Are IR's color blind?

[willymartin]

I've been coming here for years...I know most here have very high end guitars..but try and be honest (haha), do IR'S sound good (just as good) in lower end guitars? I use acoustic for about 80 percent of the band's typical 3 hour gig...thinking of a helix for the electric side...as I research the helix I stumble on acoustic IR'S. I know ir's are are well liked here so I'm hoping someone has tried them through am AMI or a different 500 to 800 dollar guitar. Catalyst for the question is someone on YouTube using a helix to put an IR on an electric guitar that had an acoustic pickup installed..it sounded decent for full band acoustic sounds. While I currently use an om28/Anthem...I've used my daughter's Road Series Martin/fishman at practice and gigs and (again, in a band mix) have been just as happy and, admittedly, even more happy
Any thought would be helpful
..thnx

[shufflebeat]

I'm currently using IRs in one form or another on three of my own instruments (Crafter [Ultra Tonic], Takamine guitars, un-named mandola [K&K Twin Spot]) and two other folks (Musicman bass, the Fiddle with No Name) and all are very cool.

[jonfields45]

Here is an IR demo in a $150 guitar: https://youtu.be/SELEE4yugjE

[willymartin]

Originally Posted by jonfields45

Here is an IR demo in a $150 guitar: https://youtu.be/SELEE4yugjE

That's great! Man, a tough lil laminate getting beat up on the road sounding great on stage..

[James May]

Jon Fields' demo says it very well indeed. A properly generated IR will make even the crappiest of pickups sound very much like your guitar.

And even if the guitar ain't nothin' to write home about, the IR sound is still miles ahead of just the raw pickup.

[varmonter]

Curious the original post said using an IR
With a cheap guitar.. jonesfields
Video used an ir generated by a
Decent guitar jm45 just making an assumption it's a J45. Then when the cheap guitar
Is played with it it sounds better??.
The best (to my ear )that guitar sounded.
Was thru the sm57 mic..the cheap
Guitar sounded pretty good micd.
The 100% fishman sounded aweful..
The two 75% cuts with the ir sounded good
But different..But they had their own tone.
It wasn't bad..just different then the cheap
Guitar through the sm57. The advantage of course is a mic cannot be used in a live setting all the time. This IR made from a good guitar sounded ok for a bar setting. It would work
Good for us gigging musicians.
But still to my ear the cheap guitar through
An sm57 sounded the best..
I hope I'm making sense here...ha.
What about an ir made with that sm57 of that
Cheap guitar..then played through the cheap guitars pickup..?? Curious minds want to know??

[cdkrugjr]

The thing about that is that a sound that works in a band is NOT a sound that sounds great solo.

In a busy mix, all that beautiful double-quad-12 low end from the Marshall stack gets rolled off below 200Hz to make room for the bass and drums. Things get muddy REAL quick at volume if you don’t devote the sonic space.

Similarly, a lot of that gorgeous acoustic tone we love on the couch is going to be lost once cymbals and bass are in the equation.

It happens that Ovations work really well in that environment. I can’t stand ‘em, but have to say they’re GREAT there . . .

Different players deal with that differently. Some players use a stage monitor that gives them all the subtleties of their amazing instrument, and let the sound man figure out how to deal with it in the house mix. Other players just want the “live mix sound” with the low end rolled off and lots of compression.

You’ll have to experiment and figure out whether a sound is “good enough” for what you need depending on where you’re playing and how many other instruments you need to deal with.

[Cuki79]

Originally Posted by varmonter

What about an ir made with that sm57 of that
Cheap guitar..then played through the cheap guitars pickup..?? Curious minds want to know??

Here is an example with one very old process

The guitar is an all laminate Yamaha FGX412 made in some Asian country in the mid-late 90s (not Japan).

The pickup is a factory under saddle pickup. It is cheap and noisy.

The IR was made using a SM57.

Even with this very old process the difference is night and day.

[jonfields45]

Originally Posted by varmonter

Curious the original post said using an IR
With a cheap guitar.. jonesfields
Video used an ir generated by a
Decent guitar jm45 just making an assumption it's a J45. Then when the cheap guitar
Is played with it it sounds better??.
The best (to my ear )that guitar sounded.
Was thru the sm57 mic..the cheap
Guitar sounded pretty good micd.
The 100% fishman sounded aweful..
The two 75% cuts with the ir sounded good
But different..But they had their own tone.
It wasn't bad..just different then the cheap
Guitar through the sm57. The advantage of course is a mic cannot be used in a live setting all the time. This IR made from a good guitar sounded ok for a bar setting. It would work
Good for us gigging musicians.
But still to my ear the cheap guitar through
An sm57 sounded the best..
I hope I'm making sense here...ha.
What about an ir made with that sm57 of that
Cheap guitar..then played through the cheap guitars pickup..?? Curious minds want to know??

That IR in the demo was custom made for that guitar with the SM57 you hear/see in the video using my jf45ir script.

The math of IR generation, regardless of whose IR generator you use, has a set of assumptions that would make exact duplication of the mic's tone impossible. Not the least of the assumptions is that a single fixed IR will do the trick regardless of how you play your guitar. BUT, if mics were so great and what performers wanted, I think we would see pros with more of them even with the hassle to set them up (they've got sound people to worry about it).

Still, in particular for ubiquitous undersaddle transducers, I think it is a huge improvement. It can be implemented with an inexpensive cabinet IR pedal targeted at electric guitarists, which won't have a blend knob. Guitar cabinet IRs are directly measured and 100% IR is great (and IMO cabinets are not outrageously impactful anyway). Acoustic guitar IRs need to be calculated and 100% IR usually sounds not as good as having some direct pickup mixed in.

ToneDexter, which includes highly evolved straightforward built-in IR generation, and loads of user controllable performance options is in a whole different (higher!) class.

It has been my experience that lower volumes and smaller rooms sound best with closer mic'd IRs and less direct pickup in the mix. Larger and louder benefits from a more distant mic'd IR and more pickup. My IR generation algorithm leans a bit towards less impact (less is more :~) as I think higher volume performance robustness is essential and not everyone knows how to plan for that.

[Methos1979]

Originally Posted by willymartin

Are IR's color blind?

A more apt title would be, "Are IR's tone deaf?"

[keith.rogers]

If the principle/hope of the IR is that it takes the pickup input and somehow differences that with the mic used in generating it [the IR], when the pickup signal is sent through your Tone Dexter or whatever, it can produce something like would be picked up by the mic.

So, it seems to me that whether you can plug anything in and get a good result depends probably mostly on the kind of signal that is sent from the pickup. USTs are much alike IMO, in that the actual acoustic qualities of the (any) guitar are largely not present in that signal. Ergo, an IR created from a nice acoustic that has a UST used with any other acoustic having a UST probably has a fair or better chance of probably giving a good result. A corollary is that almost any decent guitar, including your laminated boxes, can sound decent in recordings if played and mic'd well. So I think mixing/matching is not such a bad idea when the pickup types are of a same type and the IR is a good one.

As noted, once you start amplifying acoustic instruments in an ensemble, the pure, "full" acoustic quality of individual instruments has to be sacrificed if you actually want to hear them. Done well, listeners don't realize they're only getting a part. However (from what I've seen), many (most?), small, pure acoustic groups do almost always incorporate mics, either on-stage or small ones attached to the instruments, with some blending occurring somewhere. A pickup alone, even with a great IR pedal, is still not quite there.

[TedBPhx]

I assume an IR would help a $500 guitar and hinder a $5000.

[jonfields45]

Originally Posted by TedBPhx

I assume an IR would help a $500 guitar and hinder a $5000.

The IR makes up for the pickup's short comings. The same pickup, in different guitars, will bring with it the same problems. The price of a guitar is secondary to this problem.

If people performed in a sound booth with well placed recording mics, then an IR would be useless and the price of the guitar (potentially?) readily apparent.

[Chriscom]

I use a Tonedexter for gigs with my $700-$800 Martin Road Series guitar, fwiw. Very happy with it, though I wouldn't say it's My Guitar But Louder. I just went for a pleasing, fairly acoustic-y tone that would improve output from the modest Sonitone pickup.

FWIW the pure acoustic tone of that guitar is magnificent.