Long lasting chord and solo sounds for metal

  • I have a pretty good Gibson LP Standard but if I hit a final chord, meant to last for a long time, it dies pretty soon. I play metal songs so I looked up some metal rigs on the Rig Exchange like the AVB Classic Metal and the AVB Classice Metal /S2 (with G Nitro DI amp name) and they sound really nice but they die quickly and also with crackling parts of the played chord... Is it the rig or is it my LP?


    My Powerhead Output is also not happy with these rigs because the corresponding led is constantly red. So I deleted the attached COMP, GATE, BOOST and SPACE fx of these rigs. No result whatsoever. The led stays red.


    But more important: the soon fading away of the chordsounds and sustained solo sounds... The amps in these metal rigs

    (G Nitro DI) should sound much longer and chords should have to die after a substantial amount of time and also not in different and crackling parts of the chord...

    I hope one knows what I mean... Does anyone have better options?

  • The fading away part will be a noise gate. Best you can hope for there is to find a noise gate setting that gets rid of noise you want but doesn't cut off so soon that you get the fading.


    For the red output, you did the right thing to disable effects to make sure that no volume push was happening there. But the volume of the rig is still set to high. You need to lower the rig volume until the Red Led is not lit. If the volume then seems too low you'd have to adjust it with either the Master volume or your amplifier volume. Once you get the rig volume out of the red you could also try adding back some of the effects you had bypassed. If red again, lower the effect volume.


    Hope that helps.

  • I tried that AVB Classic Metal from Rig Exchange with a Les Paul and I hear the crackle you describe. I bypassed the 4:1 Noise Gate and instead set the Input Noise Gate to a bit over 5. I also found better result bypassing the Compressor.


    Then I was able to let a chord ring until it eventually fades over about 40 seconds. I found no issue with the output, but maybe you have much higher output pickups than I use.

  • The fading away part will be a noise gate. Best you can hope for there is to find a noise gate setting that gets rid of noise you want but doesn't cut off so soon that you get the fading.


    Hope that helps.

    As I wrote: I completely removed the gate! No success.


    As for your second part: that makes sense! I'll go with that and see if this helps. Thanks! :thumbup:

  • I tried that AVB Classic Metal from Rig Exchange with a Les Paul and I hear the crackle you describe. I bypassed the 4:1 Noise Gate and instead set the Input Noise Gate to a bit over 5. I also found better result bypassing the Compressor.


    Then I was able to let a chord ring until it eventually fades over about 40 seconds. I found no issue with the output, but maybe you have much higher output pickups than I use.

    I'm glad I'm not the only one to hear this. But I'm puzzled what you write next: How can I bypass the 4:1 NG (( I've deleted it !) and how to set an INPUT NG somewhat over 5?

    And how to bypass the Compressor? (I've also deleted this fx)

    Your results however are very promising...!

  • If you are red-lighting the output LED you can can lower the rig volume and/or change the Clean/Distortion Sens in the Input settings.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • On that rig there's a NoiseGate 4:1 in slot C. Sounds like you 've already turned that off. I used Bypass to mean turn them off or delete them. I turned off the Compressor in Slot B and I see that the Compressor on the AMP page settings is already set to zero. Although if you want Compression, I'd try that one instead of the effect in Slot B.


    The Noise Gate I'm talking about is the Noise Gate knob on a toaster. Or you can click the Input button on the Profiler or Rig Manager. You should see Noise Gate, Clean Sen and Dist Sens. That is the Noise Gate I set to about 5.3 to clean up the noise but still have a pretty natural fade out.


    Then yes, lowering the Rig volume however you like should get rid of the output red lighting.


    Pickup output is still going to make a difference so you'll need to find what values work for your guitar. These are what work for my Les Paul to avoid what you described.

  • Rig volume is at 0.0 dB and both Clean and Dist. sense are at 0.0 dB. No change. The distorted rig even wobbles...and doesn't sound evenly.


    The NG in INPUT is set to 5.0. Rig volume was indeed set higher:+ 2.45. Now set to 0.0 dB. and this affects the Output effectively. The led gets orange /green now with sometimes a bit yellow. But with the alterations the tones still dry up quickly

  • If I hit a chord and let it sustain, with a rig of gain = 4.0, it will go one for almost 15 seconds until the signal in DAW is null. Sustain goes to 18 seconds with gain at a ridiculous 8.0. With a clean gain at just 1.4, I sustain for 7 seconds until null. And both are with a NG stomp set at 2.3 with the Profiler's NG set at 0.0. All strikes were at medium pick attack. Edit: The guitar I used has a floyd rose locking trem.


    Make sure guitar's volume knob and tone knob are full up. Try different guitars. Make sure your guitar has a pro setup on it because fret buzz kills sustain pretty fast. New strings help too.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    Edited once, last by BayouTexan ().

  • I didn't play with gain since theplayer didn't mention any changes to this rig he wanted to use. So I just tried the rig as found on Rig Exchange. No change to gain or EQ, etc. Turned off the Compressor and Noise gate stomps. Set the Input Noise gate to 5.3.


    Way too much gain for anything I'd use, but this seemed to be more about the crackling as it decays and the output level.


    Les Paul - hit an E chord on the 7th fret and let it ring. At least 45 seconds before it's pretty much gone. Decay sounds pretty normal here.

  • Sorry if this has been mentioned, but perhaps your action is too low?

    Kemper PowerRack |Kemper Stage| Rivera 4x12 V30 cab | Yamaha DXR10 pair | UA Apollo Twin Duo | Adam A7X | Cubase DAW
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  • If you strum the chord on the guitar without it being plugged in does it sustain at a satisfactory length of time? That would rule out the action or pickup height or anything else with the guitar.


    Do you have other rigs that sustain better? If you can switch from one rig to another and there is a difference, it has to be something setup on the profile.


    I would recommend getting the volume down into the green. You can always pump the volume up in whatever is amplifying the sound down the chain. Pushing an amp into overdrive sounds good. Pushing a digital device into overdrive sounds terrible.

  • Just tried that AVB profile you mentioned. To be honest, I think it's not a great profile to begin with but a little tweaking can certainly make it sustain for ages.


    The Rig downloads with the input noise gate at 10 and a 4:1 gate in the stomp set at 10. Basically the whole rig is being gated to death. In addition to this clean sense is set at -12 and distortion sense is also set at -12.


    Try turning off all FX (as you have already done) then set clean sense to 0db and distortion sense to 0db. From this starting point gradually raise the input noise gate until the hiss disappears. For me this was around 3.4. At this stage the rig doesn't sound great to me but it does sustain for a LONG time.


    The next change I would make is to change the order of the stomps. I would move the Gate to stomp A. You could then use Compressor > Boost or Boost > Compressor depending on which sounds best for your needs. I would probably go Gate, Wah, Compressor, Boost but the final choice just depends on your own taste. The problem with the gate after compressor is that you are compressing the signal to even dynamics ( stops the note dying so quickly) then asking the gate to kill the sound which requires a higher threshold setting than may be needed with the gate first.


    It's also interesting that the Output LED is red for you as it stays Green for me with a Musicman Luke (EMG active pickups) even with Clean and Distortion Sense raised to 0db and Rig Volume left at +2.4db


    Personally, I would just try and find a better Rig to start with rather than spend time trying to make this one work. Go into the Factory Content and try some of the high gain rigs in the Legengs Packs. The Mis Man (Misha Mansoor of Periphery) rig in Legends 1+2 might be a decent starting point for metal. Or try the Fre Tho or Sco Ian (Scott Ian of Anthrax) in Legends 3. Also take a look at the free factory content from Ola Englund, Lars Luettge or Lasse Lammert for other solid metal rigs to compare against. These all have sustain for years and little or no hiss (at least with my EMGs)

  • Hi there,

    Solved the HISS in HIGH GAIN for my set. The HISS sound is like it's on the urge of feedbacking, but just not.... hopefully I described it well.


    I got it solved by decreasing the DEFINITION in the AMP-section. Also it's needed to tape off the strings after the Nut and (in case of Gibson) before the Bridge so nothing resonates from those parts.


    I had also 'high hiss' in numerous high gain profiles. I heard it more ore less in profiles from Cililabs, JTM, Fortin etc.

    My hypothesis is that it increases when I change the original capture. E.g when I switch Cabs.

    Also certain pickups are more sensitive to that curious 'high hiss' frequency. Pickups like Lace, Suhr produce less hiss , Burstbuckers and Bare Knuckles more. (I had the BKP Nailbomb set. Sold it because of the annoying Hiss..... regret that now.)


    How I found out (for my setting):

    I've got the unpowered Rack Profiler combined with the Matrix GT1000FX and two Matrix FR112's

    I thought the problem was in the FR112 Matrix speakers. Using my headphone (Beyerdynamic DT770)......, it was still there.

    Than I switched off the Cab-section. Awfull sound but concentrating on the frequencies (once you hear it, you can't unhear it)....still that Hiss.

    Then I knew it was in the AMP-section. The Hiss inly deminished when I turned down the definition from 10 to 5. Don't use the compressor knob, the compressor increases the Hiss. Power Sagging etc. are (in my case) definitely not the cause.


    Now it chugs without that annoying sound.


    Hopefully this solves the Hiss problem for some of you.

    Greetz