Twin Reverb Capture Sounds Lifeless and Dull (Audio Samples)

Quad Cortex
1

Hi all,

Just tried to do my first capture yesterday, and I have an A/B comparison of the tones below.

1970 Fender Twin Mic’d with SM57

1970 Fender Twin IR

As you can hear, the tones are incomparable. The tone in the first example sparkles and has a 3d quality to it, and the IR just sounds flat and lifeless.

I followed the instructions the device provided to capture, and I made sure I had a hot signal coming in (used the auto adjust feature). Am I doing something wrong? The result is nowhere near what I’ve seen watching videos.

For an additional comparison, I tried the builtin 1965 Fender Twin, and it still doesn’t sound nearly as vibrant as my simple mic example. For that test, I just adjusted the virtual amp’s settings to what I had set up on my real twin (Vol 4, Treble 7, Mid 6, Bass 7, Bright On), and added a virtual cab. It didn’t sound bad, but it didn’t really sparkle either.

To pose it as a question, can someone provide some help to achieve a tone similar to what I captured with the microphone using the QC?

Thanks!

2

Hmm, to me it sounds like you didn’t really capture the amp - your sample sounds pretty much like a DI’d guitar.

I’m wondering if you really got the capture process right - your mentioning “the IR” is a bit confusing: IRs are impulse responses and used in speaker blocks, but Amps need to be captured, so it you should be creating and using “capture”, not an “IR”. But maybe that’s just a terminology issue…

Maybe you can give a bit more detail on how you did the capture and how you use it in your preset?

3

Yea if you captured with a mic’d up amp, you wouldn’t need an IR to go with the capture. That’s gonna make it sound dull since you’re sending a cab into another cab. I capture my amps with a torpedo captor x without a speaker so I can plug any IR in.

4

Hey guys, sorry I’m a bit of a newbie with this tech, so I’m probably using the wrong term when I say IR.

Probably easiest just to describe exactly what I did.

From the QC, I did “New Neural Capture”.

I hooked my guitar to Ret 1.

I hooked my headphones to the headphone jack.

I ran a standard instrument cable from Capture Out to the input of my Fender Twin.

I put an SM57 microphone 2" from the speaker on the Twin (off the center of the cone), and I ran an XLR cable from this microphone to “In 1”.

I confirmed connection of all of the aforementioned cables.

On the capture screen, I played my guitar and confirmed that the instrument level was “hot” but not clipping". I set the Type to “Mic” and I turned on “Ground Lift” since the amp has a noticeable hum, and I thought that would help.

I used “Auto-Set” and kept playing the guitar until the knob stopped moving and showed that no clipping was happening.

From there, I did “Start Capture”. The unit produced the crazy sounds that we’re all familiar with, and then I saved the “Neural Capture” to evaluate it.

My test sample, which I provided, is “In 1” going straight to the Neural Capture I created, and then going to Multi Out.

I didn’t put anything else in the chain (no cabinet) since the cabinet was active during the capture.

Does all of this make sense? Also, is there a way to get close to the tone of my mic’d amp using any of the stock settings? Again, I’m new to setting up chains on this device, so I’m kind of fumbling around at the moment.

Thanks for the help!

5

Did you test the reference with the capture before you saved it? I messed up one by keeping a noise gate in there, and just quickly redid it and it was fine.

Also, what does your chain look when you’re using the capture?

6

Hey all,

I figured it out. Operator error… This is embarrassing, but I was recording outputs 1-2 into my DAW, so I was capturing the dry signal… I got thrown off for a few reasons.

  1. This is my first neural capture, so of course, I’m was looking for something wrong there.

  2. I just upgraded to Logic, so I’m still figuring out how it works.

Anyway, here’s the actual A/B using the Neural Capture instead of the DI.

1970 Fender Twin (Real Amp SM57)

1970 Fender Twin (Neural Capture)

They sound pretty damn close to my ears; although maybe slightly different on the bass notes. That may boil down to mic placement though, as things got shuffled around in the midst of all this.

I appreciate everyone chiming in to help and sorry for making noise about nothing.

1 Like
7

Its not embarrassing, that is how you learn! :grinning:
You had already figured it out but was going to tell you USB 1/2 is dry, USB 3/4 is wet etc., I figured that might be your problem after listening to your first examples. Your capture sounds great, share that sucker! Good luck!

8

I also got thrown by the dry signal thing at first. It does end up being a handy way to capture the dry signal in the recording in case you want to re-amp it later. Obviously, I didn’t read the manual first, I just dove straight in and learned this by trial and error, like I do with everything :slight_smile:

9

man, that is a nice capture!

quite lively

10

I uploaded the capture to the cloud in case anyone wants to use it. My username is tmountain, and the capture is called “1970 Fender Twin Silverface”.

2 Likes
11

Honestly way too many people do this and neural should make output 1/2 the wet out and 3/4 the dry out because at this point the facebook pages get about 10 posts a day asking why they only have dry signal.

12

I have 2 Fender Twins, a 1973 with JBL E120s that I had Blackfaced and
a 1979 Ultralinear Twin with Eminence Betas that was modified. I don’t know what mods were done, but that amp sounds great. I found when I just used an SM57, the amps sounded thin and a little bright. When I used a 57 on the cap in conjunction with a Rode NT1 condenser on the cone, the captures sounded stellar!!! It was the first time I played through an amp modeler/capture/profile/ that felt like playing though my Twins. I did some profiles with the tone controls at 555 bright switch off
and some at 676, bright switch off. I also have captures there with just an SM57. If anybody would like these captures, you are welcome to them. My username is mick8187.

13

This has been selectable since 1.3.0 from within the QC settings