Placement in the Chain

As far as placement in the signal chain, I find the most effective place is first in the chain - most of the noise in your tone is coming from the low signal-to-noise ratio and hum produced by guitar pickups. Anything that is compressing the tone in your chain, such as compressors, distortion pedals, and amp models, are amplifying that initial noise. You might think that this would mean to put them last in your chain (or after a compressing element), but then they are very difficult to dial in.

Note that the signal from your pickups is going to by the most dynamic, which makes it best for dialing in gate settings. If you only place a gate after some kind of compression, it will be difficult to find settings that let only let your playing through and not noise but still allow all your playing through.

Dialing it in

To dial in the Hard Gate, start with Hold and Decay set to 0 ms. Set both Open and Close Threshold around 9:00 (about -70db) - easily opened but still high enough to make the gate close when muting. If the gate won't close at these settings, turn them both up until the gate closes with the guitar muted, but with its volume knob at 10/10.

Then I see if I can make the gate open using a mundane noise, such as tapping a string, or rubbing a string with my finger. If so, I turn it up a bit. Once I've gotten it high enough so it won't open from any incidental noises and intermittent hum, I see if it will open by playing the softest note I intend to play. This varies from patch to patch. For a soft lead patch, this might be a mild hammer-on onto a silent string. For my Meshuggah rhythm patch, it's going to be a picked note at at least medium strength. If it won't open, I have to turn it down, even if this means it will also open from incidental noise as I play. Better for it to pick up some incidental noise than block out purposeful playing.

Then I back down the Close Threshold. I want to test it against punchy staccatto notes and chords as well as sustaining notes. I need it to activate between my stacatto playing but not kill a sustaining note; however, these are conflicting goals.

The "middle ground" I choose depends on the patch. For a soft lead, I want it low enough to sustain notes as long as possible. This means I have to make sure the guitar is completely muted to get the gate to close, so I have to pay more attention to doing so if I'm trying to play stacatto or after I let a note decay. For my Meshuggah patch, I want to make sure it activates as soon as I mute the guitar, even if my mute didn't have perfect technique. I'm not sustaining many notes for very long, especially single notes higher on the fretboard which are more sensitive to decay. So long as it doesn't cut off a sustained power chord after a few seconds, I'm happy.

I leave Hold at 0 ms. The Hard Gate is precise and quick enough so that I don't have to worry about trailing noise when quickly muting the guitar from a loud volume. Since I set Decay to a very low time, I don't need to worry about hearing a fade-out of noise either.

If I can get away with setting Decay to 0 ms, I'll do that, but if the gate kicking on creates an unnatural tone, I'm going to either need to use two gates, or introduce a little Decay. I set it just barely off 0, at like 20 ms. The slight decay prevents an unnatural cut-off sound, but it's not long enough so that you hear noise fade out after staccato notes. If it's not tight enough, we'll have to use two gates.

Dual Gates

Using two gates is useful when you're using strong compression or distortion, and you need to go from punchy chords to dead silence very quickly. I like to place the first gate as the first thing in the chain. I dial it in as described above, but it may not kick on fast enough, and those snippets of noise occurring as I'm muting are being amplified and are obvious when listening to the tone.

I add another gate after the compressor/distortion stage that is adding most of the compression. For many people, this is the end of the chain. For me, it's usually before the amp, but after a compressor or distortion effect with a little drive. I dial this one in exactly like the first one, and I turn the first one off while I'm doing so.

Once I've got them both tuned, I try the patch out with them both on. Sometimes it'll end up gating a little too much. I tend to back off the first gate a bit, while keeping the final gate firm.

Top of Amp/Distortion Tone

VI. Cabs and Mics

• A. Cab/Mic Overview
• B. Cab Selection for Direct Tones
• i. My Favorites
• ii. General Tips
• iii. Hiway 4x12
• iv. Tread V-30 4x12
• v. XXL V-30 4x12
• vi. Greenbacks 4x12
• vii. Uber 4x12
• viii. Brit-T75 4x12

· C. Cab Selection for Live Tones

• D. Mic Selection
• i. SM57 On/Off Axis
• ii. Dynamic Mics
• iii. Condenser Mics
• iv. Ribbon Mics
• E. Dual Cabs
• i. Introduction
• ii. Getting the Patch Ready
• iii. Phase Correction
• iv. EQ'ing the Tone
• v. Other Amp Settings
• vi. E.R. Settings
• vii. DSP Management
• viii. My Favorite Combinations
• F. Cab DEP's
• G. E.R.

A. Cab/Mic Overview

There are several things to consider when selecting a cab/mic combinations for your patches. Your main considerations should be the general tone and feel of the cab/mic and whether frequencies are plain noisy or missing.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1061