Soundbank Guitar Pro 8

[Raul Herrera]

IR's are so important in getting a realistic feel and true response from modern guitar systems. I love that ML Sound Lab made some fantastic sounding versions of the most important cabs that I need in my palette of colors."

"ML Sound Lab's are the finest cabinet impulses I have ever heard. They capture the true voice of the cabinet and sound amazing on anything. If bacon had a sonic equivalent, it would surely be ML Sound Labs IR's."

I know it has been a few months since you have posted this, but have you gotten it to work yet? I saw in two other places that you have to have tuxguitar-alsa, tuxguitar-oss, and tuxguitar-jsa installed as well as timidity. Here and here Hope that helps if you have not gotten it to work yet. Good luck! And happy jam'n!

Now, I've tried all the tricks like sympathetic EQ-ing, rolling off the low end to make room for the bass, panning one left, one right, reducing the gain/distortion etc...Guitar amp pro is a little, ermmmm; lame (for what I want, anyhow)?

No man, right forum. For that kind of sound, you really want to keep your guitar thin and razor like and complement them with a killer bass sound. It really works when the bass and the guitar play the exact same riffs. Listen to your influences (Rammstein, Marilyn Manson...) and make sure you analyze the writing in the parts that have the sound you like. If you start with good songwriting/arranging, your engineering/production work is going to be easier.

You can do a lot of things with Guitar Amp Pro and/or Amplitube, but nothing is going to sound like a speaker moving air with a mic in front. Something like a sennheiser 421 in front of a 4x12' pushed a little hard, not too distorted.. and then you can play with it in Logic, adding more distortion.

So different sounds, different pannings, don't hesitate to mix 4 or more tracks of different sounding guitars, and play each track so they all sound a little different. That's how you'll get something thick.

Positive is subjective, and we're talking about extreme distortion here. I've done quite a bit of industrial rock work and it's a challenge to get distorted guitars to sound really modern and almost digitally distorted while keeping the punch and dynamic.

I've never found a real amp that gave a good industrial distortion. A lot of guitar player use pedals like the Boss MT2 in front of a tube amp. I've had great results recording a mildly crunchy tone (Marshall or Mesa Boogie) and run that through the Bit Crusher in Logic.

Ok, cool...cheers for the tips. David, what set-up do bands like Marylin Manson/ Rob Zombie etc. have live then? Just standard 4x12 stacks with different fx/ distrortion pedals? Just curious more than anything.

On a side note, is amazing how music tech has advanced over even the last 10 years. I bought a Sepultura's "Chaos AD" (1993) to replace a long lost CD, today. I used to think it had big, heavy production; Well, put next to Rob Zombies "Hellbilly Delux" (1998) it's production was nowwhere near as "heavy" and "thick" sounding! I realise they are different bands, but the sound quality/ production was really noticable.

Iscariot, the bands your talking about blend a lot of differnt tones. They combiine digital with mic'd sounds. I'm a big fan of all of the bands you mention. I use to be a huge Line 6 guy, but then I discovered Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Their program gets you up and running in no time. The cool thing about Line 6 is that you can go to their website and download user presets. Some people post presets that sound like Black Sabbath, Carcass, Nevermore. Check out

I think you'll find something you'll like. You'll need to use midi to transfer the tones unless you have a POD with USB. You can also try a technique known as re-amping. The thing that has worked best for me has been to blend different amps and creative panning. Good luck. You'll have to post your stuff so that we can hear what you came up with.

Wikked- No problem...these forums are jolly good, are they not? Yes, I've heard about re-amping, but am yet to give it a go. As for the POD, so far, I really like it, but am thinking like you say, blending a number of different ampsounds/ distrotions etc...

The thing is, I find multi-tracking "muddies" the sound, and I loose definition, even with the gain turned down. When it comes to rock/ metal rhythm guitar, I'm pretty damned accurate, so this can prove a little infuriating!

OK. I used to ask the same question you asked. How can I get that perfect heavy tone of the likes of those band's recordings. I have one answer which really worked for me and I swear by it. It is the greatest way to record heavy guitars and I will never change the way record.

I use the pod also. Find a really heavy tone that is closest to the one you want for a particular song. Now when you come to record a riff, you need to record the same riff 4 times. It sounds wierd, but you cant just double the same riffs up and pan them separately, this just increases the volume. Basically, record the riff four times and pan them like this:

I once read a short article about a guy who had mixed Rammstein, basically what he was saying was that they had a WALL of guitars. Think stacks and thing tracking it lots of times. Double tracking is probably not enough.

Make sure your guitars are in tune, like really in tune. Have a good tech set up the intonation so that they play in tune up and down the neck. Use a good strobe or digital tuner, like a Korg DTR-1000 or a Peterson (NOT a boss stomp box), and tune between every pass. Try not to unintentionally pull or bend notes. You will be amazed at the 'size' you can add to your guitar sound just by doing this...

Try baritone guitars. I hear a lot of this in that nu-metal/neo-industrial stuff that I believe you are describing, with various inversions of the root chord (as other posters have said). Try out some harmonizer plugs or hardware (Eventide!) if you can't do the baritone guitar thing...

Lay off the digital distortion or modellers, IMHO. Ok for an overdub or a bit of 'fizz', but lacking (generally) in body. Rent an Mesa Boogie 3R or a Soldano, or better yet an Orange Rockerverb, or better yet still a Diezel, if you can get your hands on one...

Use closed-back cabinets, not combos with open backs, and the attacks on rhythm parts will be much sharper. You may not notice this sort of thing as an OMG on one track, but put a few together and you will start to hear it...

Also, try as a general rule to use a flatter response mic on the cab, like a Sennheiser 421 or e409, or a Shure SM-7. I think you may get more size this way, without the high mid build-up that you would be fighting with the typical 57 or cheap LDC setup. Mic close, preferrably in a very dead space. Reverb, delay, and other room artefacts are your enemy, unless you are very clever at managing them...

Others have mentioned playing tight, which is very, very important. I would bet that some of the stuff you are emulating been edited (like quantized drums) in a DAW to make it inhumanly tight. Use your judgement when doing this, and don't use it as a substitute for good playing, but it can be effective...

Probably most importantly, don't try to make every track huge. That wall of sound you hear is actually a bunch of parts that probably wouldn't sound that great if you soloed them. This applies to tracking - laying off the distortion somewhat in favour of body, playing a variety of positions and inversions - and to mixing - arranging and equalizing parts so that they work together well. I know it's not the genre you're going for, but listen to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. Kevin Shields is a master of fitting various guitar parts together so that the whole is greater than... You get the idea.

Last but not least you MUST use the right instrument for this. You're not gonna really get that out of a Strat, but get a Les Paul or something with a double humbucker and you'll get that thick distorted sound.

I worked with En Esch of KMFDM, and i know people like Richard from Ramstien, Ministry, Dr.Know of Bad Brains., not that it makes me a better person, guitar player or that i am name dropping to back this guitar techinc, i just wanted to post this since i do it every day.

For the tight Bad Brains sound Richard from Ramstien did exactly what David suggested, first of making the guitar sound thing to allow the bass player to punch the bottom ends, then make sure all guitar tracks where played twice and then panned hard left and right in stereo but not to wide as they can fall totally out of the mix., bass stays in the canter with the drums offcourse.

So just simply record a riff 2 times, then hard left one and hard right the other, make sure they are on time perfectly and listen from there,. don't use the exact same sample cause it will only sound like you widen the guitar a little and out of phase depending if you tweaked the eqs.

Line 6 PodXt live (many sounds but a toy) for beginners its a taste of different amp sounds but could be a trap as well if one never learns how guitar sound is mixed live., I still have it but can not tell why, they keep improving the thing, recently they actually listened to a suggestion i made which was to allow people to access there hardware via audio units, Line 6 has a future as i see, i just hope they get the JCM800 sound down, so far its fine for trash metal.

I compared it side by side with a 50w JCM800 to a slanted 4x12 with "greenbacks." and i must say i forgot which one is which now after ii listen to Mp3 demos of all these tracks, Offcourse been mp3s at low res helps simply apply the guitar phrases and riffs ideas only and makes it hard to really appreciate the quality, but mp3, REX and those suck to me., sound quality people get used to like this is so bad that they never hear decent again to appreciate a live show to understand sound all over.

The rest have some unique ideas but are over priced, Amplitude replaced all those for me, maybe the VOX is ok, but even Guitar Rigg can replace the bulkiness of that, i still have yet to hear anything beat Korg's JCM800 sound., its amazing! check it out yourself.

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