ERG Eleven Rack Users, Help!

[kalhorrible]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I purchased an Eleven Rack a few months ago (a little too poor for an AxeFx at the moment) mostly because of the flexibility it gives me to play my guitars, bass or even plug a mic in for recording. The reason I was looking in the budget modeling market was because I bought an 8 string last year and didn't have an real usable amp to play it through. So far, the 11r has been a little underwhelming in a variety of ways but mainly when it comes to getting good tones for my 8 string. I was hoping to find some good presets to used as a baseline for some AALs tones (cleans, distortion and one that would work well for slap). The 11r presets site hasn't been much help (still waiting for my account to be "approved"). Has anyone else had any better luck? It would be awesome to get any help!

 

[CapnForsaggio]

IMHO, this is why 8 strings are no good. They are an instrument without an "amp."

They don't sound good on guitar gear, and they don't sound good on bass gear. If you can get them to sound good on your guitar gear, your normal guitars won't sound good.

I expect that in 10 years, this will be common knowledge.

A "normal" six string guitar has 1x more strings than you have fingers on your fretting hand. How many other available open strings does one really need. It's like everyone forgot they could downtune a six string....

Pointless.

 

[vick1000]

IMHO, this is why 8 strings are no good. They are an instrument without an "amp."

They don't sound good on guitar gear, and they don't sound good on bass gear. If you can get them to sound good on your guitar gear, your normal guitars won't sound good.

I expect that in 10 years, this will be common knowledge.

A "normal" six string guitar has 1x more strings than you have fingers on your fretting hand. How many other available open strings does one really need. It's like everyone forgot they could downtune a six string....

Pointless.

Pointless? Kind of like that entire rant you just posted.

The best way to get the tone you want from your 11r is to build patches from scratch. Make sure all your global and I/O settings are right for your setup, and watch some videos on how to build a patch for your music style.

 

[Syphon]

IMHO, this is why 8 strings are no good. They are an instrument without an "amp."

They don't sound good on guitar gear, and they don't sound good on bass gear. If you can get them to sound good on your guitar gear, your normal guitars won't sound good.

I expect that in 10 years, this will be common knowledge.

A "normal" six string guitar has 1x more strings than you have fingers on your fretting hand. How many other available open strings does one really need. It's like everyone forgot they could downtune a six string....

Pointless.

lol I design and build amps for a living and this is silly. Literally any high gain tube amp made in the last 30 years sounds at least ok with an 8 string (and obviously lots of modelers). In fact, designing circuits for lead also has the by-product of cutting unwanted muddy frequencies for the lower strings. 8 strings pair quite nicely with nearly high gain amp because of this. Additionally, I've done bass guitar specialized renditions of popular high gain pre-amp sections and it sounds great at frequencies MUCH lower than an 8 string.

Have you ever played an 8 string guitar? I can easily sweep all 8 strings with four fingers. Believe it or not you can move your fingers to a new string when you're done with the previous string.

 

[NickS]

IMHO, this is why 8 strings are no good. They are an instrument without an "amp."

They don't sound good on guitar gear, and they don't sound good on bass gear. If you can get them to sound good on your guitar gear, your normal guitars won't sound good.

I expect that in 10 years, this will be common knowledge.

A "normal" six string guitar has 1x more strings than you have fingers on your fretting hand. How many other available open strings does one really need. It's like everyone forgot they could downtune a six string....

Pointless.

I kind of agree with you, in that I believe it is true you can not go from your 8 string and then plug in your 6 string at the same settings and have it sound any good. So obviously, if you have guitars with varying amounts of strings then it definitely complicates things.
But then again, I am a POD user and I have different patches for pretty much every guitar I own

 

[I Shot JR]

IMHO, this is why 8 strings are no good. They are an instrument without an "amp."

They don't sound good on guitar gear, and they don't sound good on bass gear. If you can get them to sound good on your guitar gear, your normal guitars won't sound good.

I expect that in 10 years, this will be common knowledge.

A "normal" six string guitar has 1x more strings than you have fingers on your fretting hand. How many other available open strings does one really need. It's like everyone forgot they could downtune a six string....

Pointless.

Wow flashback to 2008. Are you gonna say "Why not get a bass?" next?

 

[lewis]

whilst I find it true that dialing in tones is easier with 6ers, to boldly declare that 8s are guitars without an amp due to them not sounding good with anything, is pure nonsense.

Also not all 8s are tuned super low. For the longest time I was using a tuning on my 8 string that most would use on 7s instead. Its a nonsense rant imo.

anyway i can relate OP, I have similar issues with my Pod HD. I mostly find it tough because I was relying on IR's/cab sims and going direct.

Im at my wits end with it and Im now ready to ditch that (unless using my kemper) and go poweramp > real cabinet instead as It just sounds so much better.

 

[mnemonic]

I know we're kind of off OP's topic now but I just gotta say, I use the same patch in my axe fx with my 8 as I do with my 6's, if you've got a good clear tone set up, it generally won't be limited by frequency.

This wasn't the case when I used a pod, as the amplification quite frankly wasn't as good.

I've never played an 8 through a high end tube amp but I suspect it will be broadly the same - if you've got a good amp and a good cab, using a quality guitar with quality electronics, then 8's sound great, and so do 6's.

 

[lewis]

I know we're kind of off OP's topic now but I just gotta say, I use the same patch in my axe fx with my 8 as I do with my 6's, if you've got a good clear tone set up, it generally won't be limited by frequency.

This wasn't the case when I used a pod, as the amplification quite frankly wasn't as good.

I've never played an 8 through a high end tube amp but I suspect it will be broadly the same - if you've got a good amp and a good cab, using a quality guitar with quality electronics, then 8's sound great, and so do 6's.

Yeah I mean if you have an 8 string, you also have a 6 and a 7 string. So if you a dial in a tone on a 6 string, then realistically it should work exactly the same as the 6 of the 8 strings on an 8 string haha

I love twang personally so I slightly overdo it when doing 8 string tones and that might be too bitey if only using 6's but its not a million miles away.

And yeah the Pod doesnt do it well tbh. Its why Im going tube preamp route > real cab like I said. Im abit sick and tired of trying to tweak the pod finding something useable. Ran through my ENGL preamp the other day and boom. Great tone in seconds, no knob fiddling needed.

 

[TeeWX]

The 11R is the best modeler I've used so far. Haven't touched the Axe FX but the 11R honestly gets real enough for me. Through my 5150 power section into a real cab it might as well be a tube amp. The true-z input is fantastic for feel. My favorite part about it is how plug & play it is. You really shouldn't have much issue dialing in a tone.

That said... how are you using it?

If you're going the all-in-one route and using an FRFR/Headphones then you'll be using cabs. The 11R has really nice sounding cabs. If you're playing metal I'd suggest one of the 4x12's that best matches the speakers you prefer in a real cab. I usually prefer the 4x12 v30 model. You can play around with the 2x12's as well but the cab is really where I would start with the patch building process. Cabs have a huge impact on your final tone. For mic, you might want to start with the SM57 as it's a really commonly used mic and probably what your ears are use to hearing. After that, just pick one of the amps suited for metal and dial in a tone. If you want a little extra tone shaping there are two blocks of parametric EQs that you can use. This could come in handy if your 8 is tuned down significantly lower than your average 6, as you could use it to really clean up any muddiness.

If you're going straight into a power section and a regular guitar cab it's even more straight forward. Just pick an amp and go!

One additional tip. You can use the reamping mode as a way to dial in a nice tone. Basically, record the dry signal into your DAW and then set it up for reamp and run it on loop with a few riffs that cover a good amount of dynamic range. Then you can fiddle with the settings as it loops.

 

[CapnForsaggio]

Wow flashback to 2008. Are you gonna say "Why not get a bass?" next?

I'm just speaking from my experience. Can't get good tones across an 8 string.

Haven't heard anyone get good tones across all 8 strings.

It isn't personal. There are real physical limitations to the amplification of such a wide ranging instrument.

 

[Nitrobattery]

Give these a whirl. Parametric EQ's are your friend with the 11R. These were designed for a downtuned 6, but should get you in the ballpark. Just cut some low end. There's a fair amount of compression going on that should help even things out.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9iKWmkKHTrVMXJMSWtBZ1A5c0U

 

[kalhorrible]

Thanks for all the awesome responses guys!

The idea of an 8 string just intrigued me after playing a six for so many years. I saw a good deal for a TAM10 and just decided to go for it. I've used the 11r for recording guitar, bass and some vocals to some success. There's some fun tones that work for a 6 string, haven't gotten super far with dialing anything noteworthy in for the bass. For now this is my "amp" for the 8 string, I doubt I'll really be trying to record anything with it soon, I'm running it through a pair of Mackie MR5mk3s.

I'll take (what seems like) everyone's word for it and try and build some tones from the ground up. I'm fairly new to the parametric EQ game, but I will give it a shot!

I'll give you guys an update in the near future once I've spent more time playing around with it.

 

[TheKindred]

A "normal" six string guitar has 1x more strings than you have fingers on your fretting hand. How many other available open strings does one really need.

Lolol

Harps have 47 strings and pianos have 88

How many fingers you even need, brah?

Django did it with 2 fingers, should he have played 1 string guitar?

 

[lewis]

Lolol

Harps have 47 strings and pianos have 88

How many fingers you even need, brah?

Django did it with 2 fingers, should he have played 1 string guitar?

and mixing desks can have masssssives amount of channels. Best stop recording too. How many sliders do we even need?

 

[TeeWX]

I don't get the 8 string hate... I use a 28.625" scale baritone 6. How is that any different? It's not like an 8 is even giving you all that much extra range over a 6. Not even a full octave worth of notes. Dialing in a tone shouldn't be very difficult. In fact, it might be easier if you have a longer scale to keep the strings thinner.

 

[ICSvortex]

Hey dude!
I use the eleven rack with my RGA8 (emg808 upgrade) and it sounds killer!
I just went with some patches that you can download from the avid downloadzone for 11r presets and then put in the parametric eq to cut low frequenzies.
But if you have 10$ spare the choptones djent presets for the 11R are cool for this application aswell. You need to eq there too but there are many good tutorials on how to use the parametric eq on youtube.
Hope you are successfull!

But if you really just cant find the right tone just message mr and ill send you some patches