 Hello, I'm Josh, and I'm a product developer here at Blackstar, and today we're going to look at a little track I've made using the Dual Drive and how you can get the same results at home using Cabrig. So, here we are, we've got everything set up, we've got the Dual Drive, XLR out into an interface, running on the Dual Drive we've got Cabrig, and I'm controlling that using Architect here, and the guitar I'm using is this lovely PRS SE Custom 24. So I'm going to run you through the tones I used, the things I set up in Cabrig to record the rhythm guitar, then we'll move on to the lead and the solo, and even the bass that I recorded through the Dual Drive. Let's start with the settings on the pedal. We've got Channel 2 selected, and the OD voice of that channel. So once you've set up the channel and the voice, let's look at the other settings. So the gain, we've got it just a little bit lower than halfway, and just to note this guitar is super high output, so depending on what guitar you're using might be a little bit different, but the key there is to not do too much gain because then you lose the articulation of each note, and you want to keep it as present and sort of detailed as possible. Then moving on to the bass, we've got that up a little bit because we want a little bit of chunk in there, which we'll control with Cabrig, make sure we're not getting too much sub that makes everything a little bit muddy. We've got the mid down the middle, and we've got the treble quite a way up to make sure that we've got enough presence, that it sits well in the mix above the other instruments, and we've got the ISF a little bit towards the American side as that brings the mid cut down into sort of the more modern sounding range. So let's listen to the tone we've got so far. So a nice amount of articulation on all of the chugs, not too much gain that that becomes sludgy, but not too little gain that you're not getting that nice beefiness that you want for like a hard rock metal tone. What I've chosen in terms of a cab is the modern USA 412, so that's your typical kind of cab for metal, one of the most revered. We've got a one to one ribbon on axis, giving us a nice load of low end but smoothing off the top end with the nice ribbon roll off that you get. So for the param settings I've gone for the 6L6, which is a nice punchy sound. The resonance at halfway presents down a little bit to smooth again some of that top end stuff. So at the moment, this cab and microphone setup is wide open, uncontrolled, which isn't a bad thing but in a mix we want to sort of contain things a little bit more than it is at the moment. So let's look at the EQ that we've got on this. I'll play first without the EQ and then I'll engage the EQ. So by itself, the EQ bypass might have sounded a little bit more impressive because it's got a lot more of that really subby low end but in the mix we want to control that so things don't get too muddy, we don't get in the way of the bass, that sort of thing. So let's run through the EQ settings. We've got the low cut around 190Hz, that gets rid of a lot of that subby low end that we don't really want in the mix. To combat that, making the guitar sound a little bit thinner, we've added a bit of low end but that creates a nice tight bottom end that we want rather than the flubby muddy low end. We've left the low mids as they are and the high mids as they are and we've taken a little bit off the top end just to make sure we're not getting any sort of harshness coming through. We've got the high cut set to about 12.5K, that's going to get rid of a lot of the fizz that you might not want in the mix that will get in the way of the cymbals, things like that. So after we've set up our patch, we're going to save it. I'm going to click the save button, save patch the device, name it metal, left, save, over right, there we go. What we can also do is save locally so that we can have more than three patches saved because on the device you've got your Cabrig 1, 2, 3 switch, but within Architect you can also save your patches. So here you can see I've got metal 1 set up to be the first slot of the Cabrig switch, centre to be the middle slot, the second slot and the metal right Cabrig patch to be on the right, the third slot of the Cabrig switch. Here are the three different tones. So we're trying to get similar balance between all of them, but obviously different tones so that when you double track them you get a difference in the stereo image and that kind of makes things a little bit less symmetrical and samey. I feel that often makes things sound a little bit more interesting. So here's what the three tones sound like together in the context of the track. So as you can hear, everything's nice and controlled. We've got the panning going on, hard panned metal guitar left, hard panned metal guitar right. That gives you a really nice wide stereo image, gives your part that you would usually have single tracked a nice girth to it because you've got the differences in the takes adding to that stereo image, the difference in tone and into that stereo image. And this is all done with the same settings on the pedal itself. So we've set up our rhythm tones for the lead. I like to keep it simple and just use the same exact Cabrig patches but swap sides so your left goes to your right and your right goes to your left. That way it kind of balances up any differences you might have that you don't like in terms of the unbalance of symmetry. But usually that's what I do. So here's what the leads sound like in the mix. And as I'm playing out solo, the rhythm guitars as well so you can hear how they work together. Because I'm lazy, the solo tone is exactly the same as the metal left Cabrig patch except we've added a little bit more gain. So instead of the gain being just below halfway, I'm going to go ahead and turn it all the way up to about one o'clock. As well as adding some more gain, we're actually also going to add some delay in there as well to help wash the solo out into the mix. Because if you have just a dry solo, it kind of sounds a bit boring sometimes and it's very pokey out. So I find with a solo tone that adding reverb, especially in a mix like this, can make it sound a little bit muddy, a little bit washy. So to keep the solo nice and upfront, I only use delay. And that helps it to settle into the mix a bit rather than having no delay. But it doesn't sort of make it all muddy and garbled and you can still hear every note and it stays at the front of the mix. So let's take a look at how that delay sounds in isolation. So there's not tons of delay, but it's just enough to help it settle into the rest of the instrumentation. So let's hear how that solo tone sounds by itself and then with a mix. So even though it's only there at the beginning of the track for about five seconds, let's have a look at the clean tone. I've got the channel one selected on my dual drive with the crunch voice selected and the gain is set to about 10 o'clock. As you'll hear in a moment, it's not really clean, but I find from my personal taste that a little bit of break up in a clean tone just helps things saturate a bit more and just sound a little bit more interesting for the stuff I like to play. So have a listen to how it sounds. To get that level of crispness in your clean tone, you're definitely going to want to have new strings. I mean, I've just changed mine and it sounds lovely. So that's the first step of the clean tone. Then it's the settings I've talked about. And as well as changing the gain and the channel and the voice, I've also just shifted the mids down to nine o'clock from where they were before down the middle, gone to nine o'clock. The icing on the cake for the clean tones is adding the ambient effects. So what I've got set up here is just a nice long reverb and the same delay that I used for the solo tone. So let's hear how that sounds. So we're on to bass now. And I'm using this five string bass straight into the dual drive. But one difference between that and when I was running the guitars is I've actually split the bass. So I'm going into the dual drive and also DI into the interface. That way the low end is unaffected and the distortion that you sometimes get the horrible sort of fatty, muddy distortion that you get when you distort lower frequencies is avoided because we then combine the distorted signal from the dual drive and the unaffected signal of the DI to make a split bass tone. So let's look at the settings that I've got on the dual drive. As you can see, it's almost the same as the rhythm tones that we've been playing through. Except now the gain is at halfway. The bass is at halfway. The mids are all the way down and everything else is the same. We're on channel two and the OD voice. So as you can see, I've named this patch gnarly bass. Let's load it up. So here you can see I've sculpted the mids quite a lot. I've taken a lot of low mids out and boosted quite a lot of high mids. That's to get that sort of clanky, barky sound but none of the muddy mid range stuff lower mids that you get with the bass sometimes. Here in the session, here's how I'm treating the amped bass versus the DI bass. We've got this filtering on the amped bass to get rid of the low end that we don't really want from the pedal itself because it's a little bit muddy. Taking out some frequencies in the bass that I don't particularly enjoy, some whistly tones, things like that. So the EQ on the DI bass, we've essentially low passed all except the very low end of the bass. And so we can mix that in with the amped bass through the dual drive to support that and make sure we have a solid low end foundation to build the mix upon. Let's have a listen to how the bass sounds. So you can hear there's a little bit of a weird ringing sound and that's coming from these guys up here, little bits of string after the nut. So if you really wanna get a super tight bass sound for your sort of gent hard rock, that sort of thing, then you're gonna need to mute those. So one way you can get rid of that string noise is by using a string mute, or if you haven't got one of those, then just find a sock or some kitchen roll or anything absorbent that you can tuck underneath the strings or wrap around the headstock to mute those strings. And then you'll get a super tight, no ring bass tone. Let's have a listen to how that bass tone sounds within the mix. I'm going to play it by itself and I'm gonna play it with the drums and I'm gonna play it with everything. Now that we've gone through how to get the tones, let's look at how to process the tones or how I've processed the tones after I've recorded them. Let's jump into the rhythm guitars here. As you can see on each individual track, there's actually no processing. I always try to get the best tone I can before I hit record and cabrig really allows you to make sure you get the best tone into your door and less faffing about later. What I have done on the bus for the rhythm guitars is just add a little bit of a boost above one K. That's across all of the guitars to just give them a little bit of a presence lift in the mix. Essentially, all this EQ is doing for the lead guitars is getting rid of a lot of the low end that would make the mix sound congested when you combine them with the rhythm guitars because the rhythm guitars are occupying that space. That's what they need to sound nice and full, but the lead guitars, you don't need it. So we're removing a lot of that. The rest of the EQ moves would just get rid of a bit of harshness between two and three K and then boosting a bit of presence so that the lead guitars can poke out in the mix above the rest of the instrumentation. Bass in this track is the one that needed the most processing in this case. So aside from the crossover between the Amped Bass and the DI Bass, on the Bass Bus, we've got a noise gate to help things remain even tighter. So we've got some compression after the noise gate. We've then got a nice gentle EQ where we're essentially just cleaning up some of the mid-range, rolling off a lot of the top end that we don't need for the bass that's taken up by the other instruments and just making sure that we've got a nice solid low end down here. And then after that, we've got just a little touch of compression as well. So hopefully this demonstrates that with the dual drive, you really don't need to work too hard to get a great sounding mix. You just need a great tone to start with. And then with Cabrig, you can sculpt some really amazing sounds. These patches, all of these Cabrig patches will be available to download so that you can try them at home. I hope you've enjoyed the video. I've been Josh. See you soon.