Anyone have any good modern metal/hardcore presets for Quad Cortex?
The clean presets are mostly great, but I’ve gone through probably 100 metal presets and most of them have at least one of these three problems.
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Way too much gain to the point where it just sounds like shit in a mix
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The opposite problem, way too little gain to the point where it’s just weak and brittle and has no sustain
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Wayyyy to much bass/lower mids and it’s just all farty and rumbly
Yes I can make (and have made) my own presets and edited other people’s presets, but tbh I’m sick of tweaking stuff and just wanna get back to making music. Also it’s difficult to adjust the gain on capture-based presets.
My main tunings are drop A on 7-string and drop C# on 6-string.
It’s a bit tough to find a “mix ready” preset that works for every player, guitar, etc. It really depends on severs factors and any preset will require some level of tweaking to fit in a mix, depending on your guitar, pickups, playing style, musical style, etc.
That being said, have you tried any online presets from Kiko Lourerio, Fluff, etc? Or online captures from Sweetwater? Do you use active pickups? I’ve found many of the hard rock /metal presets and captures to be very usable in a mix with my guitars without tweaking to fit in a demo (will always require some EQ to fit in a final mix properly, sometimes multi band compression, etc). My main axe is a EBMM JP6.
Are you double-tracking guitars or quad tracking?
Yeah I know I’m gonna have to do a little EQing in my DAW after recording but I was just looking for something in the ballpark. All my guitars are passive pickups. My main guitars are
-Ibanez Prestige RGDR4427FX
-Ibanez Prestige AZ2402
-Gibson Les Paul Studio
-Fender Player Plus Telecaster
I just find most high gain presets are super dark and muddy sounding (even on my Tele most of the time). And when I tweak them too much they eventually just sound lifeless. I’ve made some of my own that are decent but none I’m 100% satisfied with like the clean ones. I was just wondering if anyone had any that might work better for me.
Usually have a hard panned left rhythm and right rhythm and then a lead that’s less hard panned, just enough to make room for vocals. The Sweetwater ones are good but they’re just captures and not full presets. I haven’t tried the Kiko ones, wasn’t sure if they’d work in lower tunings but I’ll try them out.
Yeah, I’d try Rabea Massad’s too, he does a lot of lower tuned stuff. Also, what are you monitoring through? I’ve found some of the stock cabs are a little dark but definitely not the norm in most of the presets I’ve tried. Also, what bands tones are you looking for in the ballpark? I can try to point you in the right direction when I’m behind my unit