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August 7, 2020

5 Amp Designer Tips For Capturing That Guitar Tone You Hear in Your Head

 

Logic’s Amp Designer is a fantastic tool for guitar players. Both Amp Designer and Pedalboard give guitarist’s a ton of amps, speakers, microphones and pedals to craft their perfect tone.

But guitarists are a particular bunch. And sometimes it can be difficult to coax that tone you’re hearing in your head out of any guitar amp. Let alone Amp Designer!

After many years of using Amp Designer, I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two about it.

But it took a long time of failing with Amp Designer before ever achieving a tone that I was happy when using it.

When I eventually gave up on believing I knew anything about guitars, I decided to poke through Logic’s guitar patches. And as I tried out the patches I thought:

“Hey, these actually sound pretty good!”

Aha! Maybe, just maybe, I could rely on Amp Designer after all 🙂

Whether you like to use Amp Designer and Pedalboard (or not), these 5 tips can still be helpful. It’s not so much the tool itself as much as what you do with those tools.

So today I’d like to offer you 5 tips for getting more out of Amp Designer:

  1. The balancing act for coaxing the tone you want out of Amp Designer
  2. Optimize your guitar’s level going into Amp Designer
  3. Double-tracking your guitars when you want that doubled guitar sound
  4. Crafting different amp tones for different guitar tracks
  5. Multi-miking your Amp Designer tracks for a fuller tone

Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Amp Designer, Guitars, Mixing, Plugins, Recording

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Comments

  1. Jimmy says

    August 7, 2020 at 3:40 pm

    I like the brown amp and the Vox imitation. Vox is the lone holdout in amp sims and Logic does a nice job of emulating the Vox sound. I have a simple process for this where I make sure my input signal is at the right level before putting any amp presets on the channel. Then, if the channel preset turns out to be at a hot level with the plugins, I insert a Gain plug at the end of the signal chain to get it right for mixing. This way I leave all the plugins that make up the sound at their settings, and adjust the level at the end. Its just been a simple way for me to use presets.

    Reply
    • Steve C. says

      August 7, 2020 at 6:28 pm

      Great comment Jimmy as usual. I have learned a lot from your comments and suggestions in the past. I always read all the comments before I watch Chris’s video. I’ve seen many people put a gain plugin at the beginning of the signal chain when they perform gain staging before mixing. Lately I’ve been thinking that it makes more sense to have the gain plugin at the end of the signal chain because having it at the beginning may possibly overdrive or underdrive some of the other plugins and change the tone that we spend so much time perfecting during recording and editing.. I’m wondering if Chris or anyone else has something to say about this? Thank you!

      Reply
      • Jimmy says

        August 8, 2020 at 5:47 pm

        Thanks Steve. I agree with you that putting a Gain plugin first somehow affects all the tonal qualities and goodness of the preset. Many times a guitar preset in LPX will have several plugins that make up that sound, and often times the final output level of these plugins might leave you with a signal level thats too hot for mixing purposes, even if you recorded with the proper level.

        I used to get in there and dial in the gain stages between the plugins and it would usually end up destroying the tone. So I figured I would just make sure my recording input level was correct, and gain stage at the end, and this seems to work best for me in keeping as much of the inherent coolness of the preset. You can still dial the amp tone and gain knobs, move or change the mic, and not lose the essence of the preset.

        Although I dont find all of LPXs guitar amp sims to be spot on for every amp, there are some very useable presets that are my go to staring points for a Vox amp vibe or some Fender amp sims. The Sweet Boutique and Indie Scorcher are a few of my favorites in this category.

        Reply

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