Guitar Gear Forum

I tend to go for trial and error and pick a speaker/mic/mic position that works with my base tone, but I feel like it's ridiculously inefficient. I should probably take the time to get really familiar with how different speaker positions sound and it would at least take one variable out of the equation.

But then sometimes I'll pick a speaker that I want to use and tweak the amp to the IR. For example, I like Greenbacks IRL so I wasn't sure why I was disliking the free Redwirez Greenback IRs until I jacked up the amp's treble and mids and dropped the bass, at which point I found a tone that I liked. But this leads me to situations where I think I would like a speaker (Celestion Alnico Blue) so I find a free IR for the speaker to try it out and I can't get a usable tone out of it. It makes me hesitate to buy IRs because I'm not sure if the IR doesn't work with my amp or if I just found a crappy one (is there really any way to tell the quality of the IR if you don't know what the speaker sounds like IRL?).

Maybe I should just take the plunge and buy the Redwirez BIGBox and leave the poverty free IRs behind

My completely honest opinion: skip IR's altogether unless you absolutely must. At the end of the day I'll take a mic'd speaker over any IR I've heard so far.

There's too many IR's to experiment with. So I stick to IR's for the speakers I know I like. CL80, EVM12L, and G12-65

Yeah I'd like to mic up my cab but unfortunately I'm pretty much using IRs instead out of necessity - the place I'm in has paper-thin walls so I can't get any real volume with speakers.

I would probably do the same and stick with ones that I know I like but I've found that I actually like some IRs for speakers that I didn't like IRL! V30s for instance...

iff wrote:Yeah I'd like to mic up my cab but unfortunately I'm pretty much using IRs instead out of necessity - the place I'm in has paper-thin walls so I can't get any real volume with speakers.

I would probably do the same and stick with ones that I know I like but I've found that I actually like some IRs for speakers that I didn't like IRL! V30s for instance...

Same here, kind of. My go-to IRs are from an Orange cab with v30s from Ownhammer. I've never played through an Orange cab IRL and don't have a problem with V30s, it's just a combination I never would've sought out.

As for choosing IRs, I start with the Ownhammer quick picks or whatever they call that folder. I also listen to soundcloud demos on the Ownhammer site.

M.Mike LX-R wrote:My completely honest opinion: skip IR's altogether unless you absolutely must. At the end of the day I'll take a mic'd speaker over any IR I've heard so far.

There's too many IR's to experiment with. So I stick to IR's for the speakers I know I like. CL80, EVM12L, and G12-65

I actually disagree with that. IRs can give you great results that are virtually indistinguishable from a mic'd amp (in a mix anyway).

I choose them by trial and error though. Once the guitars are recorded I change IRs until I hear something I like it. Once I find it, I make a copy of it and save it in a folder for that project just so I have a quick way to find it for the other tracks etc...

GuitarBilly wrote:

M.Mike LX-R wrote:My completely honest opinion: skip IR's altogether unless you absolutely must. At the end of the day I'll take a mic'd speaker over any IR I've heard so far.

There's too many IR's to experiment with. So I stick to IR's for the speakers I know I like. CL80, EVM12L, and G12-65

I actually disagree with that. IRs can give you great results that are virtually indistinguishable from a mic'd amp (in a mix anyway).

I choose them by trial and error though. Once the guitars are recorded I change IRs until I hear something I like it. Once I find it, I make a copy of it and save it in a folder for that project just so I have a quick way to find it for the other tracks etc...

Yeah I thought for a while that IR's just weren't as "good" as an actual mic'd cab until I really started to listen to what I was getting compared to recordings I really like. They are indistinguishable if using a good IR. It can be decision-hell though.

JerEvil wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:

M.Mike LX-R wrote:My completely honest opinion: skip IR's altogether unless you absolutely must. At the end of the day I'll take a mic'd speaker over any IR I've heard so far.

There's too many IR's to experiment with. So I stick to IR's for the speakers I know I like. CL80, EVM12L, and G12-65

I actually disagree with that. IRs can give you great results that are virtually indistinguishable from a mic'd amp (in a mix anyway).

I choose them by trial and error though. Once the guitars are recorded I change IRs until I hear something I like it. Once I find it, I make a copy of it and save it in a folder for that project just so I have a quick way to find it for the other tracks etc...

Yeah I thought for a while that IR's just weren't as "good" as an actual mic'd cab until I really started to listen to what I was getting compared to recordings I really like. They are indistinguishable if using a good IR. It can be decision-hell though.

That's where I'm stuck now and the new Celestion IRs don't help