have mental distortion to get that sustain and note feedback.

 

Under the stomp I have:

 

 

and Compressor I have:

 

Noise Gate:

 

This is one of my Helix lead sounds from 2019. 

 

https://youtu.be/g9upM-nvffc?t=91

 

Yes, that's me in the pink top and glasses. I was hanging out my arse at the time :D I just feel like that has way too much gain and not enough feedback/sustain. Now I've experimented a lot and retired this one, but I'm still yet to re-create anything like what I want and I tend to find me heading for high-gain to re-create that punchiness.

 

Any advice? 

[spaceatl]

The main suggestion I would have for you....and it's just a guess...would be to try using a PRE version of the amp model in the Helix. Basically, XT models are much more like the PRE versions as there wasn't really any power amp modeling in those days...That's a tweaky sorta tone to get anyway...If you like the jump plexi. you might try the Park 75 model...hardly any gain at all in the amp model but a very nice voice...good luck..

[waymda]

They look like extreme settings on the compressors. Have you tired similar on the Helix with one before the amp and one post cab (likely different comressors for each too)? Also wroth trying the mix control of the Helix compressors, particualrly post cab, so find what works for that sound.