I’ve been playing music and obsessing about gear since the mid-’80s and bought my first modeling pedal in 2002 when I got tired of hauling a 100-pound cabinet around. When I was introduced to the system I currently use, I noticed that there were shockingly few good acoustic amp models or impulse responses available from the major manufacturers or indie producers. A search of forum upon forum indicated that I wasn’t the only one who was was looking for good acoustic sims.
When I learned how fundamentally simple the process is to create an impulse response (notwithstanding the massive amount of work and time it takes to record even a single cab with multiple microphones in multiple positions and to generate IR files at multiple bitrates), I realized that I could make digital copies of my more interesting cabs for myself and for others who’d been looking. Before I’d even created a single IR, I decided to start a new business distributing them—a bit of a rash decision, or an impulsive response to the situation.
It’s my hope that the cab and environmental sims I provide are interesting and helpful to other people, and if you decide you need to incorporate any of the IRs I’ve made into your rig or your recording process, I’m thrilled to be part of that rash decision.
About Microphone Positioning
We use three standard mic positions: position A is directly in front of the dust cap in the center of the speaker cone, position B is in the middle of the cone’s radius and position C is at the outer edge of the cone. In the case of ported cabinets or a cab with a down-firing woofer, we also have position D which is aimed into the port or the space between the woofer and the floor, pointed as directly as possible at the speaker.
Finally, although we don’t have a PZM in the mic locker we do use what we call BCN™ positioning, for Boundary Condition Normal™. Any condenser mic can be used as a boundary layer mic, which is the generic term for a PZM (pressure zone microphone). By placing a condenser mic ~0.75mm from a hard surface (the boundary) at a perpendicular angle (the “surface normal,” as described in mathematics), it creates the correct conditions for reflected room sound to be rejected while direct sound pressure can still get to the microphone capsule, cutting back on phase cancellation. We typically place our BCN™ mics about six feet behind the cabinet we’re recording to contribute to a more realistic room sound.
The benefit to using this method over typical PZMs is that their built-in boundary surfaces are small enough that they break up the bass response when either suspended or placed on a soft surface like studio carpet—thus creating a de facto 6dB high shelf boost, unless the PZM is mounted on a larger hard surface (low frequency sounds have a longer wavelength and thus require more distance to propagate, which is why you may have seen PZMs attached to lucite panels at the foot of the stage if you ever go to the symphony). With BCN™ technology, you can use anything from a parquet floor to a sheet of masonite as your boundary layer, thus tuning the bass response to your taste. Plus, you’re not limited to the single mic capsule that a PZM comes with, so, bonus.