Hello my fellow GP4 users, this ambitious project has taken quite a bit of work, but it’s finally ready to see the light of day … drop the mic.
This is a complete guitar pedalboard replacement for an Incubus cover band, replete with the following gear:
- An assortment of echo / delay / reverb pedals.
- An creative arrangement of phasers / flangers / filters.
- A selection of overdrive pedals and compression / sustain pedals.
Incubus is a difficult band to emulate, the vast range of pedals all have signature sounds that can’t be found elsewhere, and the musical content of the band varies from heavy metal to funk! Even getting the sound of one part of a typical incubus song can take a lot of trial and error, and there’s no single software plugin that covers everything needed. Behind the scenes, a modular approach was needed to wire this rig together.
In my global rackspace I’ve got a TC Electronic Polytune, and I have a IK Multimedia MixBox channel strip and saturator giving me a bit of creative pre-gain tone shaping.
Post processing consists of a Valhalla Vintage Reverb, followed by the master mix (MixBox again) and a global limiter, courtesy of Tokyo Dawn Labs.
Initially I had planned a pre-amp and fx-loop set of pedals. I settled on having everything in front of the amplifier input, but I still needed 2 plugin instances to work around limits on the number of automation channels supported by Positive Grid BIAS FX 2.
The amps are again from MixBox, which happens to also have a number of excellent modules to give the amps the right tone. Finally I have a Softube Celestion Speaker Shaper emulating a pair of Vintage 30’s.
To my ears this is one great sounding stack, the cleans sparkle, the boost is edgy, the rhythm bangs, the lead screams, and the FX leave many creative options on the table. I love how GP4 allows me to bring pro studio sounds and effects to the stage, in many ways even exceeding what can be achieved with the real - and very expensive - hardware.
This is actually my first GP4 rackspace, but I’m looking forward to taking this one to the stage for a workout, and exploring the universe of possibilities from here.
