Buckethead, Metal, Guitar Rigs

[pushedbutton]

Anyone got a guitar rig set up for sounding like Buckethead or Metalica or something else metal? I'm using Reason 8.2 and I've got a mate here only moderately impressed by the distortion.

[Snugglepuff]

Well Kuassa Creme is obviously a great starting place for heavy sounds. I'm not really crazy a about the Softube Amp's heavy sound, but Navi Retlav pit out some free Combinators for it. One of them is called "Phat Phase High Gain" or something like that and it sounds incredible. It sounds to me with my guitar a lot like Dimebag's sound, kinda chainsaw like. I'd say Kuassa is second to none for amp sims. I even think they outshine the vast majority of Amplitube's offerings, though I do really like their recent Engl sims.

[MarkTarlton]

he plays through a triple rectifier and a custom built 4x10 that weighs over 100 pounds! I had to help carry the thing! he also uses an old cheap alesis midiverb.

[Rook]

I can second Snugglepuff's Kuassa recommendation. I haven't bought their REs yet (I plan to), but was really impressed when I demoed them. I think I like them better than Guitar Rig 4 Pro, which I've been using for a long time.

Do you own any pedals? Digital sims do need some help sometimes. I like to use analog distortion/od pedals going straight into my audio interface into a clean-ish software amp model. As long as you keep the overall volume of the pedal somewhere around unity gain and don't try to push it like you would with a tube amp, it can really add a lot of dimension and more organic feel to your tone.

Sometimes, when you're using a pedal like this, you can actually bypass the amp modeling entirely, and just use a cab sim...even the ones built into the Scream 4 can sound pretty good. Follow it with a really short and subtle room reverb to add a bit more depth (RV7000 or TSAR-1R), just enough so that you don't really notice it until you turn it off.

Of course, as you probably already know, a lot of the metal tones heard on records are the result of double and even quad tracking the guitar riffs. A tone that might not sound massive all by itself can easily get there when you record several tracks of it and pan them hard left/right.