Posts by dhodgson

    The Softube plug -is- great. They have a patent on that, which got licensed to Fender for its "Runaway" guitar pedal. BOSS has a 2nd-gen feedbacker too, but it's not in the same class. Honestly, the VST works best.


    -djh

    Tightness is largely a function of how a (distorting) guitar preamp reacts to the lows in your guitar pickup signal. There are other factors, but this is the big one. The easiest solution is put a high-pass filter EQ in your signal chain before hitting the preamp. Alternatively, an overdrive pedal with a variable high-pass filter built in will also do the trick (which is pretty much every "Tight" pedal in the amptweaker.com catalog, note.)


    The Havok clip you posted is seriously bass-light, BTW. That's the tradeoff - the more you tighten your guitars for punch, the more you need to compensate with a proper blend of bass in the mix to make up for it (and this track doesn't, unfortunately.)


    Key guitar pickup frequencies to roll off (in my experience) are those below 95Hz-185Hz, try putting the Studio EQ in the D slot and raising the "Low Cut" while a friend palm-mutes chugs on the lowest string until you get the desired effect. The higher the gain, the more important this setting can be.


    -djh

    But is level the only real influence on this? Not trying to beat a dead horse here, just want to understand (and I appreciate somebody else reading a whitepaper on it :D ). So, if you took a singer and placed him 4 inches in front of the mic, then moved him back 6 inches and had him sing correspondingly louder but otherwise identically (theoretical, I know), the frequency response would be exactly the same?


    Yes, that's how I've been reading it. It's weird that there's so little written on this; I started with the Wiki, then moved on to the Shure paper and branched out to a few others, I don't see how one can interpret the conclusions differently ("As the source is brought closer to the directional microphone, the amplitude component of the pressure difference increases and becomes the dominant component at lower frequencies.") It's not like there are some weird kind of reflections going on that only occur when the mic is physically close to the recorded object causing the effect. It would definitely be a great thing to test in a controlled environment... or I could be reading this stuff wrong, it's not the clearest!

    I don't think proximity effect is level dependent?

    I was reading a whitepaper on this a while back. What we call "proximity effect" is due to the sound-travel lag of sound passing over the front and back halves of the mic diaphragm, resulting in a time-delay discrepancy that interferes with perfect phase cancellation. The result is that a slight pressure differential builds up favoring the front part of the mic, partly based on the thickness of the diaphragm and partly based on the loudness of the signal. The proximity effect is largest when the mic is closest to the source, because - ta da - that's also where it happens to be loudest.


    Huh? How can they model proximity effect and off-axis behaviour?


    I don't think Antares Mic Modeler's convolution engine is going away here - just add a flat reference mic/preamp of known (ideally, per-unit calibrated) behaviour and a saturation engine.


    Proximity effect can be simulated based on level. Physical off-axis behavior is the real bitch; I wouldn't be surprised if there was a plugin knob to skip the issue entirely and/or simulate this as an effect, if at all.


    -djh

    Amazingly, there aren't many books dedicated to the subject but I've bought this one twice. Speaker cabs are heavily dependent on volume and porting, but most of the technical literature is geared towards hi-fi applications with very little practical information with respect to guitar cabs where the construction style, speaker types and porting methods are largely traditional and unchangeable. Which is a shame, really.


    "LONDON POWER DIY Speaker Cabinets for Musical Instrument Applications"
    http://www.londonpower.com/Speaker-Book


    -djh

    I had some similar experiences this year, and in each case it was due to flaky pedalboard and/or instrument cables. Really, the cables were causing a 6dB or more drop in signal level at the Kemper's instrument level input.


    -djh

    "One summer never ends,
    One summer never began
    It keeps me standing still,
    It takes all my will
    And then accidentally... my Kemper"


    Read more: The Motels - Accidentally My Kemper | MetroLyrics

    When I was researching cabs looking to build a 1X12 or 2X12 from scratch, the smallest and lightest (by far) was a pricey Italian import called the DRAGOON XSHH which claimed to be a crazy 19 lbs. By comparison, most of the others I looked at were 27.5 lbs and up.


    Guitar Center no longer carries the Matrix Neolight series, but it was lighter still... 16.9 lbs!


    Of course, cab size does matter along with materials & porting (if used), so audition for tone if you can.


    Dragoon link here. Matrix link here.


    -djh

    I did. Even though most of my SoundToys plugs were "Little"-series freebies leaked out over the years, they still added to the overall discount. $130!