EQ: My biggest complaint

As I've mentioned on here before, I've gotten GR2 to run really well on my laptop, and I use it all the time live. Overall, I'm very happy with sound quality and range of effects I can use.

However, I've still got issues with the EQ parts of GR2. For the most part, I stay away from them, but I'm really disappointed with the wah effects. (Wah wah, Cry Wah, Profilter, Autofilter.)

If you listen carefully to the "Wah Wah" pedal, there is always a fair amount of "dry" signal present with the effected signal. This is especially noticable when paired with an amp/speaker, or even when through my effects loop. Basically, to me it sounds like a "watered-down" wah. (I realize that wah effects aren't meant to be used in an effects loop)

I have used a Dunlop Crybaby 535 for years, and the difference between the 2 is quite noticable. Plug in a real dunlop wah, and move the pedal all the way to the back position. You won't hear ANY unaffected tone. Do the same thing for GR2's wah effects, and you will still hear unaffected tone. This isn't the way a wah is supposed to work folks. This is really a crying (pardon the pun) shame, because the tweakability present in the Wah Wah effect is enourmous.

I really noticed it when using the "Autofilter" effect for a certain funk tune. While playing very quietly (as the bass player was soloing), I noticed that there was no effect at all. The autofilter should have been cutting out ALL frequencies above the cutoff, but instead there was a very quiet unaffected tone in the background. It shouldn't be like this. I also noticed this while trying to use the parametric EQ and a modulator to simulate a "sitar" effect.

Is this a bug? Or is it only happening in my own copy of GR2? I haven't heard anyone else complaining about it, or maybe nobody here is as much of a "wah purist" as I am. I dunno... But I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this.

Thanks

 

On the low E string, the original tone seems to be pretty 'unaffected' even when full on - yeah. Took a little recording done with and without wah into my editing program. Set up a static 'wah' there with the graphic EQ mimicing the sound of the wah-pedal at its lowest, and applied this to the clean part. This is definetly a controllable 100% effect mix. Then I compared the two ... and to me they sound similar! Again, most of the low E slips underneath the filter, but that has to do with where the peak setting is.

I took a while for me to set up my mixer software correctly (I have a M-audio card), and in the beginning I had an unintended mix of effected and non-effected guitar signal. It wasn't GR's fault. So: are other effects just 'blends' too?

My biggest complaint, or should I say disappoinment, is with pitch shifting. Octaver, Pitch-pedal and PsycheDelay all have problems with tracking the lower mids; around the open G-string. Tracking is more accurat below and above this, although the long predelay setting needed to obtain a cleanish non-metallic sound makes the whole thing rather unimpressive. Did I say unusable? Have tried prepping my tone with compressor and some EQ before it goes into pitch-shifting, so far to little avail. I don't play like a wildman either; I've had pitch-shifters before and my notes were trackable then... There's room for improvement here, folks!!!

And here's the irony: the Octaver effect in its original form was once maybe the crudest of all effects. It wasn't really pitch shifting (which costed a car back then), it simply took the signal and devided it in two (or letting only the upper half of the waveform slip through; whatever). It didn't involve any sampling & tracking, and this was an advantage: the effect was immediate. It was such a simple circuit, you could get the parts for ten bucks. Crude as it was, it had its own distinctive sound, called "cool" today.
Switch to the present day, and you have a hi-tech software algorithm kept as if it was a national secret, running on a personal computer so powerful it equals a building full of computers from back when the Octaver came out. AND IT CAN'T CREATE THAT SOUND. Sure GuitarRig can do amazingly advanced things, but it can't do this simple trick!? Without several tenths of seconds of delay (the original had none), and a glitchy, completely unpredictable tracking to boot, that is. This is where I wonder where 'progress' has gone. At least someone has messed up something really simple, in a bad way.

 

Is the dry/wet issue still a problem after expanding the WahWah or Autofilter modules and setting "Dry" completely off for the WahWah or setting "Wet" for Autofilter to 100%? I've recently been experimenting with both and haven't noticed the issue you're talking about, but I've set both for maximum effect / no dry. I'll have to listen more closely; maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention.

 

I haven't noticed it either. By the way, I've got a number of songs on my soundclick page ("Chunky Monkey", for example has wah-guitar solos and "Jammin' the Loop" has an autowah bassline and a talk wah bass solo) and I can't hear any dry signal on those. It might be that it gets lost in the mix, but can you hear it on those songs (link below)?