Aha, I thought FX loops were usually on the front of amps. I haven’t used a real amp for decades! My next question was going to be why use an amp if you’re running through amp sim software, that should be good to go straight into studio amps/monitors. I think you’ve kind of answered that already, but if you want to use a real amp for guitar sound, then other than mic’ing it up the only other option is a load box with speaker cab simulation, something like a Two Notes Torpedo Captor X.
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Yeah, it makes no sense to use an amp sim in Rack if I want to send to my instrument amps, but, that is the way your patches are set up, so I was trying to figure out how to do it, even if it made no sense. Everything is working now via judicious attenuators when needed. The Cyber-Twin is so smart it is stupid. When I was feeding the output from your patch to the Cyber-Twin, I would set the trim, gain and volume but when I changed the preset, all motorized knobs except for trim would start spinning and suddenly my amp was overdriving. The key was to keep the manual trim knob set very low, just in case. And now I am attenuating in Rack.
Yeah, I have not seriously used my instrument amps in years. Most of the time I just use my computer Behringer powered monitors or if I want more power and fidelity, I use my large powered studio monitors with sub-bass going through my 30 year old or so 15 channel analog mixer. The 32 track digital recorder/mixer has not been turned on since VCV came along 
Ah, to have a proper studio! I mainly just use guitar, laptop and an interface with headphones. It’s what you do with it that counts eh?
No guitar in this one, but it came from a guitar patch. I wondered how an effect would work with some plucky Plaits sounds, then I added a Rings and a vocal sample pitched down quite a lot, and it just got increasingly strange. It’s basically Instant Delay with polyphonic modulation, and a resonant low-pass filter in the feedback loop. The modulation makes it go from typical granular sounds into a metallic timestretch and back again, and I edited my favourite bits into sample loops which I then loaded into Pigments for further granularisation/re-pitching/effects. The video just shows the patch and not the rest of the workflow, because I couldn’t be arsed.
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Any chance of the patch being available on here or Patch storage? It does sound interesting once again, another winner!!
Would Path set’s granular effects modules do the granular further edits?
Yep, it’s pretty much the same as the last guitar FX one, but some Rings and Plaits as input instead and without the MIDI control. You’ll need the premium Unfiltered Audio Vol1 collection, and it will be missing all the extra parts produced by Pigments (although I can share that too if anyone else uses Pigments). You’d also need the vocal sample, but I can probably upload that somewhere, Google Drive or whatever. I’ll upload the patch later today, let me know if you want any of the other bits…
Any granular effects are worth experimenting with to further process or reprocess sounds in my opinion, and Path Set is a great option! I quite often reprocess samples two or three times. Maybe smash it through six instances of Ice Tray and modulate the nuts off everything, that’s probably a winner too
Here you go, if anyone else wants the patch to play about with:
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Thanks, the sample -I have loads of vocal ones, so no problem. The Ice Tray route to sonic oblivion sounds interesting. I like the Path set Granular set as well! So all good.
Up to number 12 in the series, what a time to be alive.
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When I get my new chair with moveable arms, I plan to continue playing with the Jamstik Studio guitar and Rack. I will give your patches in this series a try also, using the Jamstik as a regular electric guitar with the standard pickups.
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Great, I’d love to hear more people using rack for guitar effects. I’m thinking of going for some sort of MIDI guitar solution eventually, that last patch really doesn’t trigger very well from a regular guitar into an envelope follower.
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I’m on the cadge again, is the patch available to play around with? Might try guitar samples or Resonator with Grids Pathset sequencer. Thanks much appreciated.
It’s up on Patchstorage here: Rings Plus AirWindows Octave Delay | Patchstorage
It’s really designed for live input though, not sure it would work that well with sequences. I think Rings sounds quite different with external audio throught it, rather than just bonging away with a sequencer. Nothing wrong with that of course, but that would be a regular Rings patch and not what I’m doing here. Having said that, it’s always worth trying other oscillators through Rings’ input. Could be interesting.
Just a short video today, no guitar but brain-melting feedback connecting VCV to itself through an old 4-track. Hours of fun!
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My, that sounds absolutely beautiful to my jaundiced ears, very 1950s space music. Would that work with Ahornberg Tape in 4 track mode do u think?
Thanks, much appreciated, well as is my want I used Rings has a guitar input and produced a lots of mayhem even used the VCO as a sound source for the Rings in.
Yep, you can put anything through Rings. Worth experimenting with…
And I probably will at some point!! Hehe. Keep making these great guitar patches and I’ll keep mangling fake guitars and even samples of guitars-slide, Hawaiian Steel etc.!!
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Sorry missed that question! Thanks, but sadly, I don’t think it would. It’s basically a feedback loop through my external interface, all the 4-track is doing is distorting everything with it’s terrible quality inputs sitting in the signal path. It’s not actually recording anything or using tape, I just arm the record inputs so it feeds back from the aux sends. The fact that it’s so crap, and distorts really easily gives it a vintage saturation which you identified as being reminiscent of early electronic music. I also immediately thought 50’s sci-fi soundtrack! It’s really just feedback though, so you could get a similar sound with an analogue mixer, or any other hardware that has analogue in/outs and distorts a bit.
Of course, you can patch feedback entirely in VCV but you need some noise floor to get it started. You could also try to simulate the analogue distortion with something like Hora Vacuumba, or a VST guitar amp if you have host. Erica’s Fusion Delay also has noise built into the modelling, so that can feed back all on it’s own, without even patching a loop. I think Vult Rescombe does this too, not entirely sure but it usually screams nicely with the feedback control right up.
Basically, just try connecting outputs back to inputs via different effects, through some overdrive/waveshaping/distortion into the mix and you should get something fairly similar!
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Just thought I would mention that I am starting to explore your Virtual Modular channel patches, using my Jamstik Studio guitar instrument audio out as input into Rack.
I have spent quite a bit of time on the Jamstik MIDI MPE input into Rack, but, I’m finding that even with MPE, MIDI guitar is a tricky beast. Whereas I can get good behavior within the Jamstik Creator application, I cannot do so in Rack. Anyway, that is a separate topic that I will say more about in the Jamstik topic. But, I need to spend some time doing something with the Jamstick audio into Rack and your patches work great, out of the “box” and sound very good too.
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Thanks, that’s good to know! They’re all designed for guitar, but you may find some levels need tweaking, especially if anything is triggering or using an envelope follower to drive change parameters. Sometimes I try samples or other synth sounds through guitar patches and it doesn’t always sound that good, so I guess they’re kind of ‘tuned’ for the guitar. Shout if there’s anything you can’t get working!
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