Now that I’m back in the QC ecosystem, I’ve been wanting to share more here and nerd out about gear and tones. Would love any feedback on the sounds I’m getting with minimal mixing!
I’ve been experimenting with capturing my Friedman JEL-50, aiming for a gnarly JCM 800 tone. I tuned my guitar down to A to try a Loathe-style sound and ended up with the cover track below (hopefully embed correctly).
I created everything here from scratch, starting with my own go-to Superior Drummer 3 preset. The drums are overall a bit higher tuned and livelier than what’s typical on a Loathe record and I’m not sure which I prefer for this kind of thing.
The bass is Submission Audio Shinzbass DI into the Bogren Ampeg plugin. Super minimal processing here, really just pinning it down with BSA Low Control and using the Waves Clarity plugin to help side chain it with the kick. I’m really loving this plugin for this application and feel like I’m finally getting the kick/bass pump relationship I’ve been after for some time now.
The guitars are my Ibanez FlatV1 double-tracked with my “Friedman JEL-50 Ch2 Heavy” capture on the left and my “Friedman JEL-50 Ch2 Mid Gain” capture on the right. I think these are overall still under-gained when compared to the original, but I don’t really mind that. I’m not boosting with anything in front of the amp for the main rhythm tracks and the clean tone is the same Mid Gain tone just played softer and with my Ibanez AZ2402 in Drop D.
There’s an octave section that comes in halfway through where I added a Thunderclaw fuzz and a 100% low octave pitch block before the amp via re-amping. Super rad and the sludge here is my favorite part of the entire track.
The last section has a 3rd guitar in Drop D panned center that helps with the clarity. The whole time I just had a set of 10-52 gauge strings on the tele and they were NOT having it so adding the higher-tuned guitar brought some snap back.
Scratchy, almost in-tune track found here: