Review: Ugritone Northern Artillery Drums (with video sample)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing the latest drum sampler from Ugritone (former It Might Get Loud Productions), a brand that has evolved from a small Finnish software house to a larger and more prominent company, capable with this first release under the Ugritone name to hire Matias Kupiainen, guitarist and producer of the legendary Finnish power metal band Stratovarius as a producer, and the Stratovarius drummer, Rolf Pilve, as a drummer to capture these samples.

This product clearly differentiates itself from the previous ones: while the older drum samplers of It Might Get Loud were smaller and aimed to obtain a specific sound, this is a much more versatile suite, which incorporates 3 kicks, 6 snares, 2 sets of 5 toms each, 19 cymbals, and the shells have a built in sampler with 62 samples, and the possibility to load your own.

I have appreciated the flexibility of Northern Artillery for several reasons: the routing options are great, they allow us not only to send the channels to separate tracks, but also to the most common configurations (for example divided in shells, cymbals and room microphones); 

the MIDI mapping is super useful (it remaps the notes according to the mapping of the most famous samplers, such as Superior Drummer), and the fact that you can blend in the one shot samples directly within each drum part, all inside the virtual instrument itself, it's just delightful.

I have found this drum sampler much more polished and refined than the previous products of the software house, and it's safe to say that Northern Artillery Drums marks a great beginning for the new Ugritone brand.

The sounds are very usable, and aimed to all kinds of heavy music, from classic metal to the fastest death metal: in the video sample I've made the drum sound comes just from N.A.D., with no additional processing other than some buss compression, and the choice of one shot samples gives extreme flexibility and the possibility to fine tune the tone to the minimum detail.

I really suggest everyone to try this product, and I am looking forward for the next Ugritone releases (rumors says that there is also an amp simulator on the way!).

Thumbs up!

Specs taken from the website:

- Drums Engineered by: Matias Kupiainen @ 5by5 Studio, Helsinki, Finland

- Drums Performed by: Rolf Pilve

- One Shot Samples by: Matias Kupiainen, Ron D. Rock & Toni Kauko

- Presets Created by: Matias Kupiainen, Ron D. Rock & Toni Kauko

- Classic Finnish Metal Sound

- 3 kicks, 6 snares, 2 set of 5 toms, 19 cymbals, 62 oneshots.

- 7 Kit Presets - Multiple Routing and MIDI Mapping Options

- Add your own oneshot samples

- Adjust the levels of Close mics, Overhead and Room per drum

- Solo / Mute

- Drum Gain knob

- 3-band Equalizer, different fixed bands for each drum type

- Oneshot sample selector on shells

- Oneshot Pan & Gain knob

- All MIDI Notes are remappable

- All drum mic channels are routable to 16 output channels

- 7 Pre-made presets for different genres ( 90's Death Metal, Industrial Metal, Metal Core etc.)

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TRIDENT IR PACK: FREE impulse response suite exclusive for Guitar Nerding Blog!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are talking about the result of our IR creation experiments, lasted for months, done my me and my friend Dano (Thank you man!) in our rehearsals room, from which I have written my How to capture an Impulse Response from an amp article (click here to read it!).

The result is a custom Ir pack that I have called Trident IR Pack, and it's a pack consisting of 14 48khz impulses created using the power amp section of a Marshall JVM Vintage Modern head, into two cabs, a Marshall 1960 4x12 and an Orange 2x12.

The impulses were captured by two microphones, a Shure Sm57 and a Sennheiser e609, two industry standards, through Presonus Xmax preamps.

There are serveral impulses, taken from the microphones in various positions, and each one has a naming code, which must be interpreted this way:

gnb = Guitar Nerding Blog

mar jvm = Marshall JVM Head

mar412 = Marshall 4x12 cab

org212 = Orange 2x12 cab

57 = Shure sm57

e609 = Sennheiser e609

45deg = the microphone was at 45 degrees, pointing towards the center of the speaker

center = the microphone was pointing straight to the center of the speaker

dustcap = the microphone was pointing to the sweet spot between the dustcap and the cone

edge = the microphone was pointing to the edge of the cone

For best results I suggest you to blend 2 impulses with a cab loader such as Ignite Amps NadIR.

Let us hear your creations using this pack and help us spreading the word!

Enjoy!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD TRIDENT IR PACK! 

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How to capture an impulse response (IR) from an amp (with free plugins) Part 2/2

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2

Now that we have everything ready, let's put our microphone in front of our cabinet (using one of the positions suggested in our article about how to microphone a cab) and now we need to nail perfectly our gain staging, which means let's plug our guitar into the amp until we reach a volume in which the power amp section is giving its best, and let's setup the input gain of our audio interface to make sure the signal is captured loud and clear, but without any clipping. 

Now follow those steps:

1) go on Voxengo Deconvolver, click on "Test Tone Gen", generate the sweep (the sound that covers all the audible spectrum) and save it somewhere in your desktop, then import it into a mono track in your Daw.

2) Connect a jack cable from the output of the audio interface to the return of the effect loop of your amp (making sure the loop is on and if there is a mix knob, it is at 100%).

3) play the sweep file you generated, so that it will come out through your amp, and at the same time record the resulting sound with your microphone into another mono track, making sure it's captured at a good volume, but without clipping.

4) export your recorded sound as a wave file, 24bit 48khz (muting the original sweep track!).

5) now go back to Voxengo Deconvolver and load in the first file browser (Test Tone File) the original sweep you have generated, and in the second file browser (File Folder) the recorded file you just exported. Make sure the bit depth is 24, the "MP transform" box is ticked and so the "Normalize to -0.3dbFS" one, and click the "Process" button.

6) The file resulting from the processing will be your IR. Now you can import it into an IR Loader, such as Ignite Amps NadIR. This is the moment in which we can test our tone and eventually see if the mic positioning is correct, if the volume is right, and this will take a bit of trial and error before we start really nailing the perfect IRs.

7) Repeat the process with all the microphone positions you want, all the different microphones, amps, cabinets you have and you'll create your own collection of IRs, so that every time you will want to play your favourite guitar amp simulator it will sound like it's  played in your rehearsals room or studio!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE RESULT OF OUR IR CAPTURING EXPERIMENT: THE FREE TRIDENT IR PACK!

I hope this was helpful!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2

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How to capture an impulse response (IR) from an amp (with free plugins) Part 1/2

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are talking about an extremely interesting topic: how to capture an Impulse Response.

Impulse responses consist, said in very simple terms, in playing a sound that covers all audible frequences from a source and capturing it with a microphone, then we subtract the original sound from the captured wave and what remains is the interaction between the source, the ambient in which the sound is played, and the microphone that captured it.
This resulting file can be applied in form of Reverb to any track we have, so that a vocal track can sound as it's recorded in a church, or in a room without resonances, or in the shower booth and so on.

Impulse responses are particularly interesting in the world of home recording for one purpose: amp simulators;
why? Because amp modeling is out there by 20 to 30 years (according to whether we are considering also the analog simulation), and still, even if the circuitry of the amp today is emulated to an impressive degree of realism, there is a technological bottleneck regarding cab simulation, somehow it never seems to sound close enough to the real thing and it's the main reason why people still in 2019 keeps making records using the same techniques of 50 years ago.

Impulse responses are a workaround to this technological bottleneck: they substitute completely the other types of cabinet simulations, and just replace them with a Reverb that recreates the sound captured from the guitar cab with a microphone; the result is so much more realistic that this technique has basically substituted completely all the other ways of simulating a cabinet, and are (in a slightly more elaborated way) the core of high end digital guitar amps such as the Kemper.

Internet is full of great impulses that can be downloaded for free (such as the Guitarhack or the Catharsis ones) or paid (like the Ownhammer ones), but if we have the right tools we can do them on our own, so that we just need to capture with our microphone and cab all the positions once, and then we can have fun at home without having to set up the recording gear every time.


What do we need to capture an IR?

A good guitar amp (possibly with a tube power amp) with effects loop and a good cabinet

A microphone (possibly an industry standard such a Shure SM57)

A good audio interface connected to a computer with a Daw

A software that creates impulses, such as Voxengo Deconvolver, that can be used for free with some limitation, but that is perfectly usable to create IRs.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/2


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Review: Mercuriall Audio Metal Area (with free Vst download and video sample)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are reviewing a FREE new Vst plugin from Mercuriall Audio: Metal Area!

Metal Area is a faithful recreation of the famous/infamous Boss Metal Zone.
The Metal Zone was a distortion pedal extremely popular in the '90s, when I was doing the high school and learning to play the guitar: all the kids that could afford it (except apparently myself) would buy this rather expensive pedal imagining to obtain the sound of a high gain metal amp, and they would get regularly disappointed, since the default settings would make it sound like a box of mosquitoes and it was quite difficult to dial in.

Since so many kids bought it (it sold one million copies!) and hated it for decades, today this pedal is notorious to sound bad, but as usual the truth is a bit more complex than that: the eq section was convoluted and counter intuitive, with the control of the highs and lows on the same pot (the external ring of the pot would control the lows and the internal part the highs) and also with a mids knob divided in two parts: the interal part that would control the mids and the exteral ring would control the exact position of the mids bell.

To this complex interface we need to add other 2 aspects: this pedal packed too much distortion, with the gain control above the half it would become almost unplayable, and the knobs were too logarithmic, meaning that the increase when moving them wasn't linear, it was like for example the high end would shift from too low to too high in the range of a millimeter.

Once we have clarified that the interface has been undoubtly a failure, let's check out what actually is unique about this pedal, once you get to understand how to use it: it features an active +/-15db eq section, and it's probably one of the only if not the only distortion pedal that lets you decide where to cut or boost the mids, anywhere from 200h to 5k hertz, and this feature gives the player actually a HUGE freedom of tone shaping;
if you have a clear idea of the tone you're after and how to achieve it, this is one of the most versatile distortion you can find, and it has been used by many famous bands such as Biffy Clyro, Disturbed, Korn, Converge, Nine Inch Nails, and (allegedly) Cannibal Corpse.

The Mercuriall Metal Area is a very faithful recreation of the original pedal but with all the controls laid out in separate knobs, and if also the original would have been like this, maybe it would have been understood much better.
By setting the distortion a bit lower and raising the level a bit, and by playing with the mids knobs it's possible to obtain quite credible tones, and it can be used as a preamp without any problem (in the video I have only used this plugin and the free NadIR cabinet simulator, nothing else), so I really encourage all of you to go to the Mercuriall Audio website and download this free plugin, it's a lot of fun to play and who knows, maybe also you will change your mind about this misunderstood stompbox!

Thumbs up!


Specs taken from the website:


- Level

- Dist 

- 4 band Eq Section 

- Input Gain 

- Mono/Stereo 

- Quality switch 

- On/Off knob


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Review: Aria Pro II Black and Gold

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're publishing the review made by our friend Edoardo Del Principe of his guitar: a 1984 Aria Pro II Black and gold, let's see his opinion!

After months of searching, scratching online catalogs, reviewes and a few online videos I decided to buy for around 450 euros a Japanese guitar made in 1984.

I want to talk about its original version before I changed some stuff: The Aria Pro II PE BG looks like a Les Paul Custom, but has its own character: the first thing I’ve noticed was the thinner neck, thinner than a 60’s neck, a sort of smoothy D shape neck closer to Ibanez than the classical LP C shape. Another impressive feature is the heel-less neck joint, something LP and Gibson started a few years later than Aria Pro.

The neck is fabulous, better than any LP I’ve tried, and for my small hand is just heaven; the headstock is also nice because has info about where and when the guitar was made in the front and not in the back.

The headstock has less inclination form neck of a normal LP making it a lot more resistant, trust me.
About the hardware I must say that 40 years made their work ruining the metal parts with a bit of rust, but they still work fine; potentiometers are not the best in the market but they are ok.
Also I really enjoyed the coil splitting system using two switch near the volume knobs, that was an Aria Pro II trademark; some guitars had built-in fuzz or boost, weird combination of PU and counter-phase option.

                                 

This Aria can be used with two HB or two SC with their own character; the original PU were able to cover a vast range of tonal options. On the bridge you have a medium-high output pickup, a bit raw in its attack but has enough bite to crunch well amps, up to a metal distortion.

Those guitars were made for more classic rock music though, especially with the neck pick up it’s possible achieve a pretty smooth tone for solo or lead arpeggios.

Essentially this Aria Pro II was a sort of hybrid between a strat and Les Paul where with a single guitar you can achieve hard rock and jazzy tones.
Anyway in my opinion the biggest “pro” of this guitar is its build quality: those guitars were made in the Matsumoku factory in late 70’s to the mid 80’s, and Matsumoku was famous to build the most prestigious guitars for Japanese brands and Aria Pro II makes no exception.

The PE Serie was not on the top, because more prestigious and beautiful guitars were made for Greco, Tokai, Ibanez and few other brands which had legal issues to be too similar with Gibson models (the famous “lawsuit era”); on the other hand Aria Pro released its own line of original guitars with their own style, inspired by the American ones but with improvements in the hardware: like it or not, they are good instruments.
If you want a coil-splitting, dual humbucker Les Paul with a THICK maple top you have to spend a lot more than 450 nowdays, but you have to consider that Japanese manufacture of guitars in 70’ and 80’ had the most discontinuous productions ever existed, so make sure to check out what model it is, make some research on the serial number and trust no one.

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Interview: Audio Assault

From left to right:

Alex: CEO & Senior Programer

Freddie: Technical Assistant & Staff

Enrique: COO & Senior Designer

Adrián: Junior Designer

Rodrigo: Junior Programer

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are interviewing Audio Assault, a company that is producing Guitar and Bass amp simulators, drum samplers and many other Vst plugins for music production from Mexico!

Here's our interview:

GuitarNerdingBlog: Hello and welcome to Guitar Nerding Blog! Can you give us some detail on how Audio Assault was born?

AudioAssault: AA was born in the late 2013 in the city of Oaxaca, México. 

Alex Damián, The master mind of the proyect, in that time was the owner of the local recording studio HT Studio which almost always recorded rock and metal bands. He started to study about the plugins creation and amp simulators modeling and coding, at the same time Alex asked Enrique Díaz to help him with the graphics and design work.

Enrique at the same time was studying Graphic design and was starting his work as Music Producer too.

In the Middle of 2014 these two friend launch the first plugin created by Audio Assault called Grind Machine, with which all was started. Now AA is a team of 5 people and it's located in the city of Puebla, México as a real company.

GNB: What do you think about the music production business nowadays? And how is it going to be in the future?

AA: I think that the technology it's a very important part of the music business, not only in the production area. With the possibilities that internet can give us now we can share our music with everyone around the world. At the same time we have access to a lot of information about production techniques, software, hardware, etc. 

In this time a lot of musicians has started to be their own music producers and engineers, as I do. We can find a lot of tutorials and tips in youtube of how to get a great sound recording without spending too much money. The music production business is transforming and expanding to new horizons, where a lot of people can access to it. I think in the future that industry will have a lot of competition, because new technology-based producers will rise, while the classic producers will struggle more to stay in the business.

GNB: What is the design process of your plugins like? What inspires you?

AA: We are big fans of rock and metal music, every band and song we listen always give us reasons to create some new weapons for "bedroom producers". 

We think that all musician must have the opportunity of creating music with the same quality of the biggest bands, that is the principal reason of why AA exist, the process starts with an idea of what we need to get a better sound in our own recordings. Maybe a guitar amplifier, an EQ or a drumkit, then we make samples of the analog component and Alex start to code those sounds while I create the GUI and all the graphic stuff.

GNB: What is the philosophy behind your software: analog modeling, black box approach or else?

AA: We work more in the analog modeling style, because almost all the time we know what result we want and how to get it, but sometimes, in few occasions, at the moment of programming and testing we found results that we didn't expect. 

So, it's a mix of both methods.

GNB: What have been your career highlights?

AA: It is a hard question, because at the beginning we never thought about the future success. 

So, for us right now it's our best moment, we have support of people around the world, we had made many friends too, and finally after almost 6 years we have a place where we can do this as our main job. We are very grateful for all the support and good vibes we received.

GNB: What do you think the future of analog and digital amps will look like?

AA: I'm a big fan of analog gear, I love almost all the tube amps, but we know that it is not too easy for a lot of people to get one. Specially here in Mexico where you can find more expensive that in US or Europe. So, digital amps makes easier to get almost the real tone of a commercial brand. 

Now, if you want to record with a tube amp you don't need just the amp, you have to buy a cab, mics, cables, pedals and fx. 

Amp simulators are great option to get good recordings at low costs.

We are working very hard to bring the people high quality digital amplifiers that can compete with the real ones.

I think in the near future the plugins will emulate at 99.9% the real gear.

GNB: Tell us something about your drum samplers!

AA: Well, that samples were recorded a couple years ago at Westwood studio in Hawaii.

GNB: What plugin do you have in store for the future?

AA: We are preparing some relaunchings, a new bass suit and a killer guitar amp based on a Krank classic tone. Want to creat a new line of digital amplifiers with 99.9% realistic sound. We have some surprise you will know very soon.

GNB: The interview is over, feel free to add anything you'd like!

AA: I'm talking in the name of all who work in AA want to thank you Atoragon and GNB for the interest you put in our products. We will still working to bring you all killer tools for production projects.

Thanks too all people who support this little company!

Cheers,

Enrique.

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