A question for Hard Rock guitarist..Quiet distortion

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aleef
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2012/10/07 12:56:15 (permalink)

A question for Hard Rock guitarist..Quiet distortion

my apologies in advance, for the X2 users still getting things worked out. i would have posted in the technique forum but all the guitar players come here first. How do you get that screaming fuzzy, guitar sound, but at low volume. sort of like Van Halen's Brown Sound. the older amps had a jack you could plug into and no matter how hard you played, you could hear the deep bassy  fuzz and the picking articulations where it wasnt loud..i know i can put the distorted guitar way back in the mix, but i want to actually play and experiment with the sound. i have all my old Boss stompboxes, a couple of multi-fx processors, Amplitube GR4 and TH2..but no amp to mic.

i know its a longshot, but i thought  i would ask the most informed audio/DAW people on the planet.

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYBODY..May you have a musical breakthrough today...aleef

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    ChuckC
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    Re:A question for Hard Rock guitarist..Quiet distortion 2012/10/07 15:50:31 (permalink)
    I am not real familiar with the sound of the V.H. sound you mentioned... but I can tell ya that for a lot of rock guitar sounds, it is about capturing good mids, accented with some lows (HP around 80hz ish), and I often roll off some of the annoying high end fuzz which helps ya get to that nice warm sound without too much crap on top. So with no amp or mic are you just going DI? Is it a high Z input?

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    aleef
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    Re:A question for Hard Rock guitarist..Quiet distortion 2012/10/07 18:47:48 (permalink)
    just the 710 and fender strat.

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    Beepster
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    Re:A question for Hard Rock guitarist..Quiet distortion 2012/10/07 18:58:01 (permalink)
    I'm not sure I am quite following the question but in GR5 there is a module called Fast Comp (it's obviously a compressor). I'm not sure if it is in GR4 or the Sonar version of GR (although the Sonar version of GR that came with X1 claims to be GR4 it is not. It is a light version). The Fast Comp may do what you are describing and I found it significantly improved my distorted tone in GR. Sadly I don't see anything similar in TH2 Producer but I'd imagine the full version has something. That said TH2 seems to be quite good at reigning in overly aggressive strikes and smooths out the distortion automatically. That could just be my dementia acting up again though. Cheers.
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    Beepster
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    Re:A question for Hard Rock guitarist..Quiet distortion 2012/10/07 19:05:03 (permalink)
    I totally wasn't following the question it seems. If you don't have an actual tube head feeding nice speakers micing probably ain't gonna get you where you want. Eddie used modded out Marshalls which eventually turned into the 5150. You could spend the money on an original 5150 combo (the first few releases are where it's at) or cobble it together with pedals and/or sims. I know this won't produce the exact VH sound but I've always loved MT-2s for searing distortion and I was lucky enough to snag a Keeley modded MT-2 before they seemingly became ultra rare. There are however other companies modding the MT-2s. Anyway, there isn't really a way to truly nail Eddie's sound from specific eras without actually hiring the lunatics that customized his amps. Cheers.
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