Can't seem to get any tight distortion out of Guitar Rig

I got a Fender with a Duncan Invader humbucker and an Ibanez Marty Friedman Signature that I equipped with a Gibson Dirty Fingers pickup.

With the Invader every distortion preset sounded like crap. The Dirty Fingers is a slight improvement, but not too much. Maybe you shouldn't use GR with anything hotter than a Duncan JB I guess. But I really don't know if that makes a difference as I haven't tried it out.

 

I haven´t laughed this much since I started using the forum. My kind of humour!

 

But back to topic: Allthough I have yet to really experiment with tight distortion sounds in GR (not my everyday type of sound), I'm convinced that you will get a long way with bi-amping. Afterall, it's helped star players since the dawn of electric rock guitar.

With GR you may even try tri- og quadra-amping if your processor can take it, and fine tune it by bringing out the the best of every amp/stomp box with the Crossover Mix, with a tiny portion of envelope filter for attack.

 

I totally agree with AlexV. But by experience I can tell you that if you plan on bi-amping you better be packing some serious Ghz on your processor. I have finally come up with my favorite heavy preset by combining two presets which both had good and bad parts. The result is a tighter, more defined sound and because you have that little split/stereo button you can basically have one preset on the lower end and one on the high pitched end. I use it on HiQ ALWAYS . Unfortunately if I choose to output at 96000 hertz from my Asio config my processor works at about 85% which means I can't afford anything else running next to GR3. But that's not that bad. I can always switch it to 41000 hertz and play along with some mp3s loaded in GR3.

 

I have an Evo 7 in the bridge of my Ibanez and it pushes GR nice and hard for a good sound.

Using HiQ does make a huge difference as mentioned above, without it you sometimes get strange aliasing sounds and it is thinner. Luckily I got a recent PC so presets are usually at lower than 10% cpu.

 

Are we speaking of live use here? Of course, for recording/mixing, even on a relatively low spec computer, it is possible to multi-amp by copying the original track, then add Guitar Rig as insert, freeze it (or whatever your DAW calls it), add an insert on the next track, and so on. But I guess you all have thought of that allready. :-S

And: After trying HiQ, LowQ is not an option!

 

Concerning tight-distortion, you could have a look at the sound I achived,
and it works really nice.

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum_us/showthread.php?p=358749#post358749

I also use an EMG-81 pickup, that I have to thank for the heavy gain.

 

Have a song done completely with GR2 (solo included), kinda retro but I feel it works. Check out:

http://broadjam.com/rickanthony

"Cannibal 4Luv"

I've sold all my Marshals, Fenders, and Vox's and have gone almost all software based programs like GR, Digi's Eleven, etc, though I did just purchase a Line 6 Spider Valve!

 

We seem to have a very different idea of retro ...

 

Hmmmm.......explain?

 

Nice job!

 

If I hide somthing in my drawer, it's gotta stay there at least 30 years to come out retro . To me, this songs sounds much more recent than that, like early to mid 90's... A good early to mid 90's tune, though .

 

Well the only retro stuff I used was an 80's drum kit sound, 70's GR amps, a 60's Peter Gun song influence but the vocals were 2006 and the song was written in 2006......guess it's a retro/contemporary thang? I was just messin' around with the Gunn theme, a song mainstay by every party guitar band back in the day, and Cannibal 4Luv erupted. The song is really fun to play live......

 

I have a quick question. I'm able to get some pretty decent Distorted sounds, but I notice when the microphone on the speaker is clipping that it sounds tighter and more lively. The number 1 rule of recording/sound reinforcement is to avoid clipping, but does that hold true in this case?

 

You know what? There are no rules. So many great sounds have been the result of so-called mistakes. I say do whatever you like!