Using tonex live problems

relic245

New tonex user. At home through my very cheap monitor it sounds ace. Last night at rehearsal through the PA it sounded absolutely shit. 

Set up is I'm using the tonex in the FX loop of a HX fx then the out of th HXFX into my monitor (or pa last night)

I have 3 sounds set up. 

Clean which is a jcm800 mid gain capture with the gain turned down
Mild crunch whish is the same capture
Heavy crunch which is a different jcm800

At home all sound ace. 

At rehearsal the clean sounded OK.

The mild crunch had a lot less crunch through the pa for some reason. I turned up the gain but it was still thin and weedy. 

The heavy crunch was the real problem. Again it sounded thin but what was really weird was playing chugging stuff on the low strings was ok but playing anything further up the neck, especially higher notes alomst didn't sound distorted some how. Almost like a thin weedy slighty over driven sound. Through my monitor (and to some extend in isolation through the pa it sounded good. ) It was definitely getting lost in the mix though. 

I am 100% certain that both of the overdriven sounds were less so through the pa than through my monitor. 

Today I'm going to borrow that PA and set up some backing tracks then use a looper to play with the sounds. Any suggestions where I start? 

I have through of using  the cleaner JCM800 model and pedals (through the hxfx) as once again at home that sounded great. 

Any thoughts or pointers greatly appreciated. We have a gig next week and I'm a bit nervouse!

 

kennedydream1980

Which captures are you using @relic245 ;

Unfortunately there are no shortcuts with this. But you are dealing with it the right way. The only way to be certain what it will sound like is crank it through a PA to see how the captures translate at a loud volume. 

Also make sure the levels on the HX effects loop are set correctly. The Tonex pedal wants to see instrument level at the input and it outputs a line level signal. So make sure the send on the HX effects loop block is set to instrument and the return is set to line.

The captures on ToneNet are all over the place quality wise. There is a lot of crap on there. I would suggest purchasing a capture pack from a 3rd party vendor to see how they translate. Amalgam Audio for me are head and shoulders above anything on the Tonex. So I would give them a shot. They offer dark, balanced and bright versions of their amp captures at various settings. So I’m sure you will find something in the ball park of where you need to be.

Musicwolf

kennedydream1980 said:

So make sure the send on the HX effects loop block is set to instrument and the return is set to line.

I'm pretty sure that you can only set send and return 'as a pair' in settings i.e. either both as instrument or both as line.

You'll probably have to play around with the send and return vales within the effects block

relic245

I think the send and return are fine. I played a lot through these and as I say, it sounds great through my monitor. 

I'll give the amalgam captures a try. 

At the moment I'm using a low gain jcm called Jcm 800 Les paul. I found it from a youtube vid where the guy says he's auditioned every free jcm 800 sound on tone.net and that was the best.  Again through my monitor I agree that it's good. 

The heavier one is called JCM800 SC20H which again sounds good at home. 

You're probably right to buy something though. It takes out the 'is it down to a bad capture or something else' element of the equation. 

I'll give it a go.  By the way @kennedydream1980 is there any of there packs you particularly recommend? 

I want 3 sounds and I'm definitely more blues and classic rock than metal.

 A nice almost clean with a touch of hair when you really dig in sound. More marshall than fender. 

A light crunch think ac/dc with the gain turned down a bit.

A heavier crunch - probably slightly more dirty than AC/DC but not much. 

Then the ability to be able to hit he heavier sound with a pedal for a searing lead sound. 

Hopefully not to complicated

kennedydream1980

relic245 said:

I think the send and return are fine. I played a lot through these and as I say, it sounds great through my monitor. 

I'll give the amalgam captures a try. 

At the moment I'm using a low gain jcm called Jcm 800 Les paul. I found it from a youtube vid where the guy says he's auditioned every free jcm 800 sound on tone.net and that was the best.  Again through my monitor I agree that it's good. 

The heavier one is called JCM800 SC20H which again sounds good at home. 

You're probably right to buy something though. It takes out the 'is it down to a bad capture or something else' element of the equation. 

I'll give it a go.  By the way @kennedydream1980 is there any of there packs you particularly recommend? 

I want 3 sounds and I'm definitely more blues and classic rock than metal.

 A nice almost clean with a touch of hair when you really dig in sound. More marshall than fender. 

A light crunch think ac/dc with the gain turned down a bit.

A heavier crunch - probably slightly more dirty than AC/DC but not much. 

Then the ability to be able to hit he heavier sound with a pedal for a searing lead sound. 

Hopefully not to complicated

My favourite pack from Amalgam at the moment is the Marshall Superbass 100. But any of their Marshall packs are excellent and should do exactly as you describe above. They split their captures into various gain levels.

Clean
Edge
Crunch
Drive
Lead

They then have bright, balanced and dark variations of each of the above.

They all react to the guitar volume as you would expect so a lot of variation is achievable just from the guitar. I tend to just use the Drive capture and get everything I need from the guitar volume. 

Set the input trim on the Tonex pedal to +8.5 for the Amalgam stuff. That to me seems the optimum level.

kennedydream1980

Musicwolf said:

kennedydream1980 said:

So make sure the send on the HX effects loop block is set to instrument and the return is set to line.

I'm pretty sure that you can only set send and return 'as a pair' in settings i.e. either both as instrument or both as line.

You'll probably have to play around with the send and return vales within the effects block

There are 2 loops on the HX effects and Im sure you can split the loops, ie have a send block and a return block separate. You can then set loop one send to instrument, then loop two return to line in the global settings.

relic245

kennedydream1980 said:

relic245 said:

I think the send and return are fine. I played a lot through these and as I say, it sounds great through my monitor. 

I'll give the amalgam captures a try. 

At the moment I'm using a low gain jcm called Jcm 800 Les paul. I found it from a youtube vid where the guy says he's auditioned every free jcm 800 sound on tone.net and that was the best.  Again through my monitor I agree that it's good. 

The heavier one is called JCM800 SC20H which again sounds good at home. 

You're probably right to buy something though. It takes out the 'is it down to a bad capture or something else' element of the equation. 

I'll give it a go.  By the way @kennedydream1980 is there any of there packs you particularly recommend? 

I want 3 sounds and I'm definitely more blues and classic rock than metal.

 A nice almost clean with a touch of hair when you really dig in sound. More marshall than fender. 

A light crunch think ac/dc with the gain turned down a bit.

A heavier crunch - probably slightly more dirty than AC/DC but not much. 

Then the ability to be able to hit he heavier sound with a pedal for a searing lead sound. 

Hopefully not to complicated

My favourite pack from Amalgam at the moment is the Marshall Superbass 100. But any of their Marshall packs are excellent and should do exactly as you describe above. They split their captures into various gain levels.

Clean
Edge
Crunch
Drive
Lead

They then have bright, balanced and dark variations of each of the above.

They all react to the guitar volume as you would expect so a lot of variation is achievable just from the guitar. I tend to just use the Drive capture and get everything I need from the guitar volume. 

Set the input trim on the Tonex pedal to +8.5 for the Amalgam stuff. That to me seems the optimum level.

Thanks - I'm on their site now and that is one that I'm looking at. Possibly the jcm800 too. 

They have a 3 for 2 offer at the moment so I'm going to pick up 3 packs. Perhaps a fender one as well. 

You are right about being able to split the fx block on the hx fx - i'll play about with it. 

mrkb

I’d be looking into why it sounds different on your monitor vs PA as that will affect any sounds you setup. Are you listening at the same volume on both? If not Fletcher Munson effect will make them sound different and it will be very difficult to setup. What are you using?

relic245

mrkb said:

I’d be looking into why it sounds different on your monitor vs PA as that will affect any sounds you setup. Are you listening at the same volume on both? If not Fletcher Munson effect will make them sound different and it will be very difficult to setup. What are you using?

This is where it get's complicated

The monitor is this: it's a £99 pa monitor from PMT which sounds incredible for it's price and size. 

We have 2 PA's our rehearsal PA and the live one. 

The rehearsal one (which is what I was using last night) is a very old soundcraft powered mixer with a pair of yamaha speakers. Up until last recently I've been playing  a Blackstar Amped1/HXFX rig directly in and it sounded good.  Last week something has happened to the PA and one side is not working and my old rig didn't sound as good as it normally does either so possibly the PA is playing up. 

I also wondered, the Amped1 goes into an XLR input where as now I'm going in with a jack (same channel on the PA) so don't know if that makes any difference. 

The live PA is a pair of RCF EVOX J8 powered speakers that we use with an external wireless mixer. 

I'll be borrowing that later today to set it up in the conservatory with a backing track. That is about as close as I can get to mimicking our live sound. 

As for volumes last night. There wasn't a lot of difference to be honest. 

I've been turning the monitor up a bit at home and it's pretty loud. We rehearse with an electronic drum kit in the drummers spare room so we're at neighbor friendly volumes (as long as you get on pretty well with your neighbours lol)

damm73

Search for Amalgam on ToneNet. They have a bunch of free captures on there. 

I've bought several of their amp packs but one of my most used presets is the free JCM800 capture called "MRSH JC800 Crunch FAT CAB"

I have found that editing presets gain/eq levels to taste is very effective and also the global input trim can have a massive effect on how gained up a capture feels.  YouTubers like Jason Sadites have gone down the rabbit hole of how to properly set the input trim so that's worth having a look at. 

Another tip for live use is to pick one IR/CAB that you like the sound of and just stick with it for all your presets. 

Roland

So many things to look at/eliminate. CAB/IR is a complete rabbit hole. As @damm73 says, pick one and stick with it.

What stands out for me are that clean and low chug are OK, but crunch is thin and weedy. Immediately that makes me think Fletcher Munson. That’s something which you might not be able to resolve at home volumes, but you can get partway there, and set yourself up ready to fix at rehearsal volume. 

Basically you need more mid frequencies at volume. The more gain you’re using the more mids you need. That’s why tubescreamer are so successful: they bump the mid range alongside gain and volume. The quest is to find out which mid frequency range, and how much. You can set up an EQ towards the end of the chain in the HXFX, wide Q centred between 750 and 1Khz, and boost it by 6dB. Then you have to experiment with frequency and Q. 

relic245

Roland said:

So many things to look at/eliminate. CAB/IR is a complete rabbit hole. As @damm73 says, pick one and stick with it.

What stands out for me are that clean and low chug are OK, but crunch is thin and weedy. Immediately that makes me think Fletcher Munson. That’s something which you might not be able to resolve at home volumes, but you can get partway there, and set yourself up ready to fix at rehearsal volume. 

Basically you need more mid frequencies at volume. The more gain you’re using the more mids you need. That’s why tubescreamer are so successful: they bump the mid range alongside gain and volume. The quest is to find out which mid frequency range, and how much. You can set up an EQ towards the end of the chain in the HXFX, wide Q centred between 750 and 1Khz, and boost it by 6dB. Then you have to experiment with frequency and Q. 

Thanks @Roland . ;

I'm not very experienced with eq. 

There is a parametric block which I'm guessing is the right one. 

Parameters are:

Lo Freq
Lo Q
Lo Gain

Mid Freq
Mid Q
Mid Gain

Hi Freq
Hi Q
Hi  Gain

Low cut 
High cut
Level

From what you're saying I'd guess that the ones I'm looking for are Mid freq (between 750 and 1k) mid q is a number between 0 and 10 (with 0,1 increments) I'd guess pick a big number from what you've said and I can set mid gain in db's 

Does that sound correct?

relic245

This is getting really interesting!

I've purchased 5 of the Amalgman packs (sale on 5 for the price of 3)

Tweed delux
JCM 800
Superbass 100
Matchless DC30
EV 5050iii (this is an outlier - i'm not really a high gain guy, or so i thought but sometimes like to let my inner hair metal demon out)


Straight away they have all put a smile on my face. Even through my £99 monitor the difference is night and day to the free captures so thank you  @kennedydream1980 ; for the nudge. 

I found a backing track of all the small things which is one of the songs we play and recorded it into audacity then played along with the capture I've been using. It sounded aweful and was lost in the mix. 

Played about with eq as Roland suggested - better but still muddy. 

Recorded another version with one of the JCM 800 captures and another with the EV5050 capture. 

Really surprised myself that I liked the EV a lot. Both of those 2 cut through infinitely better.  I like both and I'm on the fence of which I like the sound of first. Interestingly in the mix they sound pretty similar. 

Something else I've learned is that I name sounds differently to everyone else. 

What Amalgman call a clean JCM800 I've always called a crunch sound and what they call drive I would have called pretty heavily distorted. 

So making good progress and loving some of these sounds - albeit only heard them through my monitor so far. 

kennedydream1980

relic245 said:

This is getting really interesting!

I've purchased 5 of the Amalgman packs (sale on 5 for the price of 3)

Tweed delux
JCM 800
Superbass 100
Matchless DC30
EV 5050iii (this is an outlier - i'm not really a high gain guy, or so i thought but sometimes like to let my inner hair metal demon out)


Straight away they have all put a smile on my face. Even through my £99 monitor the difference is night and day to the free captures so thank you  @kennedydream1980 ; for the nudge. 

I found a backing track of all the small things which is one of the songs we play and recorded it into audacity then played along with the capture I've been using. It sounded aweful and was lost in the mix. 

Played about with eq as Roland suggested - better but still muddy. 

Recorded another version with one of the JCM 800 captures and another with the EV5050 capture. 

Really surprised myself that I liked the EV a lot. Both of those 2 cut through infinitely better.  I like both and I'm on the fence of which I like the sound of first. Interestingly in the mix they sound pretty similar. 

Something else I've learned is that I name sounds differently to everyone else. 

What Amalgman call a clean JCM800 I've always called a crunch sound and what they call drive I would have called pretty heavily distorted. 

So making good progress and loving some of these sounds - albeit only heard them through my monitor so far. 

Amalgam dial in their sounds with single coils or low output humbuckers. So if you have higher output pickups it will push their amp models a bit more. Karlis from Amalgam has a thread going on the Gear Page and has stated that his clean captures should break up slightly if you hit the strings harder on the guitar.

The input trim setting will also influence how the captures react to your guitar.

willo

There's a thread I started last year called "the curious case of the disappearing tone", where I got loads of great advice on something similar that was happening when I started playing my Helix live. I'm very very happy with where my tone is now, love it's killing it but EQ, speaker size etc all needed some attention.

relic245

willo said:

There's a thread I started last year called "the curious case of the disappearing tone", where I got loads of great advice on something similar that was happening when I started playing my Helix live. I'm very very happy with where my tone is now, love it's killing it but EQ, speaker size etc all needed some attention.

Thanks @Wilco ; I've found that and will take a look.

willo

relic245 said:

willo said:

There's a thread I started last year called "the curious case of the disappearing tone", where I got loads of great advice on something similar that was happening when I started playing my Helix live. I'm very very happy with where my tone is now, love it's killing it but EQ, speaker size etc all needed some attention.

Thanks @Wilco ; I've found that and will take a look.

Great, hope it helps! Since that thread my set up has basically changed and settled as:

Home: headphones and / or Headrush FR108
Rehearsal*: all through the PA
Gigs**: direct to FOH with the Headrush FR108 acting as an on-stage monitor

*We rehearse at a bandmates house, and everything goes into his mixer and out his studio monitors. It's not a rehearsal studio and even the drums are electronic. When we have rehearsed in a rehearsal space with full drum kit etc, I used the Headrush and felt it worked OK but I do think that a 1x12 or 2x12 would be better at filling the space. I think that speaker size is important - whenever I'm playing through the 6" (?) studio monitors and someone turns up with a 1x12, that becomes hard. I am thinking about getting a power amp + 2 x 12 cab if we can sort a regular rehearsal space where I can store it.

**Our gigs are local and small size. We play in local pubs and clubs, and probably the largest has been around 200 capacity. Mostly smaller than this though.

Final thing I'll say is that:

1. Our band setup shifted to a single guitarist, rather than dual guitarist, setup after that show. That undoubtedly made it easier to 'cut through'. I don't think its the main point but it would be remiss of me to not mention it.

2. The mental challenge of modelling is that it's easy to think about another solution, another fix, another preset. I do still find that a challenge.

3. I guess it all takes time and effort. No doubt that sorting my EQ, boosting my levels, changing my speaker, and, undoubtedly, shifting to a one-guitarist setup, all helped. I don't know that there is a perfect answer, but the same is true of all amps - everything requires compromise.

sorbz62

This is why I got rid of my Tonex pedal. It sounded great at home but absolute dog shit live through the PA, Regardless of the IR/ settings. That and the torture of using the app meant it had to go.  

relic245

sorbz62 said:

This is why I got rid of my Tonex pedal. It sounded great at home but absolute dog shit live through the PA, Regardless of the IR/ settings. That and the torture of using the app meant it had to go.  

Interesting. We're you using free captures or paid ones?

I know it's not quite the same but I've currently got our pa set up in our (fairly large ) conservatory.

I've spent the whole weekend tweaking it. True it wasn't at gig volume but definitely not neighbors friendly.

I was also playing to backing tracks of a full band to mimic live as much as possible.

I started out with what I thought were the best of the free captures that I could find then invested in some pro ones.

Massive difference straight away.

I don't think I've finished tweaking but certainly good enough for our gig on Friday.

Recently I've been using a blackstar amped1 direct and was pretty Happy with the sound.

Even at this early stage the tonex is sounding better.