Guest blogger Robby Miller shows us how he incorporates Celestion Impulse Responses into his guitar arsenal to achieve the tones he wants for performance, teaching and recording.
We guitarists are prime examples of people who are never content. We buy a new guitar and we change the pickups. We purchase a new amp and we swap out the valves. We obtain a new FX pedal and we modify it. Why?
Well, it’s because we have this forever-changing sound in our head, and we are on a lifelong mission to find and capture it. I think over the past few years I’ve become less inclined to set sail for the golden tone as often as I did and am trying my best to focus on what I already have. To be honest, there’s a whole blog yet to be written about how I stumbled into the world of Celestion Impulse Responses, but for now, I’d like to express my feelings about why they have helped me embrace the ‘if it ain’t broke…’ mindset.
I’ll cover three examples of why Celestion IRs are a very comfortable ‘throw and go’ option for me.
It’s Just a Phase…
The cherry on top for these Celestion IRs, right off the bat, is the convenience element. A typical way I’ve been recording guitars lately is to take a line out from my BluGuitar Amp 1, plug it into my Focusrite Scarlett with a pad, launch Pulse IR Loader in Logic Pro and call it a day! Because there’s no physical mic’d up cabinet on my end, my dry guitar amp signal is just being dressed up in a sharp Celestion IR suit! This means I can copy and paste that recorded section multiple times, all with different Celestion IRs and not deal with phase issues. By the way, the suit of today’s choice is the new G10 Greenback ‘Dark’ 2×12 and oh boy, does it look (sound) smart!
P.S. Be sure to check out Adam Steel’s fantastic blog where he touches perfectly on phase issues you might run into when combining IRs with a real mic’d amp response.
Speaker EQ, Who Knew!?
This is honestly the truth… I haven’t EQ’d any of the IRs I’ve recorded with. It was only recently that I thought about this since it came up in a discussion I was having. When I’m looking for a good speaker IR tone, I listen, I swap and change. I might blend a few but that is the beauty of this technology, the natural EQing has kind of been taken care of already!
Now all you have to do is find ‘that’ sound and a typical Celestion Impulse Response bundle gets you the best part of 20 very usable tones. It’s pretty fun blending more than one IR too; in fact, it’s a great way to EQ! Try taking a sound you like and mixing it in with a room mic, or take a dark mic placement and pull in a bright or thin IR for contrast.
We Don’t Need Ya, Mike!
Okay, take this title with a pinch of salt, please. I’m not saying you need to list your microphone collection on eBay! But if you’re like me – who has a modest but workable basement recording studio, but also has a very needy cat… I can tell you first-hand that your perfectly placed and positioned SM57 will not thank your out of tune, feline session musician.
Celestion IRs are captured with industry standard, ‘go-to’ microphones: a Shure SM57, Sennheiser MD421 and a Royer R-121. And for others in my position who might be forever paying off the debt for a collection of microphones like these, this is ideal.
Celestion Impulse Responses
Sometimes musicians need to capitalise on the inspiration of a certain moment. For me, this is so important. The fact that I can have such a well-captured tone at my disposal in literally minutes is just a huge breakthrough for creativity and accessibility. It means I can record a chord progression, riff and solo, all with different cabinet sizes, microphones and mic placements in an efficient and timely manner. Right before I need to feed the ever growing impatient, hungry cat…
If you’re yet to try impulse responses, explore Celestion’s ever-expanding range of guitar and bass speaker IRs here.
I’ve created a video to accompany this blog which shows exactly how easy Celestion Impulse Responses make things for guitarists trying to achieve perfect tone. Check it out:
British born guitarist, Robby Miller, is a professional musician and guitar teacher residing in Ottawa, Canada. As well as crafting his own pop/rock songs, he can be found playing guitar for Ryan Roxie and bass for Planet Axe tours.