What Happened to Sonic?

If you listen to many of the high gain monsters on their own and not part of a mix, you will almost always hear the fizz and that's talking about real amps without Kemper being involved. some call it desirable hair (classic rock guys while Metal guys call it fizz)

Many guitarist who go for these high gain sounds mitigate by using high output pickups and those roll so much highs and the mids become more pronounced to the point of almost sounding like a wah in the mid position. I have few high output pick ups.

I installed a monster high gain pickup in the bridge of a strat with single coils that are medium and not really high output. When I switched to the high output humbucker, the change will sound like you just engaged a Wah. Needless to say, I removed it and put it in another guitar with other high output humbucker and they sound fine buy if you listen carefully you will notice that the high output pickups sound very middy. I'm not saying it's all coming from pickups but there are many factors to consider to isolate problems and achieved desired sound.

Maybe active pickups can suite situations of extreme high gain amps because they don't roll that much highs as the sound comes from the Preamp in the pickup itself that isn't overly wound like the rest of the passive pickups.where so much highs are rolled and mids become so pronounced to sound like a WAH

if your're looking for a very dynamic sound, imo the channel 1 of the victory kraken is the most dynamic thing i every played, i also profiled it and i'am very happy about the tone ...

If you're looking for dynamic response, pickups can also contribute.

I have a set of Kinmans woodstock, relatively higher output strat and I haven't played any pickups that offer that much dynamic. Lowering the volume or how hard or soft you hit the string will be felt and the tone will respond accordingly, change from clean to distort can be had just from the way you hit the strings..

I don't remember my long-gone Marshall Anniversary as that fizzy as some modern amps, and my Engl Sovereign and I are about to part due to our lack of mutual understanding, but the truth is I prefer vintage "dullness" (not neccessarily the woman tone) to the harsh sounds some folks do like here (and sure Guido can sound harsh here and there, so I agree with memento to some extent), and I often roll down the tone in the guitar to make some hi gain profiles work for me. Since I tend to use cleans and mid gain profiles 75 % of the time, I find the fizz a minor problem.

Quote from Dimi84

Most dynamic tone I ever had was through a software sim :)))
And.. the sound sucked, haha! I made that with a friend years ago.

I think there's a point when "more dynamics" can become a negative thing.

I love the Kraken What a great amp. Has the right amount of "dynamics" imho. Cheerios, Bommel

Sure, for modern metal who cares about dynamic. I just received a guitar with active pickups that had 500k Pots in it. Instead of returning the guitar, because I like it, I just ordered 25k pots.

In active pickups situation, 500k volume pot becomes basically an on/off switch, you can
t do any swells. it goes to 10 at 1 or two.
They probably figured that someone who's buying active pickups guitar won't care about dynamic to the point where I thought it was funny because they're presuming that the active guy might care more about on or off and nothing in between, They might as well not included a volume pot as long as the pickup selector will turn the pickups on or off..

Quote from MementoMori

Yes, most of the fizz, or hair comes from the mic'd portion. I didn't mean to say this is exclusive to the KPA, but it's nonetheless very prevalent over scores of profiles. I've tweaked Pure Cab before, but I'm quite honestly not a guy that has any interest in tweaking every profile I come across to make it work. There are thousands to choose from, so I just move on to the next unless the profile comes out very close to useable and I want to try and salvage it.

Pure cab can be set globally to be on and it's a one parameter. For the times when I audition really high gain, sometime I leave it on all the time at about 5 and I go through and scan through the profiles. It really takes care of the Microphone fizz that we all agree exists in real amps in close micing situations and is not specific to the Kemper.

A very important thing about dynamics is the pickup choice... the most dynamic amp will sound less dynamic with highoutput emps pickups ... it will drive the preamp always so hard that the better choice are low gain humbucker oder sinlgecoils ...

this thread has wandered off-topic.
not that the premise of this thread was all that relevant to begin with, but still.

@Dimi84 if you want to showcase new, relevant examples, please do so in an appropriate thread.

Since the question asked ("what happened") was answered quite early ("he was banned"),
I'll lock this thread.