IK Multimedia TONEX

[Sascha Franck]

Just a high cut and a bit of low cut. But in the tonex vst? Quite a bit of dancing around, especially for the high end.

The tonestack doesn't do it for you? It most often does for me.
But as said before, I agree, high and low cuts in the cab section would be nice.

 

[dean701]

it would be nice to have the cuts but depth and presence do a lot. Depth takes care of 120hz and presence adds/cuts spice.

 

[Sascha Franck]

My Pirate MIDI Pico is about to leave Down Under, should now take a week or a little more. Gotta say it's been quite a while that I've been awaiting a piece of kit that much.

 

[Dimiguitar]

The tonestack doesn't do it for you? It most often does for me.
But as said before, I agree, high and low cuts in the cab section would be nice.

It can get me some way to where I wanna be, but I often want to be more surgical. Especially with the high end. Matching some specific EQ moves with tonex tonestack well isn't as easy, if at all possible in some cases.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Regardless of several quirks IK has allowed to slip into their software, there's really a lot of things to love with Tonex.

but I often want to be more surgical. Especially with the high end.

Hm, typical high/low cuts on cab blocks aren't exactly surgical. In fact, usually not at all. The amp tonestack of the Tonex at least is a *lot* more surgical (and it's not exactly that, either, as the boost/cut range is pretty tame).

 

[synthpenguin]

I was going to try that next. I'll get time tomorrow to add some IR's/Cabs to the preset and turn them on/off. The only reason I'm thinking this may not help is that the tone model sounded great with my acoustic until I turned on a pedal model on my stomp.

The tone model I am using is @Deadpan LRS Acoustic 03 and it has a cab backed in already

LRS Acoustic Amp 03

TONEX Tone Model sharing community

www.tone.net

I can't try that capture right now, but if the IR / "cab" is designed to model an acoustic guitar, it may not be filtering out the high end like a speaker would. This can be good for clean(er) sounds, but might be pretty bad with overdrive pedals. When running into your guitar speaker, you're getting the guitar speaker's frequency curve on top of this capture, and that's rounding things off, whereas that's not happening with a PA speaker etc that is giving a more neutral response (or at least one with a lot more high end, and usually low end too).

If you want to keep the capture as it is, and don't want to add a guitar speaker IR on top of it (e.g. with the cab block in Helix), then yeah I'd either use a drive pedal block that can cut quite a bit of high end (and possibly some low-end too), or introduce a high cut after the Tonex that toggles on when you toggle the drive pedal. I'd try setting that high cut as low as 5 to 7kHz even.

An alternative approach would be to switch to an entirely different Tonex capture for driven sounds, like a normal guitar amp one. Choosing an amp that doesn't have a big mid scoop or too little low end could help with the transition between the two sounds. A round full sound. I'd maybe even look at a tweed type thing, or like a Benson Chimera capture (Amalgam has some free amp + cab Benson captures on Tonenet that you can try), or AC30 normal channel.

 

[Dimiguitar]

Regardless of several quirks IK has
Hm, typical high/low cuts on cab blocks aren't exactly surgical. In fact, usually not at all. The amp tonestack of the Tonex at least is a *lot* more surgical (and it's not exactly that, either, as the boost/cut range is pretty tame).

What I meant by “surgical” (maybe not the best word) is that with a high cut, I know exactly where the cutoff starts — it’s a blunt tool, but at least predictable.

With the Tonex EQ stack, the Treble range feels pretty limited, and the Presence control doesn’t specify what frequencies it’s actually affecting. I'll probably ask IK, but didn't have the best results fudging with it.

But with a high cut, I can just use my typical settings and know where my high end tops out for a given tone and context. Similar stuff I always do with other units.

On the low end, at least Tonex gives you a lot more usable range: that's better than the perceived high end issue, I think.

 

[Sascha Franck]

the Treble range feels pretty limited

Hm, along with the frequency knob I think it's pretty effective.

On the low end, at least Tonex gives you a lot more usable range:

It's actually the same as with the treble knob. Just for lows.

 

[Dimiguitar]

Hm, along with the frequency knob I think it's pretty effective.

It's actually the same as with the treble knob. Just for lows.

Treble only goes up to around 4000, right? Thereabouts. Something like that. I think we don't have control after that, minus the presence knob, which I'm not sure what frequencies it affects.

But bass knob can be set fairly low to target frequencies usually problematic to me. So that's less of an issue. Can mostly get rid of mush. But the high end, that's been harder, especially for the big tones I typically go for.

That's why it's an issue for me. There's workarounds, but they are less convenient.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Treble only goes up to around 4000, right?

Yes. And it seems to be a shelve EQ with very low Q (probably just around 6dB per octave). So, while it's not a cut but a shelve, it's pretty similar to, say, the high cut of the HX cab block, the main difference being that you can as well boost.
I'm actually not sure what you're usually doing with frequencies above 4kHz, because typically there's little information. All one usually does is to apply a high cut.

 

[synthpenguin]

and the Presence control doesn’t specify what frequencies it’s actually affecting

fwiw if I'm remembering right, the presence control is a high shelf starting around 500 to 600Hz (and depth is a fairly wide bell filter centered around 70 to 80Hz)

EDIT:
Okay, yep. A little more complicated than just a high shelf, but basically:

 

[Sascha Franck]

fwiw if I'm remembering right, the presence control is a high shelf starting around 500 to 600Hz (and depth is a fairly wide bell filter centered around 70 to 80Hz)

That seems correct (just sent some white noise through a neutral capture and watched what happened in an analyzer when fooling around with them knobs).

 

[dean701]

confirmed. graph 1 in plug in doctor is the depth freq. at noon on the dial it is flat.

presence does this: (also flat at noon)

 

[synthpenguin]

That seems correct (just sent some white noise through a neutral capture and watched what happened in an analyzer when fooling around with them knobs).

Yep, just edited my reply with a video that does that too :)

 

[synthpenguin]

For normal guitar stuff, I've found that that EQ set to pre + the presence and depth controls can turn a (relatively) neutral capture into just about any sound I want. Very bright and/or thin captures can be more of an issue, but not always.

Not having the high cut can be problematic for certain IRs, but it's been fine for me as long as I'm picky about them. Lately, I do lean towards darker amps though, and that might be part of it. Also, I never use amp + cab captures outside of a couple free ones I got and only use occasionally.

 

[Sascha Franck]

For normal guitar stuff, I've found that that EQ set to pre + the presence and depth controls can turn a (relatively) neutral capture into just about any sound I want.

Yeah, it's pretty flexible. I keep the EQ post, though, for consistency in my live rig (and in the plugin world, I've got various other options anyway). I actually like a broad mid Q at around 500Hz, allows me to thicken up any sound quickly (or thin it out somewhat), basically pretty much what I typically need for last minute adjustments.

 

[synthpenguin]

Yeah, it's pretty flexible. I keep the EQ post, though, for consistency in my live rig (and in the plugin world, I've got various other options anyway). I actually like a broad mid Q at around 500Hz, allows me to thicken up any sound quickly (or thin it out somewhat), basically pretty much what I typically need for last minute adjustments.

Yeah, post is the way to go for a lot of things! I just like it pre for the interaction with amp gain, but it just depends on what you're trying to do!

 

[Sascha Franck]

Btw, by now I have recorded around 20 loops for the internal file player. At first I thought that thing was a bit gimmicky, but by now I find it absolutely fantastic. I've recorded stuff from all my 3 main live guitars using all relevant pickup positions (on some files I actually switch within the file) and various playing techniques. As they're all trimmed properly, the player loops them perfectly.
This is just super useful. No need to pre-record anything for guitarfree operation and I can very quickly "switch" guitars.

It's gotta be said: While there's plenty of quirks in IK software land, they've defenitely gotten quite some things right.

 

[Dimiguitar]

Yes. And it seems to be a shelve EQ with very low Q (probably just around 6dB per octave). So, while it's not a cut but a shelve, it's pretty similar to, say, the high cut of the HX cab block, the main difference being that you can as well boost.
I'm actually not sure what you're usually doing with frequencies above 4kHz, because typically there's little information. All one usually does is to apply a high cut.

I cut highs, and often don't want frequencies around 4k affected/attenuated. My cut is often set as high as 10k. For gainy metal tones with my IRs, that typically makes a meaningful difference.

I think of it this way: a small sliver of glass in the hand may feel insignificant. But the moment I touch something, it becomes much more noticeable, painful, undesirable.

Similarly, even though there's less stuff above a given frequency level, it can still be a relative problem, especially for some kinds of heavy tones and fizz. And you may want to target frequencies just above a certain, higher level and up, not affecting stuff around 4k.

 

[Dimiguitar]

Yes. And it seems to be a shelve EQ with very low Q (probably just around 6dB per octave). So, while it's not a cut but a shelve, it's pretty similar to, say, the high cut of the HX cab block, the main difference being that you can as well boost.
I'm actually not sure what you're usually doing with frequencies above 4kHz, because typically there's little information. All one usually does is to apply a high cut.

And an example of what tones I'm talking about. Don't 100% remember what high cut I used here, but it's likely 10k.