The guitar player in the clip is using a wonderful legato technique, like the esteemed Allan Holdsworth, and I would like to know if anyone knows what sort of Guitar Rig 5 settings I might use to approximate the tone?
 
(I am a keyboard player, and not very likely to duplicate his hand and picking, but if I could get somewhere near how the sound is constructed I would be very very happy)/
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RdA7StUwSc#t=71
 
Thanks for anyone who even listens to the above, and double-thanks for anyone who can also help steer me in the right direction.
 
Bob Bone
 

I suppose you could just ask the guitarist. Short of that I think he sounds very similar to the tone Larry Carlton used to get. Here's an excerpt from guitar player magazine on how he did that. If you reverse engineer it in guitar rig and at least have a starting point.


Larry Cooltone.” That’s what all of us wannabes at G.I.T. called Carlton back in ’78. He was the king of tone who held court with a Gibson ES-335, Fender and Mesa/Boogie amps, and a Sho-Bud volume pedal—a royal rig that was adopted by half of the guitarists in Hollywood. Before becoming “Mr. 335,” Carlton went through a slew of axes, including a Fender Broadcaster, Telecaster, Stratocaster, and Jazzmaster, a Gibson ES-175, and various Les Pauls. “I bought a 335 in 1970,” he told GP in 1979. “I needed something real versatile that I felt comfortable on, that I could play the way I liked to play, which was coming from a 175 approach but with a more contemporary sound.” As studio dates began to snowball, Carlton acquired every effect of the day, including the first Roland Chorus Ensemble, one of the first MXR Dyna Comps, and MXR and Electro-Harmonix Small Stone phase shifters, and used them frequently on sessions, but from 1971 to 1981, Larry’s cool tones typically emanated from the same rig and one of four 335s: his trusty ’68 sunburst, a dot-neck ’58, a newer burgundy model, and a ’60 dot-neck, all of which feature stud tailpieces, flattened fingerboards, and custom Dunlop frets to improve tone and bendability. (Gibson later issued an ES-335LC signature model.) In 1982, L.C. added Custom Valley Arts Strat-style guitars with EMG pickups and combo amps built by Howard Dumble to his arsenal, and began routing his effects (which at the time included a rackmount Roland 3000 digital delay, an Audio Arts parametric equalizer, and a T.C. Electronic chorus pedal) through a Yamaha mixing board, a practice he still employs for his live rig. Currently, Carlton mics his Dumble Overdrive Special’s 12" speaker with a Shure SM57 that feeds the dry signal to a Mackie 1604-VLZ PRO mixer, where it is connected to his effects via the board’s aux sends, and the processed signal is sent to a pair of powered JBL monitors. This studio technique allows Carlton to blend in any amount of reverb and chorus without affecting his straight-amp tone. “My effects get hit with the sound of a microphone on my speaker, rather than a preamp out,” he reveals at larrycarlton.com. Carlton likes his action on the high side, and currently strings up with D’Addario’s: .010-.052 for electric and .011 -.052 on his ’84 Valley Arts 00-Acoustic. Of course, L.C. has always stressed that most of the sound comes from the player, not the gear.

That's an interesting bunch of goodies you posted - thanks.
 
I have ony Guitar Rig and either an American-made Strat with David Gilmour's active pickups, or a low-end ESP to choose from, so I have to try to figure it all out for what I have.  I do have Platinum, as well as Native-Instruments Komplete 8 Ultimate, so between Sonar and Komplete I have a bunch of effects, and I have a bunch of other freeware 64-bit effects from other folks.
 
Bob Bone
 

Far be it from me to question why you'd want to recreate that tone :-p

It sounds *very* compressed to me.  Some of that may come from the youtube encoding but there are no dynamics to speak of, so compress the b'jeesus out of the signal for a start.  Add in a moderate amount of 'tube' distortion and I think there's also some echo on there helping with the sustain.  PUPs and selection matter a lot to tone, looks like EMG's with the bridge selected to me (so perhaps your ESP..?)

As for EQ, the tone has quite a boxy/wooden feel to it, so chop the lows, drop the highs and (effectively) band-pass the low-mid range (maybe boost that area) - that might give you a decent starting point.  Maybe circa 400Hz for the boxy/woodeness and around 1.5KHz for the nasal quality of the sound.

Definitely use the ESP instead of the Strat.
 
I'd try a "middle" pickup config (so if you only have neck and bridge it would be using both) or maybe the bridge with the tone pot turned down a bit but that guy has a rather "round" kind of tone which implies the bridge pickup is in there (and I think I can even see that his toggle is in the middle). Unfortunately he also looks like he's got some nice active EMGs so not sure if you stock pickups will be quite as smooth.
 
I'd start with a "Modern US" amp sound (like a Rectifier emu, maybe a 5150 but only if you are stuck) through a 4x12 bottom cab (matched to the Rectifier emu). Have it set to the drive/distortion channel but don't have the drive cranked (that is a tight distortion but it isn' searing).
 
You want a thick but smooth distortion (no crackling or squealing) which hopefully you'll be able to get close to just with that. I forget what the cab micing options are like in GR5 but I seem to recall them being rather limited. If at all possible try to get your mic options to be more toward the center of the cone (maybe not right in the middle but definitely not the edge of the cone which tends to be sharper... but play around with it). Also try (if possible) a 45 degree mic and rear mic sounds. Listen to all three mic setups on their own to see how each is reacting to the sound and blend them to taste. I recently learned that 45 degree mics tend to give a better modern distortion sound (and I personally like how rear mics give some fullness to a tone).
 
The other thing I'm hearing in there that will be trickier to nail down is there is something really eating into the bite of the tones attack. It's almost like really fast and precise gate producing a quick volume swell for each note being played. This MIGHT be some fancy compression work but I don't know. I'd look for some kind of transient shaping effects in GR5 (or maybe even see if Sonar's Transient Shaper plug will work). Basically you just want to really smooth out the attack of the note so that you can't hear the abruptness of the pick/hammer on. You are going to have to be careful with it though because I find that type of thing ends up screwing up the parts of the notes you want to keep or the timing gets all screwed up so the effect delays/softens the attack TOO much. I have stumbled across this type of effect while browsing presets within sims or using multi FX units but I do not know exactly what is used to do it.
 
As to the "legato"... well he's playing those. Just hammer ons/pull offs. I can't think of any traditional guitar effect that would produce something like that and still sound natural. You may be able to fake it with some kind of fancy delay set up (so that the first note is held in a way it overlaps the second note and maybe slightly delays the start of the second note). Of course as you sped up and slowed down it might ruin the effect. hmm... maybe a slapback delay or something. It won't be the same as actually playing it but maybe it will get you close enough.
 
The otehr thing, and I have no idea if this would work, is put it into Melodyne. Then go in and chop the attack part of the second note off and drag it down to the pitch of the first note.
 
Essentially what the guy is doing is picking the note immediately BEFORE he fingers it then hammering on/pulling off to the actual note. Not a particularly difficult technique but he is doing it so fast and consistently and timing it all very well that it's creating that interesting off time staggered effect. I like it.
 
So if you can duplicate that in Melodyne by attaching all the pick attacks to the end of the previous notes and make sure you have Melodyne set up so it doesn't hit the start of those second notes with a hard attack (I'm pretty sure there is a variable setting for that) then it might work.
 
The problem is performing it in such a way to anticipate the slurs that won't exist until you create them. It might be tricky to time it... however you may be able to do the Melodyne edits then nudge the clip on the timeline to stagger the notes like he does.
 
Another thought that comes to mind is you might be able to feed the audio into one of your fancy synths and access a legato setting. That way the synth is processing the audio and doing the heavy lifting for you. Again I have no idea if that would work and I don't know much about synths but I have seen some pretty interesting stuff done to audio this way in various vids and tuts.
 
Anyway... just some ideas I had reading your post and watching the vid. Maybe they'll give you some things to experiment with to get you close. I am NOT a pro engineer (but am a "pro" guitar player... even though I haven't been paid for a while but that's just because I ain't sellin' at the moment).
 
Cheers.

Oh and BTW... it sounds like the guitar in that vid was recorded with a mic in the room. There's probably a little bit of subtle verb in the actual tone but most of the ambience is coming from the room and I don't think is really intentional. Just a dude jamming out to a backer track in his kitchen.
 

the way someone plays,
has more to do with the way they sound,
than any choice of gear.
 
 

batsbrew
the way someone plays,
has more to do with the way they sound,
than any choice of gear.
 

Definitely and this example is very much how/what the guy is playing rather than the sound. It's not a particularly unique tone at all but I think Bob just wants to get close without having to work his way through Speed Mechanics.
 
I really should dig up my PDF of that book now that I have more time to goof around on my guit. Might shake some ideas loose for some of the projects I'm planning.

Robert, get a good gainy tone and add some mid range. Then, remove the highs so they aren't abrassive and then roll your tone knob on your guitar down until you get closer to this tone.
 
These tones should be easy to achieve. The mids are excessive which is why Ston though it sounded so compressed. When I have talked about mid range congestion in the past, this is exactly the type of stuff I was referring to. Though this is ok for a lead instrument, quite a few people try to make all their instruments that warm and all it does is congest the mix with 0 life.
 
Anyway, try using more mids, (add in like 220 Hz to warm it up....I HATE that frequency, but guys that play like this seem to spike here constantly) removing harsh highs and then rolling off your tone knob using either your neck pup or your bridge pup with a guitar that has humbuckers. That should get you pretty close.
 
-Danny

Just to add to Danny's advice, it might be worth trying a compressor (more accurately limiter I suppose) of the fast attack then squish like mad Ross/Dynacomp type before the amp sim. That compressed pick sound has "Dynacomp" or similar all over it. I can get very close to that sound using the neck pickup on an SG with the tone rolled off a bit followed by compression into an overdrive/smooth distortion that boosts the mids (tube screamer type with gain set fairly high), or just compression into a saturated valve amp. Though that setup does lose the "artificial" quality of the sound on the video a bit.