Getting a good heavy tone

[357mag]

Thinking of trying an HX Stomp pedal. I'm into heavy sounds, my amp of preference is the Marshall JCM-800 which sounds great in my old X3.

 

I tried a Helix rack a few years ago but I had trouble getting a nice thick chunky tone out of it.

 

Have any of you been successful and getting a good, heavy tone from your HX Stomp?

[silverhead]

That's tough. Describing a sound is very personal. Can you give us a hint or example of what you consider to be a 'good, heavy tone'? What you have in mind could sound like bees in a tin can to me. Conversely, what I consider good and heavy might sound like it belongs in a kid's lullaby to you.

[357mag]

Scorpions or Judas Priest or Ozzy Osbourne, something along those lines. 

[silverhead]

Thanks. Out of my wheelhouse but will give others something to go on.

[Vanderdecker]

This is my standard advice for a good metal tone.

Having a good starting point helps a lot. Below is the one custom tone that sent me down the correct path! My advice is to start here and then shape to make it fit your needs.

https://line6.com/customtone/tone/5292982/

I find that searching for IRs at all I think they are a rabbit hole. Pillars and the screamer 808 are your goto distortions.
Also I only cut at 15k and above in the global EQ then EQ to taste.

[357mag]

But will presets that have been made with the LT load on the HX Stomp?

[datacommando]

On 8/5/2025 at 11:42 PM, 357mag said:

But will presets that have been made with the LT load on the HX Stomp?

Hi,

 

I just checked that “Megadeath” patch in a Helix preset viewer, and it would not be possible to load that into a HX Stomp, as it contains dual paths, consisting of 13 blocks, including 2 different amps.

 

If you go to in CustomTone, select HX Stomp and then type Ozzy into the Search box, it returns a few options that you may want to try. Also when I typed Judas Priest in the box, it found a preset named “British Steel” - give it a go.

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

[Mako2112]

GENERIC AMP TONES:

A med-high gain amp is modeled as a freq curve, gain, EQ controls, and an IR.

WHAT YOU WANT:

EQ --> Amp --> IR --> EQ

 

WHY YOU WANT THIS:
The freq curve for high gain is not a lot of lows, a boost from 700-1200 Hz, and a roll off above 5k. This is the meat an potatoes of the tone.

The EQ and speaker IR are very important and get more important as gain goes up. When gain gets ridiculous, all of the sound comes from the EQ and IR.

So you need to pick an amp that gets you close. Rev Red for example. Then add an EQ before the amp to tweak the tone in. This may mean reducing lows if it is boomy or adding more boost in that 700-1200 range. 

As gain goes up, you must reduce the lows coming in or you are making a fuzz pedal. The lows will over power the mids/highs. Then make up the reduced bass after the gain stage.

 

If you need more after this then start adding pedals like the LA COMP, Horizon, etc as others have suggested. 

 

You can thicken things by adding 400-500 hz boosts before the gain as well.

SIDE NOTE

I wrote a VST that uses this setup. I am currently trying to find good combinations of freq curve (IRs) and built in amps. So I am running an IR then some flat EQ amp to try and get different amp tones. But any EQ can get you there, you dont have to use an IR.