12 String effect - best use case?

[themetallikid]

I'm curious to add this as a subtle type effect to my guitar signal for my acoustic sounds when applicable.  I tried scouring Jason Sadites and youtube for videos on best practice to apply this effect.  I know there are several ways people have made it sound best by adding it on a parallel line and mixing it in, but can't really find any great direct resources to this.  

 

any help on this?

[Anderton]

Consider giving the following a try, it's an excerpt from Chapter 4 (Poly Block) from my eBook on the Heilx. I use Helix a lot to do pseudo-Nashville tuning. One day it hit me that the only reason the two top strings of a 12-string are doubled is because of physical limitations. So, I wanted to come up with something that had the vibe of a 12-string, but also, had some of the octave-higher top two strings mixed in subtly. The green text has no special significance, it just refers to other presets included with the book. The Poly Capo is transposed up an octave. Hope this helps!

 

Gourmet 12-String

 

The Gourmet12-String preset (fig. 4.13) wraps processors around the Poly Capo to produce a rich, bright, big 12-string sound for stereo or mono. It’s optimized for the bridge pickup, but other pickup positions work too.

 

This is based on the LayeredNashville preset. However, the sound is more like one guitar than layered guitars, because the second EQ (Low/High Shelf) doesn’t emphasize the highs as much. Also, to give a 12-string’s characteristic shimmer, the Dual Delay toward the output adds subtle modulation.

 

The crucial difference is the Simple Delay that precedes the Poly Capo. With a physical 12-string, there’s a slight delay (around 20-25 ms) between hitting the main string and its associated octave string. The Simple Delay emulates this effect. Your ears identify this as part of a 12-string’s characteristic sound.

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.13  For a synthetic 12-string sound from a digital effects processor, this preset comes very close.

 

For live performance, only some blocks are suitable for footswitching. All the blocks before the Mixer are essential parts of the 12-string sound. The post-Mixer Delay and Reverb are good candidates for footswitching. One (or both) compressors can also benefit from footswitching. Then you can call up sounds that are more or less compressed.

[ttorus1]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:19 PM, Anderton said:

This is based on the LayeredNashville preset. However, the sound is more like one guitar than layered guitars, because the second EQ (Low/High Shelf) doesn’t emphasize the highs as much. Also, to give a 12-string’s characteristic shimmer, the Dual Delay toward the output adds subtle modulation.

 

I often use a Nashville acoustic. I'd like to get an electric version using HX Stomp but I'm not seeing this preset in my HX Stomp. Where would I find this?

[ttorus1]

Thanks for the comments. The Poly Capo achieves the octave up, but seems way too artificial; not like the 12-string high desired. I'll try more effects/amps but I'm looking for a duplicate at higher pitch.

[craiganderton]

You can't get a duplicate, but you can get the same kind of vibe. A major problem is that a physical 12-string doesn't create an octave higher sound for the top two strings, but using the Poly Capo will create octave-higher sounds for all strings. This is why some EQ after the Poly Capo can help bring down the brightness a bit, while retaining the frequencies of the physical 1st and 2nd strings. 

 

As to where to find the presets I mentioned, they're not factory presets. They come with the download for the eBook mentioned in a previous post. Unfortunately I've used up my available memory allocation for attachments, so I can't attach any more presets here. Sorry!