Okay, Mesh. I found a sound preset in TH2 that is pretty much the exact Malc tone from For Those About to Rock.
First though... it requires the full version of TH2 so when you said you had TH2 did you mean the one that came with Sonar or did you upgrade to the full version? If it is the full version then you have this tone. It is part of the Lynchbox set of plugs.
I will add to this post with the various instructions, tweaks and thoughts as I play around with it. This is obviously going to depend on your pickups and what guitar you are using but I think I've figured out which controls are the best ones to screw with to accomodate whatever set up you may have. Also I'm doing this with a direct line in using the Inst setting on my Scarlett TH2 instead of doing my usual input through my amps so no mics, mixers or any other outboard crap to gum up the works. I'm using a Yamaha Pacifica that has been modded with a "Hot Strat" style pickup scheme so actually these pickups aren't particularly the best for this tone but in the Hot Strat scheme I do have a bridge humbucker so this should translate reasonably well to a Gibson humbucking set up. Single coils would not be advisable.
For reference I am basing the tone on this youtube upload of the original studio song...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKhTk0IynHM It should also be noted that I personally would try for the older AC/DC sound which to me capture more of the tube sound of a cranked amp AND I am not really including the Angus tone in this (because you asked for Malcolm). Angus' rhtyhm guit on this is significantly fuller and slightly brighter as is the norm for AC/DC stuff but could probably be easily obtained with further tweaks to this preset.
In TH2 full (not the severely crippled TH2 Producer that came with Sonar X2/X3 Producer) click the "Search" button underneath the Line Out Meter/Knob. If you do not see the Search/Write buttons click the Master button on the upper left corner of the GUI beside the TH2 logo and the preset navigator will appear. So press the search button and navigate to Bank: #002, Bank Name: Meet the Randalls, Sound #03, Variation 2: Plexi & Room. Click the patch name so it is highlighted the press the Load Sound button at the bottom of the Preset window. The main GUI should pop back up so you are looking at the amp/effect chain window.
First thing you are going to want to do is turn of the reverb module in the patch. It's the orange BREVERB RoomRev thing. Just press the glowing red button on the right of the module. That verb is way too agressive for this particular tone. The tone from the song is pretty dry with just a touch of room verb (or natural room sound) and you can add that in the Prochannel or via a reverb bus after the fact.
Play around and you'll see it's pretty darned close as it is. If you play lightly you'll get those subtle chords at the start of the song. Play a little harder and you'll get the crunchiness oof when the song kicks in.
Remember Malc is a punchy player and a lot of the meat of the tone comes from the fact he's playing full 6 string chords for the G5 and D chords while the B and low E are power chords (which he is really wailing on). Edit: On the E power chords he is also letting the open B and high E strings slam out with the power chord for many of the chords which is adding a lot of dimension to those chords.
This is one thing I REALLY like about TH2. The models respond to pick attack and various chords/note combinations like a real amp would.
Now this tone isn't EXACT but no presets ever are because the guys who program them have no idea what guit you are using but for simple stuff like this it's not too hard to take the preset and tweak it a little to work with your gear. I think this one would actually sound better if I were driving it with one of my amps padded by my mixer but for the sake of just getting the tone by the simplest means I did the line in thing.
Click on the amp head in the TH2 navigation window (that's the top window where all the modules are small and you can see a large portion of the chain). The lower window should jump to the amp head which is one of the Randall LynchBox heads. The controls on this that I find help tweak in the Malc tone a little better, in order of importance, are Presence (I found turning this up a bit more gave some more of the crispness and bite from the recording), Gain (this helps give it a bit more drive for when the song kicks in but with layering may not be necessary but too much and the sound starts falling apart), Level (this seems to add a different type of gain to the sound so try out different level variations of the Gain and Level knobs to see what works best for your set up). The only one that really needs to go up more than a little seems to be the Presence knob but that just may be due to my pickups and this could be dealt with on the track EQ. An instance of the Sat Knob or Tube Drive in the PC may result in better gain but I'm just focusing on the Sim end of things. The Density knob on the amp head seems to help fatten things up a little bit but I don't think it's all that necessary.
Next go to the Compressor pedal (the blue stompbox labelled RSS Comp). I found turning up the sustain a bit and turning down the release time to very fast helped clean up the tone even further and got rid of a bit of the "sim" sound.
Next click on the cabinet in the navigation window. In the main window double click on the cabinet so the mic controls pop up. I'm still messing with this but I found turning up the Rear Mic level really brought the sound together.
These are preliminary findings and I only messed with it for a little while but that is sounding pretty darned close to the rhythm guits in the song. I'm guessing layering this a few times and adding some bus compression to those layers and you'll have a very good emulation of the tone on the track.
As I said though I think this isn't really the greatest AC/DC rhythm tone but I'm a die hard Bon fan and prefer the older, raunchier stuff so I may be biased.
I may post more on this later and maybe some examples for Bats. It really was very easy to put it together with TH2 and this is exactly the type of thing that made me immediately drop the coin on the full version as soon as I saw what the program was all about. Soooooo much better and more realistic than Guitar Rig... and I really like GR5.
Cheers.
Edit: During the more powerful chorus parts there seems to be an extra layer added that is just single notes of the chord roots blended in with the chords. They have a really wide spread and there seems to be a major bass boost at those points that I'm not sure what is being applied to. These are likely Angus parts.
post edited by Beepster - 2015/01/25 14:34:41