DAY 8: preset memories management Pt.1

I am writing this to clarify my ideas.

I stored all the preset for the RGD and 7 string in the orange bank:

Heavy oriented for guitars with a lot of basses

The red bank is for SZ and other guitars, again heavy oriented:

And, finallym the green bank is for blues to hard rock presets:

There are a number of tips i'm using to order the presets:

# - Clean tones
G - Clean or slight dirty ( Insane preset should be moved elsewhere)
A - M2K allround
C - American 90 allround
B - Solo presets
D - Megadeth/Metallica/Trash, only the red is a Marshall, i have no other marshall models in the banks
E - Should also be for Solo presets but more melodic side
F - maybe another clean zone

Some slot still to with default tone, but they will go soon. I have a big number of tones in my library with 5-6 version of every tone i am working at in the preset library.

Preset in the Mustang are selected to be in some way peculiar, such has dinamic response or bass response.

Example:

Insane: very strong in the armonic department, like you have a totally different amp
ENGL amb: fake an ENGL amplifier, not very strong in the palm muting zone but still a very peculiar flavor and ambience
Raw boomer: a Mesa with a lot of Bass response
Erotomania: very very good for palm muting riffing and also good in soloing, but without the classic delay setting for solos

Continue...

Day 7: british heads and stranger cabs

I read many things about cabs emulation on the net recently, here is some useful info.

First of all, a list of equivalence:

57DLX = 1x12" 1957 Fender Deluxe [unknown] speaker
BSSMN = 4x10" Jensen speakers
65DLX = 1x12" Jensen C12Q speaker
65PRN = 1x10" Jensen C10R speaker
CHAMP = 1x8"  1957 Fender Champ[unknown] speaker
4x12M = 4x12" Celestion G12T-75 speakers
2x12C = 2x12" VOC AC30 [unknown] speakers
4x12G = 4x12" Celestion G12M Greenback speakers
65TWN = 2x12" Jensen C12N speakers
4x12V = 4x12" Celestion Vintage 30 speakers
SS212 = 2x12" Eminence speakers
SS112 = 1x12" Celestion Vintage 30 / Celestion Alnico Blues

I usually select the 4x12V that gives you the best tone if you like you palm muted E string to be defined and "raw!

I also read a post that suggested to use the SS112 (that is a 1x12 cab with v30 or alnico blues speaker and give a similar sound but a bit more "vintage") to get a decent tone with the brit models.

Indeed it works well, i found i can sort out a decent tone from the brits if i back the bass knob under 4 (11 oclock), keep the middle above 4 and dont go too far with the gain knob!

Day 6: New Joe Satriani Tone with Metal2000

As you may have read in my previous post, i've found similarity between the Metal 2000 and the Soldano amp, so i managed to experiment with my Satriani patch.

Some word:

1) stomp boxes: i've found that the fuzz wah do a pretty good job in the wah department. This one is twaked to my touch

2) Amp eq: need a good amount of high freq but without sounding too raw, also need some mid to make the wah wah work properly

side notes: if you want a solo tone without the wah i may suggest you to lower the amp gain and put the overdrive in front of it. I heard that in many songs Satriani is clean channel + Boss overdrive!


You can find it here:

https://fuse.fender.com/mustang/preset.php/mordor74-satch-wah-satriani-summer-song-metal2000

Day 5: work in progress on Amp Models on the Mustang...

When run any of my guitars on my Toneport GX i have the basic 18 amps + 24 from the power pack + 18 from the Metal pack: 60 amps!

The amps i use most are the L6 clean for the clean and a range of high gain: The "mesa", the mark IIC+, the "soldano", the "marshal preamp", the "engl", the L6 Insane plus a number of other that really does not make much difference to me other than have a different graphical front end.

When i switched to the Mustang I the number of emulated amps dropped to 12.

I use the twin for the clean, the bassman for my bluesy moods and for the high gain things the American 90 ("mesa") and the Metal 2000 ("peavy 5150 and sons"). I dont use the Marshall, i dont like them that much!

As i stated before i have recovered a functional model of my beloved IIC+ by tweaking SEG and BIAS.

this leads me to a consideration: you have 12 amps with 3 SEG setting and another 3 "extreme" settings for the BIAS (with a lot of finetuning possibility...). A total of 12*3*3 model possibility: 108?

So i started a little research on guitar amp genealogy to better understand where my experiments lead.

I found this interesting video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5kf5CuB8FA

It shows that the Soldano, the EVH and the Peavy sound pretty similar with some small diffrence that you can also find on 2 copy of the same model that slightl differ in the bias twak or in the valve "condition".

If you use the settings from the video on your mustang amp you will get a pretty similar sound :).

So in my todo-list i added this:

Getting a round and warm lead, soldano like, tone from my Metal2000 model.

Finally i started building a "guitar amp's family tree":

Day 4: The Mustang BIAS setting and the Mesa Boogie Mark IIC+ sound

I've been experimenting to fake a Mesa Mark IIC+ with the American '90. I found i nice sound with SEG and BIAS to the max so i started reading about BIAS on valve amps, especially Mesa ones...

It tourned out that an higher BIAS warm the sound and a lower BIAS make it raw, so:

1) high BIAS for warm soloing leads

2) low BIAS for cutting edge solos and metal rythm

As a final result i got a pretty decent fake of the IIC+ sound that i used to make a patch that sound like Rob Balducci in the clinic i've recently been.

Here is the preset:

https://fuse.fender.com/mustang/preset.php/mordor74-mesa-mark-2c-rob-balducci-v4

Next i will be sperimenting to obtain a flat clean sound and to obtain further more result with my bias settings...

Day 3: Fender Mustang volume tips

ANTIFACT

At the beginning i manage my volumes on the mustang like i used to do on my L6 products:

i set to an high level my clean channel patch and balance the volume of the dirt/high gain channels to the clean ones

i sorted out with a clean channel at 8-10 and 6-8 fot the overdrived channels...

THE PROBLEM

this gives me 2 issues:

usb recording was a bit "confused" and "undefined"

i was unable to control the master volume: it was too sensible! in passed from not enough volume to too much volume with a light touch of rotation

THE ANALYSIS

When i recorded i started to lower volume for the channel and then i understand:

while L6 channel volume act "digitally" with no change in the tone, the mustang channel volume act more like a real amp: the more you push it the more it changes, act differently

THE SOLUTION:

I set the volume for my overdrive channels at 4 and then balanced the clean to them

THE FINAL RESULT:

1 - better recording

2 - a good fine tuning of the master volume