How do I use a guitar amp?

[PonE-Sharp]

I'm looking for the sound similar to the intro to Loyalty. I'm using Shreddage as my guitar and Guitar Rig 5 for my amp, but no matter what I do I cannot reproduce that same sound. It's either a way to 'funky' 80's sound or balls to the walls distorted. How in tartarus do I use this thing?

[ChocolateChicken]

For the effect, it's just a clean sound with chorus. So no distortion, drive, or high-gain for the lead in the intro. Most guitar amps include "chorus" among their built-in effects, and that is the sound that you're looking for. It also kinda sounds like there might be a tiny amount of tremolo effect as well.

For the sounds themselves, Acoustic Brony always records their own instruments, which means they must have used a real guitar for "Loyalty." I am not sure about whether or not they use real amps or virtual amps though. If I had to guess, I'd say that they mic up real guitar amps as well, but don't quote me on that; I have no idea. In fact, I might ask them and see if they respond.

But anyway considering that those two record real instruments, first I would focus on which kind of guitars they use. The sound will be different depending on if you use a Fender Stratocaster, a Telecaster, or a Gibson Les Paul. I don't know what Shreddage is, but hopefully it is able to emulate specific guitar types.

Also, if Acoustic Brony indeed mic up their amps, it would help to know what kind of amp they are using, what kind of microphone they record it with, and the position the mic is in.

But yeah, see if Guitar Rig 5 has "chorus" in its effects. If it doesn't, then that is a waste of money considering that most amps nowadays include it; no effects pedals required.

[PonE-Sharp]

Wow thanks Chocolate! I would've never guess it was that clean. I think I forgot to mention it in the OP, but I was also wondering what settings I should use to get the distortion that goes for most of Loyalty, that generic rock sound? It always seems way too distorted or not enough.

[BlackElectric]

Wow thanks Chocolate! I would've never guess it was that clean. I think I forgot to mention it in the OP, but I was also wondering what settings I should use to get the distortion that goes for most of Loyalty, that generic rock sound? It always seems way too distorted or not enough.

I think that he thought you were talking about the intro. The rest of the song does have distortion

[ChocolateChicken]

Wow thanks Chocolate!

I think that he thought you were talking about the intro.

I'm looking for the sound similar to the intro to Loyalty.

As for that generic rock sound, I'm looking into it right now. It's obviously some kind of guitar distortion, most likely from the bridge pickups. As for the kind of distortion, I'm trying to figure that out, although a big part of the sound would come from the type of guitar that they used, as well as the mic-ing situation and amp type that was used, as stated above.

I'll post when I figure it out.

[BlackElectric]

Oh, oops. I totally didn't notice he asked for the intro specifically. My bad.

[PonE-Sharp]

Oh, oops. I totally didn't notice he asked for the intro specifically. My bad.

to be fair I'm especially bad at organizing my posts. I'm bad at all my english classes too.

[Applejinx]

That's not a chorus guys- it's a phaser. I don't think it's an MXR (at least not the one I have) and it might be a plugin of some sort, but that's a phase shifter giving that throaty sound and then a chorus making it stereo. I suppose it's possible the whole thing is a Leslie speaker effect but I'm betting on phaser/chorus. Maybe even all three- phaser/chorus/leslie!

As far as the distortion guitars go there's two secrets- one, the bass guitar makes up part of the weight but you're probably hearing it as part of the guitar walls, and two, it's never as much gain as you think it is, usually a lot of the 'chug' is coming out of the actual playing. I'm betting it's the same basic sound for the much weaker and softer melodic riffs at 1:53 as it is for the chugging again at 1:58- but for the main chord stuff he's able to dig in and make the strings bark a lot more, and the chug just comes right out. Get it sounding like those softer riffs, and then palm mute and give it more attack and you should be able to get the main riff going for at least a little while

[MixolydianPony]

Of course, that's an issue if you use fake guitars... Very hard to get the dynamics just right. And in my experience, virtual amps don't respond well to dynamics. At all.

If you're going the route of using one amp setting for both parts of that song, that'll only work if there's no compressor on the input of the amp. A lot of virtual amps do that automatically, don't know about Guitar Rig.

[Foxtrot89]

Yeah, it's a relatively low gain sound. You might be surprised what kind of sound you get if you turn back the gain. It's actually a fairly bland and boring tone, so you may want to just do your own thing. With the smallest amount of tweaking, amp sims and sampled guitars it's pretty easy to get a decent tone just by messing with some of the presets GR has. Just go through the presets and find something close to what you want and tweak it a bit. Until semi-recently all of my guitar work was done through amp sims and shreddage. All of that said, a good deal of amp sims (Revalver is pretty good at it) don't do crunchy mid-gain sounds all that well to begin with, so you might not be able to get the exact tone down.

As for the intro sound, it sounds too twangy for shreddage to accomplish right. Shreddage is some sort of humbucking drop tuned thing made for metal. Something along the lines of Pettinhouse's direct guitar, or prominy's SC are more geared toward the twangy single coil strat sound and would do better at the intro.

After a second listen it sounds less twangy than I thought though. It's hard to tell through all the crazy effects they've got going on.

[Lavender_Harmony]

Uh, guys, no, not chorus, not phaser. There are two parts to the intro sound.

First is the chords which are broken, or arpeggiated. That's being put through a flanger, it's too clean to be a phaser, phasers tend to have a lot more harmonics, and the tone of them is quite clear, you can often hear it ascending and descending clearly. Flangers operate differently, sort of halfway between a chorus and a wah.

The second part is the melody on top, there are two guitar parts here. The second uses a tremolo effect, at quite a fast pace. The tone for both is pretty similar, I think the tremolo tone might have been recorded on the neck pickup, but that might just be EQ.

[Applejinx]

I totally think it's a phaser rather than a flanger (and yes, also chorus and maybe leslie too, but certainly chorus)

We gotta get the guitarist in here to say who was right! It's turning into a game

[Foxtrot89]

To be fair, a "leslie" is just a tremolo effect. It sounds more like a flanger to me. At first I was leaning towards the phaser, but after trying it out myself and tweaking the knobs a little more than I normally do, it definitely sounds more like a flanger.

[Applejinx]

To be fair, a "leslie" is just a tremolo effect. It sounds more like a flanger to me. At first I was leaning towards the phaser, but after trying it out myself and tweaking the knobs a little more than I normally do, it definitely sounds more like a flanger.

Um, no. A Leslie is spinning speakers in a big box, generally stereo miced- or the simulation of that. The lows are more an offset stereo tremolo, but the highs are twirling horn tweeters and you get sort of a doppler effect going on.

Maybe it's a flanger I'm just not familiar with? I've got an MXR flanger, but it sounds more like that 'narrow frequency peak sweeping' noise rather than the broader wash of a phase shifter. If there's a plugin flanger that sounds like that, I'm wrong and mea culpa from this silly pony

[Lavender_Harmony]

To be fair, a "leslie" is just a tremolo effect. It sounds more like a flanger to me. At first I was leaning towards the phaser, but after trying it out myself and tweaking the knobs a little more than I normally do, it definitely sounds more like a flanger.

Um, no. A Leslie is spinning speakers in a big box, generally stereo miced- or the simulation of that. The lows are more an offset stereo tremolo, but the highs are twirling horn tweeters and you get sort of a doppler effect going on.

Maybe it's a flanger I'm just not familiar with? I've got an MXR flanger, but it sounds more like that 'narrow frequency peak sweeping' noise rather than the broader wash of a phase shifter. If there's a plugin flanger that sounds like that, I'm wrong and mea culpa from this silly pony

From what I remember, a leslie on a guitar will give a kind of very rapid doppler effect, see Soundgarden: "Black Hole Sun"

[Foxtrot89]

The rotating speaker is used to get the vibrato tremolo type sound. Though I suppose it's got a chorus type effect to it as well, so it's not strictly a tremolo sound, but damn it, it tremols! Kind of, anyway (hooray for non-existent word. Hooray for not wanting to admit I was wrong.) I've only dealt with pedal replications and not the actual thing. Upon watching a couple youtube videos I couldn't help but laugh a bit.

I'm starting to lean back towards thinking it's a phaser though. I can't quite replicate the sound with amplitube's flanger. Sounds too "whoa" and not enough "E-yow," if that makes sense.

[Lavender_Harmony]

I just deleted a post here. You know who you are. Don't.