Rosen Digital Impulse Responses

[Maribeth Seagers]

Thereare two broad approaches to designing patches: Stomp mode: get the most out of each patch (includes snapshots), or Preset Mode: make each patch for a specific purpose. These two approaches correspond to the Helix Stomp Footswitch Mode and Preset Footswitch Mode respectively. In stomp footswitch mode the footswitches are used to control 8 or 10 (Stomp Mode Switches global setting) effect settings while in preset footswitch mode the footswitches are used to select between 8 different patches. The Preset Mode Switches global setting can be used to provide a combination of both with one row of stomp switches and another row of four presets.

Distortion and Overdrive: Overdrive, gain staged for different boost/distortion and voicing levels. One should be for controlling metal lead distortion, and another for creating the overall amp sound. The second should clean up well when turning down the guitar volume. This section can also be handled completely by the amp if it has sufficient gain staging options. Cartographer is a good amp model for this because it has two Drive controls and two Bright switches to control the gain and distortion voicing. Use it with snapshots to setup different gain staging configurations that could eliminate the need for distortion pedals. Using overdrive pedals however can give more control over the amount of distortion and overdrive, as well as the tone shaping or voicing. Use a tube preamp and/or EQ before distortion to control the distortion tone. Use a tube preamp and/or EQ after distortion into a clean amp to do a simple volume boost for clean or distorted tones.

Modulation Effects: Mod effects like flanger and chorus come next. These effects modulate frequency and usually work best after distortion. More classic tones came from pedals before the amp which provided most of the overdrive. This can result in a less articulate tone, and reduces the impact of the effect. In some cases, these effects were produced in the studio after the recording, especially flanger for a more pronounced effect that is operating on the distorted signal rather than being distorted by the overdrive.

Ambient effects: Delay and reverb effects go last. Usually Delay comes before reverb. Use a slap-back delay for clean ambiance, and a longer delay with repeats to smooth out the overall tone.

With the preliminaries finally out of the way, we can now get down to the actual patch details. This is my goto electric guitar patch. It designed primarily for Americana, Blues and Rock styles, and using a Stratocaster (or single coil pickups). Its based on a Fender style amplifier, but takes liberties with the speaker model to get the desired warmth.

The first effect in the signal chain is the Chrome Custom Wah. Of all the Wah Wah pedals in Helix, this one sounds the most musical to me. Its before the compressor to deal with any odd peaks when using the Wah with a clean tone.

I use to use the Deluxe Comp because it gives a lot of control that can be used to reproduce other compressors as needed. But I found the Red Squeeze works a bit better for guitar and is simpler to use. The Red Squeeze models the MXR Dyna Comp compressor which has 36dB of compression, very fast attack (5 msec), very slow release (1 sec), and high compression ratio (10:1 or more). This is well suited for guitar and provides very nice sustain as well as the funky attack. Kinky Comp is another good choice (and uses less DSP).

The Studio Tube Pre sounds good and is a flexible means of adding some early distortion through its Drive control, and a mid-focus EQ using a combination of the Low Cut and High Cut parameters. By adjusting these two parameters, you can control the width of the mid-focus EQ and where it is positioned in the frequency spectrum.

Before going into the details of this block, we have to consider gain staging. Since this patch is based on patch mode, and we want to get a wide range of tones out of the same patch, we use gain staging to control different levels of distortion. I like to have four gain levels in a patch like this one: Clean, Drive, Overdrive, and Distortion. Each of these gain levels increases distortion and uses various tone controls to control the distortion voicing.

Teemah! is used to create the Overdrive tone, and is controlled by the Overdrive footswitch. Gain is set to provide additional distortion for blues leads while Bass Cut and TrebleCut are used to provide additional bass and treble cuts for higher gain distortion voicing.

The Amp Master volume is set pretty high so that any initial distortion is created by the power amp, not the preamp stages. The Amp Drive control is controlled by the Drive footswitch to, along with the Studio Tube Pre early in the signal chain, and the one following the IR, support the Clean and Drive gain stages as described above. Recall that the Drive footswitch also controls the Studio Tube Pres to add some a bass cut when the Drive is increased. The tone controls are set for the desired clean tone using the Strat neck pickup. That often results in the bridge pickup being a bit too bright, but turning the guitar tone control down just a little fixes that and provides the overall clean tone.

A quick slapback delay can add depth to guitar tones without standing out or contributing to muddy ambiance. I leave this on all the time, but it is configured to be turned of if the long delay after the amp in path 2 is turned on. Mix is set so the slapback is there, but not that noticable when you play.

I added this traditional guitar-centered EQ between the amp and IR. Its set flat, but is available for tone shaping if needed. I like this EQ for guitar because the five frequency bands are right in the range for an electric guitar: from 80 Hz, the low E string to 6 kHz which is about the high-frequency limit for an electric guitar.

The Leslie block is placed in path 2B so that it is in parallel with the cabinet model. I use a snapshot to switch the 145 Rotary block on. Speed is controlled by EXP 1, so the Volume block is bypassed in this snapshot. The 2A merge block controls the mix of the amp and IR tone with the Leslie tone. This balance is usually -60dB so there is no Leslie tone. The Leslie snapshot changes the B level to -16.4dB to blend in the Leslie. Again, headroom is high because the effect (designed for guitar input) is being fed by the amp output.

In an electric guitar setup, the things that touch the air often have a major impact on the overall tone. That starts with the guitar (including pick, strings, and pickups) and ends with the speaker cabinet. Helix provides a lot of cabinet options, including dual cabinet modes. But there are also a wealth of guitar speaker cabinet impulse responses (IRs) on the market and free on the Web that also sound wonderful. Support for IR blocks is one of the distinguishing features of Helix over the POD HD500X. Selecting the right cabinet (open or closed back), speaker, mic and mic position can really tailor the sound.

After trying a lot of Helix Cab models, and a number of my own Redwirez and Rosen Digital IRs, I discovered JOOSTALNICO-G12M-R121-U67 IR.wav from the Helix forum post My Two Rock/Fender clean tone, PRESET+IR by JazzInc. This is a very warm, low-end heavy model that uses a blend of two Redwirez models:

This Studio Tube Pre is designed to come after the amp and cabinet to warm the tone and provide after the amp low and high cut filters as needed. The effect is subtle, but does seem to improve the overall tone of the patch.

The Studio Tube Pre is set pretty flat and clean so that it does not produce any additional distortion. The low cut is set to minimize any sub harmonics created by the amp, while the high cut is used to control fizz and ice-pick from the gain stages and amp distortion.

This delay adds an obvious long delay or echo effect intended to be more noticeable. The delay is longer, 1/2 sec, and there are repeats. This delay can be used to fill in softer, sparse phrases, or provide even more ambiance in situations where there are fewer instruments and you need some fill. This is a delay setting that would often be used to thicken vocals. The Transistor Tape delay provides some modulation of the delays, giving a wider, richer overall tone without creating a wooshy chorus on the main tone.

I have set Scale high so there is just a little delay offset between the left and right channels. WowFluttr is use to add a little modulation on the delayed signal. Spread is set to 5.0 so that the modulation on the delays is partially in stereo. Trails are on since there are repeats that fade out when the effect is bypassed.

A LA Studio Comp compressor is placed at the end of the signal chain to take advantage of its unique contribution to the tone, even when its not compressing that much. This helps glue the effects together and provides a good controlled signal into the FRFR amp. Again, the effect is subtle, but does contribute to the overall tone. The use of the LA Studio Comp, and the Studio Tube Pre after the amp are intended to duplicate what would be typically be done in a studio when setting up for an electric guitar track.

The last thing in the signal chain before the output is a Parametric EQ. This provides the final tone shaping of the total signal path including the effects. It plays the same role an EQ in a recording track would play for final tone shaping to fit into the mix. I also use this EQ in snapshots to provide for an acoustic tone from the JTV-69S with the amp and IR blocks turned off. Like the Cali Q Graphic EQ, the frequencies are chosen to be useful for guitar tones.

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