Ive been a lazy boy !

So yea, been pretty lazy recently. Between iRacing, Skyrim and recurring back pain, Ive taken some time away from music to refresh and redefine my goals. I do have some new demos with some good tones to talk about soon, mainly using The Anvil from Ignite Amps. It rocks. Thanks for reading my blog and will get back into things very soon!

Seymour Duncan pickup comparison – JB vs Distortion

Ok heres a quick riff comparing both pickups in the same guitar (my Soloist)  and mix. The playing was a little loose in the JB clip but I had already put the Distortion in so couldnt re-do it, as the whole comparison idea was an afterthought anyways. One thing to note is this is a JB with an Alnico 2 magnet, not the stock Alnico 5.

Duncan JB2

Duncan Distortion

Also the guitar was in Drop-A at this point, I was messing about with lower tunings to work on some mixing theories I had, but I have since tuned back to E-standard and I must say I prefer the Duncan Distortion by far, just has a certain crunch about it that I cant get out of a JB.

Guitar chain : Etude in A Mojo

I used my Edwards Les Paul on the neck pickup (a 59) and rolled of quite a bit of tone to get that creamy sound.  Also I had a dark, rich reverb on the guitar bus. Here is the plugin chain -

Then on the guitar bus I used The Black Dragon -

 

 

Also having that organ underneath the guitar really gave it the vibe I wanted, so playing alone this tone might not have worked so well, but who knows hehe.

High gain guitar practice – Etude in A mojo

I recently wrote an etude for electric guitar, specifically to help with picking and muting techniques. Heres the tab : GP 5 file or PDF for download. You can listen to the audio on my Soundcloud page here :
I used Lepous SoloC for the tone. Honestly its the best Soldano sim Ive found.

Seymour Duncan JB magnet comparison – A5 vs A2

Ok so I changed the stock A5 magnet in my Soloists’ JB to an A2 mag. I love the JB but I wasnt 100% sold on it in my Jackson so it was either a pickup swap which is more expensive or a magnet swap. Much cheaper.

Now the tone I got from soloing I was very happy with, after rolling off a little of the tone knob it is really articulate, it was more the ‘metal rhythm muting’ stuff where I found it was a bit….I dunno, just not right.

Here is a short clip of 1 rhythm riff being played 4 times. The riff is 8 seconds long.

The sequence is : A5 – A2 – A5 – A2. It might take a few listens to really notice the difference but I am so much happier with how it sounds.

Duncan JB A5 vs A2

I can also say that the tone has improved in soloing as well, just seems warmer and clearer with more voice. (hard to explain tone, try to bear with me) Basically its better overall.

I highly recommend anyone who is not happy with their stock JB to try this first.

Gary Moore tribute – Johnny Boy solo guitar

I wanted to make something that showed how I felt about Gary Moore, so I bought a Les Paul this week and came up with this short tribute. Using Alus NRR1 on the clean channel and his new TS-999 screamer for the gain, with Onqels TSE808 as a clean boost out the front.

Johnny Boy mp3

I miss you Gary.

Guitar chain plugins and settings for D.G.M.R. #1

Ok here are the settings I used for the tone test in D.G.M.R #1.

2 guitars Hybrit panned 100% L and 100% R.

I then used some post EQ settings I copied straight from Dandelium at Ultimate Metal Forum.

I really liked how the REQ added some good air without being too harsh, and the C4 keeps things from booming too much.

Then with the Q10 I hunted for some annoying frequencies and cut them out with some deep notches. I use this preset for both amps and impulses, and it seems to work (according to my ears anyway).

Of course these plugins arent free but are worth the money if you have it.

 

2 guitars NRR1 panned 80% L and 80% R.

Same chain as above,  just replace the Hybrit with the NRR1.

All 4 guitars are sent to a seperate bus with this Eq on it (as suggested by Alu from GAM forum- I tested his ears suggestions and my ears agreed)

Thats pretty much it for the guitars. Funnily enough the guitar is a cheap Epiphone Prophecy EM-2 with stock Epiactive pickups. I put some 12-60s on it and dropped down to A# for that sloppy sound.

 

One thing I learnt from this experiment was that notching out those annoying frequencies allowed me to really push the guitars higher without becoming too brittle.

Any questions please ask, I will be doing another test soon! (…and hopefully some actual original music Im working on)

 

R.I.P. Gary Moore

You will be sorely missed.

Catharsis spreshigh vs lolzgreg ASEM beta impulse….

Ok its not really a versus.

I took that mix from yesterday and got some fine tips from the best in the business and updated the sound.

Catharsis spreshigh on all 4 gtrs : D.G.M.R. #1 Cath

lolzgreg ASEM beta on all 4 gtrs : D.G.M.R. #1 lolzgreg

Interesting comparison I think. All settings are the same except for the impulse. Remember to go to my Impulse Links page  to find where to get these, they are 2 of the best Ive messed with. Totally free as well, I feel ashamed

Downtuned generic metal riff #1 – Hybrit + NRR1

A new test using an old favourite. I wanted to see what kind of tones I could get by downtuning further than usual, and I need to work on mixing something just for fun so I came up with the idea of just doing lame-ass riffs based off simple grooves.

This way Im not emotionally involved and can just work on trying to get a monster tone. It turned out better than I thought. Ive been reading and reading about getting volume and clarity and some of the things  have started to make sense, finally. I deeply and profoundly have immense respect for audio engineers, thats for sure, they are wizards.

Dropbox : DGMR1