Awesome video! As someone who loves to use preamp pedals straight into my audio interface, the next logical step would be a video explaining how to make a Cab IR with a power amp's sonic characteristics. I recently started doing that , but not with real power amps, just with the power section of some of the Brainworx amp plugins, like the VH4. I run a short burst of pink noise through the plugin activating only the power section and bounce that. I then load it into an IR loader where you can have IRs in series, like the MixIR3 from RedWirez, put a regular IR after it and export that into a new IR file! Other plugins that have separate Power amp sections are the Mercuriall plugins, which sound amazing - and actually have a good Cab sim! There's also the TPA1 power amp plugin from Ignite Amps! One of the only IR companies that i know that makes IRs with tube power amp signals baked into them are Kalthallen. They make REALLY beefy IRs and they sound incredible
I've completely given up on finding band members, so this is basically how I intend to move forward in creating my own music. I very much appreciate all your videos, man!
@@jacobhenderson1763, it's extremely hard to find people to mesh with, these days. Egos, differences in attitudes, differences in creativity, etc. I live in Louisville, and there are plenty of musicians, here. Getting enough people together that agree on a creative direction is insanely difficult, though. Lol
First time I ever tried to record to a DAW by myself, back in 2005 I think, someone had given me a copy of Sonar to mess with and I definitely plugged my Metal Zone directly into the 1/8 mic input on my computer's sound card. Good times.
@@mylogify You need a DI box if your space is polluted by electro smog, but using a pedal as a preamp, you'd only need a good interface with LOW LATENCY. You can't reamp a signal recorded with distortion thou, but in this case you don't need an amp plugin anyway
The revv pedal sounded really nice. This is how I record my guitar as well basically. Been playing through an Orange combo and ts9 overdrive through an ir for about a year now.
It really shines as a preamp and sounds awful as a distortion pedal. Same with Metal Zone, the EQ is just more suited to hit a power amp rather than most amp inputs.
Why not use a free poweramp sim as well? Like the ignite TPA-1, or free clean channel from Ignite as well. Peeps should try that as well with the pedals, if they find them lacking in some aspect that is.
sure thing you would want that! Just remember that some if not most impulses are made through a power amp already. But that's the beauty of life right there, there are no rules.
@@OlaEnglund True that, the only rule should be your own taste. The poweramps in IRs are often so transparent that adding in a poweramp before them that does add color to the sound a bit does help some pedals though. And for example the Be-Od IMO sound way better through clean channels that direct (a good clean clean-channel that is). great video btw!
Recording an impulse response through a power amp does not reproduce the whole effect of the power amp. An impulse response is a very fancy EQ filter. The famous desirable effect of a power amp is more like compression than EQ. Impulse responses can't capture the compression effects produced by the power amp. It's still worth trying a power amp sim or any gentle tube saturation plugin before the impulse response. In the context of metal rhythm guitars, the compression is less likely to be desirable, but it's great for anything that needs a little more squish, like a spiky lead guitar.
Agreed! I discovered that running the distortion/overdrive pedals into the TPA-1 on EL34 mode and setting the volume on the front panel of the plugin to the edge breaking up really adds a lot. AND ITS FREE!
I have a few amps in my apartment and my go-to is always just my pedals into my power amp. You'd be surprised how good a lot of distortions sound as a preamp
I'm using a Victory V4 The Kraken for this stuff and it's great. You can get at least Nadir from Ignite for free, it can load 2 IRs at a time. For a little more powerful IR loader Ugritone TrveCab is like 5€ at the moment and it can load up to 8 IRs at the same time, so you can blend IRs for different cabs, mics and mic placements.
I love my metal zone! I've used it for years and it's never failed me. I'm a sludge player and it brings a wide variety of beef! Lean.. ground.. and chunk!!
I'm using a Diezel VH4-2 pream pedal and it sounds kick ass just plugged in my focusrite Scarlett. No amp needed ! Personal tip : I plug a noise gate pedal just after the pedal and it works perfectly well without changing the tone of the preamp. The Revv G3 and the Friedman sound killer too !
@@jorgeguitar2540 yeah it’s legit. Distortion pedals are pretty much just preamps, and using multiple pedals like an hm-2 into an mt-2 (with the mt-2’s gain set pretty low to act like a crunch channel, or even turned up some) , or even a tube screamer into an mt-2 with the gain turned up a bit you’ll get good results. Use noise suppression though just like you would with a real amp.
Hi Ola, did you know that you can load IR's into the space designer in Logic Pro X? I tried it with a free IR from Celestion. It sounds great! Your channel is wonderful. A carnival of edutainment!
it's a method I often make use of often but simply use a few Two Notes C.A.B. boxes and a few of the dinky yet great Mooer RADAR boxes which take care of the mic'd speaker cab impulse response real-time convolving as well as both featuring power amp modelling which is very useful for turning practically any distortion or other gain-based pedal into a preamp, The Revv G3 is an ideal pedal in the role of a preamp as it nails tight yet crushing modern high-gain sounds with ease as that is what it was built to do. I have a loop switcher with various distortion pedals which get rotated often but the REVV G3 has always stayed, currently have an AmpTweaker TightMetal Pro, Line 6 Uber Metal, Digitech Hardwire TL-2, EHX Nano Metal Muff as its a newish toy, Victory VH4 the Kraken preamp pedal, a DOD Grunge distortion which I get a nice grindcore-suitable high-gain sound from that old beast (the original though, the Digitech variant doesn't sound/feel the same), a Bogner Extasy red channel pedal as well as an EHX IC Big Muff, Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz along with a second Line 6 Uber Metal which feeds into a long discontinued MXR "Hendrix Fuzz System" which isn't used for the fuzz but rather for that horrific foldback octave part of the circuit which with a tight, carved & contoured filth box like the Uber Metal is easily dialled in as this enables me to nail a more responsive but every bit as horrible sounding OTT distorted octave fuzz sound. The main reason being I am very short on physical space therefore I can't use a good chunk of my gear, mainly amp heads & cabs as I usually would which basically forced me to start meddling around to make up for missing out on certain goto sound...I got them available now even though they might not be 1 for 1 identical. The TORPEDO C.A.B.s and RADARs do still get used even with a multi-mic'd amp and cab as well as a DI as it offers me more options/versatility to track with & then when it comes time to mix things down, I have the same type of variety to mix and match thanks to pedals acting as preamplifiers. All the best as always sOLAr fella, some fine sounds as you always achieve and best to all too, cheers! \m/ Dean \m/
For anyone who has an Orange Micro Dark like me, you can run the FX send into your interface. Just plug a dummy cable into the headphones output then run the FX send to your interface and mind the master volume on the amp, set it all the way off then gradually bring it up. Been doing this for a while and prefer it over all my plugins
You have a great weekend too, Ola and family! This a great vid. So many wonderful options. People don't have to wait for big ass awesome amps... they can START RIGHT NOW!
Thank you and you also have a good day! I just figured this out about a week ago when I bought my first distorsion pedal ever. That moment was like "Damn, man! all I needed was a freaking pedal!!! If only I knew this earlier when I started playing..."
My Signal Chain in 1996 was like: Guitar > Ibanez Soundtank Classic Metal > Boss Metal Zone > Fostex XR-5 Tape Recorder. Sounded like s**t but the envy was massiv and i enjoyed it. Haha.
Love these videos where people are shown that there is no magic with pedals or electronics in general to get a good sound. Most of it is about good filtering. A good way to experiment getting a good sound is using 2 equalizer pedals. One before and one after, lets say, a distortion pedal. Just playing around with the frequencies shaping the sound.
2:36 Hard to believe the sound is created without a real amp. I just ordered a regular MT-2 hope it pairs well with my marshall SL-5 and Gibson LP standard
Hey Ola “god of the riffage” Englund. The setup I use is a metalzone with the transparent amp on logic with a modern British 4x12 cab panned left, and a modern American 4x12 panned right. Full presence and a sm57 centred. Eq at noon on both pedal and cab amp thingy. Mid boost on leads. Sounds badass. Give that a go!
Source Audio UltraWave + EQ2 into power amp into guitar cab. or Tech21 PSA 2.0 (turn off the sansamp) into power amp into guitar cab. The UltraWave has compressor, distortion, LFO, and this is key: 8-band graphic EQ + high and low pass filters; also has envelope, trem, and noise gate. The EQ2 has a tuner. The Source Audio pedals two ins and outs, so many routing options are possible such as stereo or dual mono - which lets you have two different "preamps" for a dual amp rig, or as a two channel preamp... I've used these with different power amps, solid state and tube.
Yeah! We were at the studio, and a speaker just blowed up. That was just ok, and as a guitarist..we plugged my Ibanez through behringer ultra metal pedal straight to the mixing bord, and it sounded great.
thats the crazy thing about the metal zone. that through a power amp and IR it sounds like a sick amp. but the pedal into a clean channel is a bit bleh haha
@@andrewpegg its pretty good for rhythm stuff through the fx loop, but you can get a sick lead tone if you dial it in like a boost over your high gain channel
Thank you Ola ! I'm glad you tried the metal muff this way. If I may, that's the second time you turn down the trebles to compensate for the boost: I would suggest to just put the boost at 38min, that's subtle but no aggressive hiss anymore ;)
That's what i do for years. I was thinking about buying a Neural DSP plugin, but the tube preamp I use sounds way better and more real. Would be interesting how an old Marshall JMP-1 and/or similar would fair against a new trendy ampsim.
Yeah Ola... I also use the same method.. TS9 & Fuzz pedal + I.R to get Chainsaw Sound... Sound Pretty good to me but this method nowdays have a few guitarist cant trust i.r... BTW Congrats Ola And Nice T Solar...
I don’t usually use distortion pedal but I’ve preordered the ascendancy pedal from Matt heafy and Corey Beaulieu and I can’t wait to try this bad boy out!
It took me a while to realise that my favourite tones did NOT require power amp simulation. I use Victory V4 tube preamps straight into IR and get the best response.
Cool video man. Useful for guitar players on a budget. I tried using the analog pedals to the interface and then the TPA-1 by Ignite Amps that is free and the IR loader. It sound a lot better than most people think. Even better than albums recorded with real amps. Cheers man. See you on next guitar related video or SWOLA.
its important to know that ALL IMPULSE RESPONSES ARE RECORDED USING A POWER AMP OF SOME KIND INTO A GUITAR CAB. So you really just need a preamp with a tone stack to do all of your gain and shaping, so of course this works. My fave sound rn is a metalzone going into an IR, so i am going to get both a super cheap power amp and an IR cab sim pedal to make a mobile amp setup.
Tack! I have been wondering about similar things for a while but hadn't tested it out yet because I AM LAZY and already get quite good tones. But knowing this is good for when I might need to do this :)
I'm of the suspicion that the Metal Muff with Top Boost is intended for Doom bands that use Orange/Marshall amps with a more classic gain structure that darkens as you push the amp hard. Though I'm hardly an expert, and happy to be wrong.
You know what, Ola... I agree with your comment. Few years ago, I let go ALL my amps: Marshall, Randall, Fender, and Peavey. I was so so so tired hauling amps to every gig and rehearsal. I'm so glad, companies made better pedals. Most of the times, my pedals sound way better than my regular amps. lol.
Man for the longest time I believed it was way too hard to mic a cab, so I bought ir's and a tone captor x for recording and I was never happy with it. Tone always sounded brittle and thin nothing like in the room. So one day I just threw a sm57 in front of a 1x12 c90 and right away it blew the doors off any IR. What's my point? At least try and mic your cab even if your room isn't treated or whatever because you might be suprised!
I've learned after years of tone searching that a CAB makes much more of a difference than an amp. All amps can be made to sound identical: they just amplify the guitar, a cab shapes the final tone.
The cab is extremely important. But don't forget some of the amps have different circuits and operating principles. A transistor distorting is going to sound different than an opamp distorting. They also have different impedances matching the speakers sometimes which can affect the frequency response. And of course different tone circuits. The speaker is the biggest player still though.
That's not true at all. I work on them. Have a pretty good understanding of amp circuitry. Go ahead plug a twin reverb into a 4x12 marshall cab and tell me that it sounds the same as superlead. The cab makes a difference yes but so does the rest of the signal chain. Hell with that logic you can throw a metal zone on a squier starter amp and throw a mesa cab under it and say you have a triple rec. That's not how it works.
That's because pedals back then were all instrument level output, and the Tascam had instrument level inputs. I was doing the same thing, but the IRs today make a world of difference.
Reminds me of the video where you told us to try the metal zone pluged straight into the loop receiver of an amp to use it as a preamp, at the end it's the same thing
this also works great into the fx return of an amp with a crap sounding preamp section. completely revitalized my origin 50 head... tried some other power amps and same same. sometimes it's the simplest things, right?!? OLA!!
Ola, dumb question. The sound of the pedal/impulse response is coming out of the speakers connected to your computers sound card correct? May I ask what kind of speakers you are using and is it just a basic L&R stereo set up, or do you also have a sub woofer?
overdrive is just a smoother way to increase your gain. if you use multiple "gain" knobs in a single chain, you can achieve a smoother, more dynamic guitar chug.
To me it sounded like just driving preamp to IR. You most definately need a power amp to get that extra harmonical layering and thump. Or get power amp simulator also.
Hola, maybe a but unrelated but great to hear you like the gold color it's also my favorite. Would love to see a gold matte solar(A/AB type) with a floyd. Hope you do more with that sweet gold finish.
I find that if I put a boss SD-1 or a fulltone OCD in front of my metal zone waza for a little push it sounds ultra fat. Overdrive lvl at 12:00 and drive at 9:00 on one or the other and the same on the metal zone. Into a clean mesa boogie recto through a marshall 4x12 it is recording worthy.
Distortion pedals used as preamp straight into a mixer board isn't that bad, and if you're steel string acoustic like I am you may want to mic the room up a bit some serious distance away from the speakers. But it's fucking great. Personally I'm using a Bad Monkey as a preamp for the pickup, and then again the room mics via a loop back to the mixer on a separate channel.
I mean, this is how the bass world is going basically. So many bassists these days going for DI rigs using distortion preamps like sansamp and the darkglass stuff with cab sims. The guitar world is somewhat behind compared to the bass world in certain regards.
I blame it on þe guitar world being entranced by bulky tube amps. Alſo hiſtorically, getting a good diſtorted DI guitar tone has been quite difficult compared to baſs tones.
Pedals over amps everyday when a budget it a concern. There are so many more options for people now a days on a budget. Days are gone you have to waste money on a “starter amp” a
Very good video. 👍 This was just the question I asked you two weeks ago for your next FAQ video, referring to the very good results that can be seen on the RU-vid account "Direct Recording Guitar". But my question didn't make it, although it must have been interesting, since two weeks later you made this video about it. But I guess that's a coincidence 🤔 Ola, you are starting to show signs of exhaustion. Take care of yourself. Refocus on the essential. What do you want to do with your life?
I mentioned this on twitter but I'll say it again, thanks Ola for this amazing video! 🤘 This video helped me come up with my rhythm guitar tone for our first album! 🤘
Hey Ola! Awesome video! Have you ever considered testing cheap amplifiers like the Marshall MG100 FX for the Will It Chug series? I think ti would be great to see their real capabilities. Keep rocking man!
Wayne Static swore by those MG100s. It was my first half stack back in the early 2000s. Did the job for a tone ignorant 16 year old in a metal band. Sounded horrible when turned up to full volume I remember though.
I have bugera g5 head with HB 112 loaded wit v30 and marshall G30r and funny thing is that i do NOT use eny distortion pedal when ever i playd marshall it has pretty nice distortion it self, only use usual FX pedals delay chorus and reverb, and cmpressor witch gives nice touch to amps own OD channel, but with bugera i had to u 2 differend pedal ts9 type od to boost clean and hi gain distortion to overdrive if want play trash/speed or something melodeath type kickass metal
you can emulate tube sag by adding compression between the input and IR. also makes it easier to get a cleaner sound from turning the guitar volume down like on a single channel amp
Or probably just a clean and flat boost with little drive. Power amp tone section is just that after all... Sometimes part of the tonestack goes there (like presence), but that's it.
An additional way to do this: hook pedal into interface, get free NAM plugin, find a NAM capture of a cool amp on clean or low gain, add your favorite speaker IR.
