The Gmc Guide To Free High Quality Tone

Revision as of 11:41, 9 May 2012

The Gmc Guide To Free High Quality Tone -- UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!

An article by The Uncreator

So we all want that Mesa Triple, Engl, 6505, Diezel, 5150, AxeFx, or whatever. We also would all want it for free - BUT - we unfortunately live in reality and this is not an option. For those of us who lack the often thousands of dollars to purchase high end equipment, there are solutions such as Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5, Overloud TH2, IK Multimedia's Amplitube 3, or Peavey's Revalver that can all be bought for a couple hundred dollars.

These products essentially emulate many of the high end equipment we love and know, and with recent releases, often times do it remarkably well. They also offer different mic positions, cabinets, stompboxes, and other processing alongside its guitar amp emulation. I will personally testify that these products are worth your money, especially Guitar Rig which produces brilliant lead and solo tones, and exceptional cleans.

Now, there is still yet another option. And this is the best part, everything mentioned from here on out is free. Do not make the mistake and assume that this freeware cannot stand on its own against the might of NI products or Peavey's legendary tone, these not only hold their ground, they often times exceed them.

With a guitar amp, there are many deciding factors such as room, mic placement, mic type, dual mic'ing etc. This is not only expensive, but most of us do not live in studio conditions. These freeware programs ( and the aforementioned ones) emulate the room, the mic type and position, and many other nuances home studio artists might struggle to achieve. These programs are simple VST's that can be opened in your signal chain inside your DAW. Now, lets begin!

The amp

LePou Lecto

LeCto is a guitar amp simulator inspired by an american modern high gain head. This simulator has 2 channels with 3 modes on each channel. It can go from crunch (raw mode) to modern high gain (modern mode).

Features :

-oversampling : determines the signal oversampling; up to 8x
-mono/stereo : determines the signal routing
-input : controls the magnitude of the input signal
-drive : controls the amount of gain
-low : controls the low frequency
-mid : controls the mid frequency
-high : controls the high frequency
-presence : presence control
-resonance* : controls the amount of resonance resulting from the interaction with the speaker cabinet

• Only active on modern mode
  

LePou Legion

LeGion is a high gain preamp simulator. This is an original design, it's not based on any hardware gear. My goal here was to build a high gain sim that doesn't need any booster in front in order to be tight.

Features:
- 2 channels, actually two completely different preamp circuit
- 2 modes on each channel, rhythm and lead
- 2 tonestacks assignable to any of the 2 channels
- the usual drive and tone controls

Thanks again to requietus for his great job on the GUI.
Thanks also to the testers : Alu, daxliniere, cococo, shogger, Dimi, onqel and HOTRIFF.

New version 1.01:
- more output volume
- less volume variations with coutour changes

LePou LE456

It's a preamp sim roughly based on a famous German gear. It has 2 channels and 2 modes per channel. Each channels/modes share the same features. Apart from the usual tone controls (drive, low, mid, high and contour), each channels/modes offer two different tone stacks that can be accessed via the focus switches. Bottom and bright switches can be used to boost the low and the high frequencies respectively. On the low gain channel only (Clean/Crunch), the effectiveness of the bright switch decreases with the gain settings.

Nick Crow 8505

Controls:
POWER - Power ON/OFF.
HQ - Oversampling ON / OFF. Use OFF to reduce CPU usage, use ON to get the quality sound without aliases (more CPU). When a project or the track is exported to a wave file (mixdown, bounce, render, freeze) oversampling is always automatically enabled regardless of the position of the button.
GAIN - Determines the amount of gain applied by the Pre Amp.
LOW, MID, SWEEP, HIGH - Tone Stack controls.
POWER AMP - Determines the amount of gain applied by the Power Amp.
VOLUME - Output level.

TSE (The Serina Experiment) Products

There are many more but these are some of the widely used and highly acclaimed products. The amp will be first in your signal chain, but an amp by itself is nothing right? You need the cabinets, and this is where things get interesting.

The cabinets