One for the guitarists

[crimsonwarlock]

Anyone recommend any good plugins for making guitars sound interesting?

Short answer: get all the Kuassa stuff

[MrFigg]

Anyone recommend any good plugins for making guitars sound interesting?

Short answer: get all the Kuassa stuff

Yep. Kuassa. That said, as someone who owns waaaaaay too many amp sims, I can recommend getting Hotone VStomp. It normally costs $99. It’s down to $49.99 in their home page but for some reason if you follow this link you can get it for $9.99.

https://shop.hotoneaudio.com/products/vstomp

I wouldn’t hesitate. I like the tones and would certainly take it over AmpliTube any day. I do own AmpliTube.

[dakta]

Thanks all,

Maybe I'm easy to amuse in my middle aged but I laughed at 'get all the Kuassa stuff '

Pretty succinct

Passive listening to the radio there's just a lot of moments like 'hmm I actually wonder what they did to get that sound'

[DaveyG]

I'd suggest initially just getting the free version of AmpliTube:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitube5cs/

It has a decent selection of amps and pedals and a bunch of presets that will help you get close to many of the more common FX combos. And it's hard to argue with the price. If you ever want to upgrade it make sure you don't pay full price because they regularly have huge discounts on that stuff.

[crimsonwarlock]

Maybe I'm easy to amuse in my middle aged but I laughed at 'get all the Kuassa stuff '

Well, that was an easy one

Passive listening to the radio there's just a lot of moments like 'hmm I actually wonder what they did to get that sound'

I (try to) emulate certain guitar sounds (without using an actual guitar), and I regularly watch episodes of Anderton's “Sound like...” and “That pedal show” to find how certain FX combine to get a specific sound.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... QbbZc2qTCU

https://www.youtube.com/@ThatPedalShow/playlists

And I try to emulate that with... all the Kuassa stuff

[dakta]

Sorry for a late reply, it's all appreciated. I'm still loving the guitar.

At the moment I've found my favourite play along - it's not going to float anyones boat on here I don't think but I love the energy

I also love the passive but blatant "if I want to put an electric guitar to a electronic synth backdrop, that's exactly what is happenin"

One thing I wanted to ask, on the topic of 'sounds like' - a friend mentioned some kind of effect you could get to change a guitars octave, we got onto this subject because I noticed on some music the lead guitar goes quite low and I wasn't sure how they acheived it. Not bass low but just an octave further than my (non bass) guitar can.

Is this a thing, does reason have the capability, if not what do I need to look for?

[Jackjackdaw]

There are various pitch shifting pedals for guitar. Boss Octaver is a popular one. The latest model has polyphonic detection and and isolate just the bass strings to pitch shift. Sometimes people will tune the E string lower to get lower notes. You can get Baritone guitars with longer necks and lower overall pitch, think Twin Peaks theme tune or Phoebe Bridgers. Reason has a bunch of pitch shifter fx. Polarr is the Reason studios one. It’s a bit of a handful to dial in. There is one called Ghmammy which looks to be based on the digitech Whammy pedal which might be more guitar friendly but I haven’t tried it.

[MrFigg]

There are various pitch shifting pedals for guitar. Boss Octaver is a popular one. The latest model has polyphonic detection and and isolate just the bass strings to pitch shift. Sometimes people will tune the E string lower to get lower notes. You can get Baritone guitars with longer necks and lower overall pitch, think Twin Peaks theme tune or Phoebe Bridgers. Reason has a bunch of pitch shifter fx. Polarr is the Reason studios one. It’s a bit of a handful to dial in. There is one called Ghmammy which looks to be based on the digitech Whammy pedal which might be more guitar friendly but I haven’t tried it.

Ghammy is great. T2on also Have Drop’n’lift Which is the other side of the Digitech Whammy DT. Kuassa Have an intelligent pitch shifter which works well in chords. If I remember correctly TonicMint have a free RE similar to drop’n’lift.

Edit: sorry, the TonicMint one is a MIDI Transposer.

[dakta]

as always, thanks so much for the responses!

I think a larger guitar is out for two reasons - budget and reach due to length (the latter being more of a problem, I'm a small person haha)

I'll have a look at Polar, would neptune in transpose mode do anything similar? It's not a plugin I've ever used as I don't work with vocals but I wonder if it might, though having loaded it into the rack it looks a bit of a handful so I'd better put an evening aside to suss it. It's not a bad idea though as since we have the plugins might as well take the chance to familiarise. It's easy to focus on the tools you haven't got rather than sit down with a cosy coffee and spend time with the tools you never paid attention to / didn't know you have.

I'll definitely look into the Kuassa and other suggestions here though, I am building a bit of a budget to build on things, I don't think I can 'get everything' at least for a particular while (or until the next sale ha) but if there are specific recommendations it'd be good to know for payday

Tonights discovery is combining my guitar audi input with the alligator (another device I've neglected to pay much attention to), just roaming through the presets for gating effects etc how cool is that?

I'm a terrible player and will be for a long time (maybe forever) but god this guitar and my bass are turning out to be fun purchase of the year status

[guitfnky]

Ghammy is great, but not the best if you're looking for clean pitch shifting. it's excellent for character and creative pitching though, if that's what you're looking for. Polar is probably the best Reason device if you're looking for something cleaner sounding (think the Digitech Whammy--newer version)--it also has a lot of creative depth as well. Neptune is monophonic only, so you can't really reliably use it to pitch chords, without a lot of glitching/artifacts (which may work well, depending on what you want)--as I recall, it also introduces quite a bit of latency, so may not be the best for live monitoring, but I can't remember for sure.

honestly, I haven't heard anything better than Digitech for quality clean polyphonic shifting, so far. it's a physical guitar pedal, but well-worth it, if you're looking for something accurate.

again, though, if you want creative, there are a ton of great options, and experimenting with/demoing them is a great idea to figure out what will work best for you.

[dakta]

even though I've work tomorrow I've had a play - you're right, i don't know why i focused on neptune, but polar works and tbh for a quick go you can just leave everything, enable transpose and just spin the wheel -12 and there you have it

I presume there's probably a better, cleaner way of doing it, but for a quick result it seems to work and doesn't sound terrible - that said, (besides buying all the Kuassa stuff, which will happen eventually) I'm all ears for things to buy, even if it's just to expand the sonic arsenal.

I'm not going to rule out physical pedals either, not at all - though I don't have a lot of room where i practice - my 'studio' is effectively a broom cupboard haha

[Jackjackdaw]

I'm a terrible player and will be for a long time (maybe forever) but god this guitar and my bass are turning out to be fun purchase of the year status

Remember to practice actual playing as well as noodling around with fx! It will remain fun for longer if you get less terrible.

[MrFigg]

I bought Polar the day it came out way back then. Creative? Absolutely. Don't like it on guitar. Too much latency.

[turn2on]

Ghammy is based on granular engine, fixing buffer size, you make sound pitches more clear with glide fx on pitches. This is granular way to make pitches with grain-buffer size manual control.

After this, we create CORIOLIS FORCE RE. As solution have anything similar to POLAR, inspired by one popular guitar pedal from Catalinbread (Coriolis).
https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... lis-force/

Clear sounding Dual Parallel Pitch Shifter without granular buffer, Freeze (Hold Sustainer), multimode filter (includes HP, LP, BP and X-Wah), so can be used as harmonizer.
You can manipulate with Sustain Hold, Filter processing (can be controlled with pitch changes of L or R shifts or in Sync mode). Possible to make Tape-Stop/Play effects. Etc.

So if you look at any Pith Shifters, just try Corilois too. It's more clear pitch-shifter, just set 20kHz mark mode.

[guitfnky]

I bought Polar the day it came out way back then. Creative? Absolutely. Don't like it on guitar. Too much latency.

I don't think I ran into any latency issues--was using it as my de-facto Whammy replacement in my live practice setup for a while, and it worked nearly as well as the real thing, as I recall. might just need a few settings tweaks. that said, never really cared for it--something about the UI has just never gelled for me, I think. sounds great, but hated the process of using it.

[MrFigg]

I bought Polar the day it came out way back then. Creative? Absolutely. Don't like it on guitar. Too much latency.

I don't think I ran into any latency issues--was using it as my de-facto Whammy replacement in my live practice setup for a while, and it worked nearly as well as the real thing, as I recall. might just need a few settings tweaks. that said, never really cared for it--something about the UI has just never gelled for me, I think. sounds great, but hated the process of using it.

Yeah. I've got a Whammy DT. I still say that Ghammy/ Drop'n'lift are pretty damn close. I like it better than the Kuassa one in any case.

[motuscott]

I have many Kuassa amp sims. The one I keep returning to is Caliburn's JCM800, but they're all pretty great.

[dakta]

re Coriolis force - That looks like quite the beast..!

Love the suggestions, agree with playing to get better, just want to keep it interesting and I'm already composing / writing with the guitar even though nothing complex