GGD Contenders Cab Plugin / Impulses

[Jarick]

Recently I've been seeing a ton of people online praising the GGD IR's, so I picked up the Contenders plugin yesterday.

They aren't actually IR files but it's a plugin where you mix your own IR files like a Cab Lab or Redwirez. You get 8 different cabs (all 4x12's) with several mic options for each cab. But instead of adjusting the mic position, you get one "sweet spot" with a knob to make it darker or brighter. So it's kind of more like the UA Ox Box, but you can mix and match 7 different cab/mic combos. No room sim or effects though. And then you can either save a preset or export an IR to load in a modeler.

I actually find these all to sound really good, the 57's are all very usable. Of course you can blend in a ribbon or condenser for more warmth, or you can dial the knob to make it darker, or toggle an "EQ" switch which flips over to an alternate IR with EQ baked in (usually to dial out harshness or clean up low end). One thing I wish they'd do better is auto volume leveling, they do this when adding a new cab but if you adjust each cab level or mute one cab it messes up the overall volume.

There's a bunch of artist presets from the usual suspects and I found a Rabea one that sounds really good. Exported it and running into the Axe FX 3, works really nicely, and really balanced. I wanted a bit more high end so added another 57 cab to help it cut. I really prefer the curated IR's with less tweaking, and it seems like it's hard to find a bad sound where other things like Dyna Cab are really hard to find a good balanced sound.

Curious if anyone else has tried these out and what your thoughts are?

 

[hblu22]

I have all of the ggd cab sims. I find their ease of use exceptional and they improved with newer versions like contenders with quality of life improvements like listing the volumes per mic. Fidelity is awesome and exporting ir’s for hardware use is simple. They are essentially designed to not have a bad sound — but if you don't like “that sound” its really hard to significantly alter them. I also found when comparing exported ir’s with same cab but a few different mic options that the differences were often almost neglible both from auditory as well as visual (frequency plot) point of view — much more homogenous than my own experience with real cabs and microphones.

Still I found most of their selected mic sweet spots a bit too dark for me and could never ‘brighten them enough to achieve exactly what I wanted. I favor other cab sim options like neural dsp’s 3d positioning, mirror profiles amazing cab ir’s or making my own ir’s (kind of my main focus now - just for personal use but they obviously achieve my personal intentions best). Agree that they are easier to dial in than dynacabs esp if someone has less real world experience miking real cabs (not implying you don't but I have seen some folks really struggle). I also felt dynacabs were particularly hard to dial in for me — always a bit too harsh or too dark and difficult to get balanced tones. Neural cabs in the qc and their plugins were a bit easier but I suspect it is because the actual ir spots selected are more limited than suggested by the positions - cap mic spots are a little too dull/dark compared with my own experience with close miked cabs or possibly they added a high cut without actually disclosing it or the mic is literally eating the grill cloth which would add tons of proximity effect. I close-mike but usually leave at least an inch or so for my closest proximity ir captures.

 

[Jarick]

Excellent write up, totally agree!

NDSP cabs I really liked from the QC, much easier to find good tones without tweaking. I think the GGD stuff is likely similar because Nolly was involved with both.

Dyna Cabs definitely are hard to balance harsh vs dark. It sounds much more like the mic is placed technically where it should and you can move around infinitely to try to find a good spot which may or may not exist on that cab at that angle. I’d guess the GGD approach might have the 57 moved around until it sounds the best even if you’re off axis a bit or proximity isn’t the same. I would prefer that approach.