GGD: Oversized Cali clip. Morin Marshall CARCASS

Thanks man, that's so cool to hear! I feel extremely lucky that part of my job enables me to go down these rabbit holes. For me at least, there has been nothing more elusive in the world of recording than the conundrums of top tier high-gain guitar tone, so it's been extremely cathartic to be able to come back with answers and tools that others can enjoy too. I appreciate your kind words, thanks!



I'm glad the Thick cab gave you the right vibe mate, it's a cool and "brutal" sound that definitely needed to be included in Cali since I wanted to make sure all of the most famous flavours of tone are represented in there. It's also cool you're the one that sourced those Marshall cabs for Mark. I'm interested to hear those really old '87 8ohm Vintages, I think I'm probably always going to prefer the sound of the smoother early 00 speakers (I guess I've just been conditioned that way) but I look forward to hearing what Mark gets out of them for sure.
Yep, Andy is using the Marshalls almost exclusively these days, with straight off-the-shelf Chinese 16ohm V30s. He gets a great sound from them, his tones always sound like him. He's also throwing more mics up than he used to back in the day, I think it's typical 3 or 4 inputs blended to get his tones. It makes sense once you've done the single 57 thing for a while and have gotten excellent tones that way, you'd want to change things up and use unfamiliar mics or combinations to get to new and interesting sounds - that's why I wanted to make our cab IRs into actual plugins that encourage blending and experimentation, and hopefully that'll mean it stands the test of time where users can keep coming back to it and getting fresh sounds.

No worries at all. For what it's worth I've downsized my rig from the Ensemble Thunderbolt to the Symphony Desktop and I love it. I'm pretty much only mixing or tracking a single input in my studio these days though.



Thanks for the info! Hope you don’t mind us picking your brain. It’s interesting what you said about “Andy always sounding like Andy” basically. How do guys do that? I mean after all, I use much of the same exact signal chain as him often, and my tones in the raw form never turn out close to his. I don’t think you can say it’s the player that makes the difference in that case because he’s obviously always tracking different players, albeit all mostly pros, and yet, you still know it’s a sneap production. So what’s the key I wonder? How do guys develop “their” sound when they often use, Atleast in Andy’s case, pretty simple signal chains that everyone else uses? Aka: 5150, Mesa cab, and a 57? Sure you can identify that sound pretty easily, but it doesn’t mean MY 5150/Mesa/57 combo sounds anything like his. You hit the nail on the head though, recording guitars is incredibly elusive, and makes absolutely no sense at times, such as using the exact same gear as someone else and creating nothing close to those types of tones.

That’s kind of the reason I’ve been personally anti multi mic setups over the years too, Atleast when you are brand new like me and many others. But again, you can tell mark influences me still to this day a lot, and that’s his thing: “usually” a 57 and a 57 only in the right spot. He made the 201 cool though I think as well haha!

Anyways, I’m rambling, glad im not the only one that is constantly perplexed by getting great guitar tones and the elusiveness of it all, and the lack of concrete standards of it all.
 
Thanks man, that's so cool to hear! I feel extremely lucky that part of my job enables me to go down these rabbit holes. For me at least, there has been nothing more elusive in the world of recording than the conundrums of top tier high-gain guitar tone, so it's been extremely cathartic to be able to come back with answers and tools that others can enjoy too. I appreciate your kind words, thanks!



I'm glad the Thick cab gave you the right vibe mate, it's a cool and "brutal" sound that definitely needed to be included in Cali since I wanted to make sure all of the most famous flavours of tone are represented in there. It's also cool you're the one that sourced those Marshall cabs for Mark. I'm interested to hear those really old '87 8ohm Vintages, I think I'm probably always going to prefer the sound of the smoother early 00 speakers (I guess I've just been conditioned that way) but I look forward to hearing what Mark gets out of them for sure.
Yep, Andy is using the Marshalls almost exclusively these days, with straight off-the-shelf Chinese 16ohm V30s. He gets a great sound from them, his tones always sound like him. He's also throwing more mics up than he used to back in the day, I think it's typical 3 or 4 inputs blended to get his tones. It makes sense once you've done the single 57 thing for a while and have gotten excellent tones that way, you'd want to change things up and use unfamiliar mics or combinations to get to new and interesting sounds - that's why I wanted to make our cab IRs into actual plugins that encourage blending and experimentation, and hopefully that'll mean it stands the test of time where users can keep coming back to it and getting fresh sounds.

No worries at all. For what it's worth I've downsized my rig from the Ensemble Thunderbolt to the Symphony Desktop and I love it. I'm pretty much only mixing or tracking a single input in my studio these days though.

You are right, not easy to get, “top tier high gain tones.” Even if you have top tier amps it’s still hard to record them to sound epic. Thanks for all the work and experimentation.
 
Thanks for the info! Hope you don’t mind us picking your brain. It’s interesting what you said about “Andy always sounding like Andy” basically. How do guys do that? I mean after all, I use much of the same exact signal chain as him often, and my tones in the raw form never turn out close to his. I don’t think you can say it’s the player that makes the difference in that case because he’s obviously always tracking different players, albeit all mostly pros, and yet, you still know it’s a sneap production. So what’s the key I wonder? How do guys develop “their” sound when they often use, Atleast in Andy’s case, pretty simple signal chains that everyone else uses? Aka: 5150, Mesa cab, and a 57? Sure you can identify that sound pretty easily, but it doesn’t mean MY 5150/Mesa/57 combo sounds anything like his. You hit the nail on the head though, recording guitars is incredibly elusive, and makes absolutely no sense at times, such as using the exact same gear as someone else and creating nothing close to those types of tones.

That’s kind of the reason I’ve been personally anti multi mic setups over the years too, Atleast when you are brand new like me and many others. But again, you can tell mark influences me still to this day a lot, and that’s his thing: “usually” a 57 and a 57 only in the right spot. He made the 201 cool though I think as well haha!

Anyways, I’m rambling, glad im not the only one that is constantly perplexed by getting great guitar tones and the elusiveness of it all, and the lack of concrete standards of it all.

No problem, I'm happy to chat about all of this stuff.

RE: Andy, I believe the answer is (unsatisfyingly) that it's really a result of a holistic process where his personal taste and skills are a crucial piece of the puzzle. He does whatever it takes to get the tone to where he wants it to be, which on some records is literally 0 EQ, and on others means he's doing some quite large boosts and cuts. He's been pissing guitar tone excellence for decades now and clearly has such a great ear for it that he can take a decent sounding track and elevate it to his standards.
Some notes from my conversations with him that may be interesting:
- He cares more about the attitude of the performance than anything else.
- He's not precious about anything in the signal chain - happy to use modellers, simple rigs, complicated rigs, expensive gear, cheap gear, analogue, digital.
- Don't assume this laissez-faire sounding approach means he doesn't care, he still experiments with tones all the time, always trying new things and combinations. He just hates the pretentiousness that some people approach recording with.
- He never thought the 5150->Mesa->57 was any kind of "be all end all" guitar tone, just something he liked and then moved on from years ago.
- He hasn't used the Peaveys for years and years.. The various EVH amps and Marshall JVM have done most of the heavy lifting for the last decade or so, and nowadays he is using his Gower Rockmonster a lot.
- I may have made it sound like he'll use any speaker without much thought, but I want to make it clear he's still very fastidious and knows exactly what he's looking for in a raw tone for it to be workable.

I hope some of that may help? I've definitely banged my head against the wall for years trying to figure out if there are any specific tricks that he has that he has never divulged etc, but I know for sure now that there aren't.
 
I finally spent some quality time with this and got some sounds I am pretty happy with. Still not sure I like it as well as the Zilla version but it definitely sounds great with the Dual Rec Rev G and Savage Drive boosting. Working on some clips/vids of both plugins.
 
Hey Nolly, here's something I've always wondered about. Do you put any stock at all into what a cab sounds like in the room unmic'd when you're making your decision to purchase it in general? Can you tell how a cab might sound recorded before you record it or is it truly just something you have to mic up and listen to through monitors before you can tell?

I ask because years ago I briefly helped out a friend with recording a couple of metal bands in his studio, and I always found it the strangest thing that in the room, all the cabs we mic'd with 57's sounded absolutely nothing like what they did through the monitors. Specifically, I remember micing up a 5150 / Mesa Recto 4x12 rig with a 57, and in the room it sounded totally unusable. In the room it was garbled, fuzzy, woofy, muddy... basically every negative adjective for high gain amps you can think of. However, through the monitors it was a totally different story. It was huge and clear, you know, the typical massive 5150 / Recto 4x12 sound everybody loves.

Is that your experience as well, that standing in front of a well-dialed recording rig sounds worlds different than what it sounds like recorded? Or do you find that the in-the-room sound is usually pretty close to what you end up recording?

edit: also, I really dig the Studio Fredman style "dual angled 57's" mic option. You don't see that mic technique pre-packaged very often. Very cool.
 
I finally spent some quality time with this and got some sounds I am pretty happy with. Still not sure I like it as well as the Zilla version but it definitely sounds great with the Dual Rec Rev G and Savage Drive boosting. Working on some clips/vids of both plugins.
Nice, I look forward to hearing/seeing those, thanks for the support!

Hey Nolly, here's something I've always wondered about. Do you put any stock at all into what a cab sounds like in the room unmic'd when you're making your decision to purchase it in general? Can you tell how a cab might sound recorded before you record it or is it truly just something you have to mic up and listen to through monitors before you can tell?

I ask because years ago I briefly helped out a friend with recording a couple of metal bands in his studio, and I always found it the strangest thing that in the room, all the cabs we mic'd with 57's sounded absolutely nothing like what they did through the monitors. Specifically, I remember micing up a 5150 / Mesa Recto 4x12 rig with a 57, and in the room it sounded totally unusable. In the room it was garbled, fuzzy, woofy, muddy... basically every negative adjective for high gain amps you can think of. However, through the monitors it was a totally different story. It was huge and clear, you know, the typical massive 5150 / Recto 4x12 sound everybody loves.

Is that your experience as well, that standing in front of a well-dialed recording rig sounds worlds different than what it sounds like recorded? Or do you find that the in-the-room sound is usually pretty close to what you end up recording?

edit: also, I really dig the Studio Fredman style "dual angled 57's" mic option. You don't see that mic technique pre-packaged very often. Very cool.
Hey! Yeah, that's a good question. I don't put much stock at all in my thoughts on the "in the room" sound of a cab. For recording the only thing that matters to me is how it sounds under the microphone, which magnifies all of the nuances of the speaker/cab to an extent you could never hear in the room, especially if your amp is at the kind of volume you're likely to be recording at - which as you say, also excites all the room reflections to the point you are barely hearing the direct sound from the cab anyway!

Glad you like the Fredman IRs! Once I got the Fredman clip and watched how he uses it, I realised a large part of the Fredman guitar sound is because of the two 57s having deliberately misaligned capsules (the angled mic is closer to the speaker than the on-axis one), giving a phase cancellation that cuts a significant amount of top end when you sum the mics. So, it's really important that you capture both mics together and present them as a single IR if you want this to work as it should.
Like most people, before this I was happy to refer to any combination of on- and off-axis 57s as the "Fredman" technique, but now I think that's not really true - it's a lot more specific than that.
With the amount of top end cancellation you get, it also makes sense that he blends a brighter Greenback loaded Marshall cab with his V30 loaded ENGL, to give a bit more top end bite. I'd suggest in Cali that you could get something kinda similar by blending, say, the Thick or Massive cab with the brighter Guttural cab.
 
This plugin is really fantastic. It easily matches and in many cases exceeds my favorite IR blends I've been using for the past few years. I'm finding the Smooth and Upfront cabs to be my particular favorites. The Smooth cab + C414 mic alone is worth the price of admission, hah.

One question though, does anybody know how to delete user patches? Overwriting them is simple enough but I'm not seeing any easy way to delete patches I made by mistake.
 
This plugin is really fantastic. It easily matches and in many cases exceeds my favorite IR blends I've been using for the past few years. I'm finding the Smooth and Upfront cabs to be my particular favorites. The Smooth cab + C414 mic alone is worth the price of admission, hah.

One question though, does anybody know how to delete user patches? Overwriting them is simple enough but I'm not seeing any easy way to delete patches I made by mistake.
Awesome, so glad to hear it, I think the Smooth cab is a bit of a dark horse among users at the moment, for me personally I rotate between that one, Upfront and Massive as my favourites (and those are the three cabs I'll never sell, even though right now they are taking up space in the hallway while I'm moving things around the house haha).
User patches will be stored differently depending on your OS and DAW, but will be in the same place as all other user presets for plugins you have installed. For example, I'm a Logic user and on my Mac they are stored at "Library->Audio->Presets->Getgood Drums->Studio Cabs Cali". Hope that helps
 
Awesome, so glad to hear it, I think the Smooth cab is a bit of a dark horse among users at the moment, for me personally I rotate between that one, Upfront and Massive as my favourites (and those are the three cabs I'll never sell, even though right now they are taking up space in the hallway while I'm moving things around the house haha).
User patches will be stored differently depending on your OS and DAW, but will be in the same place as all other user presets for plugins you have installed. For example, I'm a Logic user and on my Mac they are stored at "Library->Audio->Presets->Getgood Drums->Studio Cabs Cali". Hope that helps

Thanks man! And yeah I wouldn't sell them either, they sound fantastic. All the cabs in the cali pack do, really. Some sound better solo and some sound better in mixes but they all have their strengths. The Smooth cab is really grabbing me though. Its description is very accurate. It extends pretty far into the higher frequencies, so it's very clear, but it doesn't seem to have, you've used the words "whistling" or "ringing," resonant peaks in the high treble that so many IRs have. I usually cut a lot of top end out of most any cab or IR specifically to avoid those issues but I don't have to with this one. I don't have to do that with any cabs in this pack actually, but the Smooth cab, true to its name, is particularly even-sounding in those high ranges.

Again, something about that cab and the way the C414 balances the lows and highs just kills. That mic brings out quite a bit of slice and cut, but manages to avoid strident ice-pickyness or weakness in the low end. And paired with basically any cab and an R121... dude. That's it, no more tweaking needed. That's the sound. Done. Funny, I never thought I'd stray much from a 57 + ribbon mic combo, but I see why the C414 was included here.

And I can also relate to too many cabs in the house being an issue, hah. There are several 4x12 cabs at my place and as much as I'd love a half dozen more, one is already spilling out of my office and has found itself hanging out in the guest room at the moment.

Oh and about the User patches, I'm using the standalone client in Windows and I must have chosen to install it for all users. For anybody who is interested, it looks like in Windows, individual User patches are located in the "C:\Users\All Users\GetGood Drums\GGD Studio Cabs Cali\User" folder.
 
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