As usually is the case with me, my let’s call it perfectionism, kicks in.
When I’m trying to learn a song and make a cover of it I alway try to match the tone perfectly with the original. Sometimes I end up bothering my favourite artists about the gear they used on specific record, sometimes I have to ask some folks if I am getting close, or which particular settings imitate original better.
Hi, folks.
So in today’s rendition of my inability to give up and play the stupid song, we are taking a look at Obscure Sphinx’s piece called The Presence of Goddess:
My initial knowledge of the gear comes from the guy who used to play with them, actually he recorded the last studio album with them.
Here’s what he told me:
His chain was Line6 Pod XT Pro with SLO100 preset + Sonic Maximizier into Marshall JCM800 2204 input (I assume it was to provide proper wattage and that’s all) into Laney IRT 412.
The second guitarist used similar rig, only the POD and Maximizer went into Peavey PV900 and then Orange 412.
I am not sure who played which part, but from what I learned doing the previous cover, the guy I was speaking with played the “lead” part.
At the moment I am focusing more on the rythm guitar, so I am going with Orange cab (especiall since Laney IRs are not all that easy to find and it looks like I only have like… a couple or so.
By some miracle I found no less than seven working Soldano SLO ampsims laying around in my library, none of which is Neural DSP. I mean, I used to have a demo but it expired, and I am certainly not paying 120USD plus tax for another plugin.
So I decided to have a little test.
I will be comparing the following:
Amplitube 5
Nembrini BST100
Helix Native
NeuralAmpModeler (an oddball, I know)
Neurontube
all through the same IRs - Orange 412 V30 with SM57 and R121 (although I am not entirely sold on these to be honest)
So for reference, here’s part of original that I isolated via AI (might be a bit skewed as probably some of the tone bled through to vocals which were removed and vice versa):
And mine (levels might be not exactly there yet though):
Amplitube 5
Nembrini BST100
Helix Native
NeuralAmpModeler
Neurontube
And yes, being lazy as I am, I used isolated drums and bass instead of writing my own.
Also, apologies for crappy playing. I also did not learn the whole thing properly so there surely are some mistakes.
Might be worth noting that before the amp, I added EQ with lowcut with gentle slope placed a bit higher on the spectrum - this is supposed to act a bit like a boost, without actually boosting anything. I just wanted to remove some distortion from the low end so it has better punch.
I also added maximizer to bring some more oomph, I can’t say I am happy with the result but sounds better to me that way than without it.
I kinda feel like there is still some oomph missing from the low end.
Also there seems to be this stringy tone to my playing, like an unamplified guitar tone, that percussive high end… I don’t know how better to describe it.
Lastly, the distortion structure seems to be much, much thicker in the original, yet they don’t use a lot of gain… I think.
I know this is a rather lengthy post with all the long samples and such, so I really, really apreciate your time and I’ll be grateful to anyone who actually goes through all of this XD