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LITTLE IR GUIDE

FREE PDF GUIDE, DOESN’T INCLUDE ACTUAL IRs OR PRESETS

 The Evolution of Tone

WHERE IT ALL STARTED

First of all, thank you for trusting my taste in guitar tones. Ah, thank you for trusting a
21 year old David as well. Brave of you I must say. Why brave?? Well, let’s say that my
understanding of guitar tone didn’t really start in a traditional way. My first encounter with
“guitar tone” started when I was 13 (before I even started playing guitar for real) with first
version of Amplitube using some weirdly adapted cable plugged directly into one of those
colored web-mic inputs on the back of the old PCs. Noisy as hell, sounded like utter shit
just like my “playing” at the time… and I was pretty aware of that. When I was 15 and when
I started learning my first pentatonic scale positions, someone (I don’t remember who…)
gave me a KORG AX1500G. Still sounded like shit… It wasn’t too long before I got myself a
GT8 Guitar Processor by BOSS. Needless to say I still sounded like ass, but this time I
decided to stick with it. Took me hours and hours of tweaking over the course of more than
a few years to finally find the sound I was pretty happy with. Why did it take me so long??
Was it the Amplitube that sucked so much, or KORG?? Did BOSS somehow sucked for
years and then turned out to sound pretty great few years latter? I don’t think those units
were the issue (first Aplitube. maybe). Acquiring taste and objectivity for your guitar tone
takes years to develop, just like guitar playing.

This IR and Preset library gives you a glimpse in the evolution of my guitar tone… well
at least the last 8 years of it… from my first record (2011) ‘till some of the tones I’m using
today, both live and in the studio. This library wasn’t made only to please a guitar player’s
tone needs. These tones are really close and personal to me. Nonetheless, I hope you’ll
enjoy them and find use in them for years to come.

 

CONTENT

WHERE IT ALL STARTED 2

IMPULSE RESPONSES 4
HEARTBEAT 4
AFAR 5
FLOWER 6
VODA 7
MOON 8
LUN+ 9
PVD212 10
AIR 11
COMPLETE IR LIST 12
PRESETS 13
LIST OF PRESETS AND THEIR CO-RESPONDENT IRS 13
AUTENTICITY 14
LITTLE CUBES_1? What about _2? 14
 IR

IMPULSE RESPONSES
HEARTBEAT

As I said, I’ve never had a traditional (amp > cab > mic) approach to creating a guitar
tone and this one was a pretty weird one to start with.
Heartbeat is a guitar tone from my first record “Bilo I” from 2011. Bilo is an old Serbo-
Croatian word for a heartbeat or pulse and it symbolically represents a “birth” of a new life,
or a new musical journey in this case.

I was using the BOSS GT8 guitar processor at the time. All cab sims on it sounded
kind of thin for my taste at the time, so I ended up quad tracking some of the parts and
would deliberately play 2 of the takes a whole step up and then pitch them down on the
way out to make the tone seem like it was recorded through a “bigger speaker” or a
“bigger cabinet”. Another reason for that approach was the fact that there was almost no
place where I could find a string thick enough for a low tuned Ab nonsense.
The signal itself was heavily treated with EQs both within the GT8 unit and in the mix
itself.
The IR of the album’s guitar tone was captured using the EQ match technique,
afterwards converted to .wav and .syx file formats.

 AFAR

AFAR (Along For a Ride) is an IR based on the guitar tone take from my 2nd record,
continuation of my “Bilo” series and very creatively called “Bilo II”.

Given that I started working on this record the same week I released the first record of
mine, I was still using the GT8 unit… Unfortunately, my memories of writing/recording
process of this record are somehow blurry so I can’t tell for sure, but this was the time
when I introduced my Marshall MG50 combo amp to the chain. Combining the GT8 and
Marshall MG50’s headphones output made an extremely satisfying and pleasant sound.
Such a nice combination that I decided to take the amp itself out of the cabinet and make
it’s own enclosure which made it possible for me to use it live and in the studio for another
2 years. I adored this tone and was very proud of that whole setup at the time.

In late 2012, Steve Joh (A&R at Century Media at the time) saw me use this pretty
unusual setup at Euroblast Festival and immediately decided to get me in touch with
Fractal Audio guys. The rest is history…

The IR of the “Bilo II” guitar tone was captured using the EQ match technique which was
then converted to .wav and .syx file formats.
 FLOWER

And the AxeFx II era begins!

I was never a fan of Fractal Audio factory IRs. I’m not a huge fan of most 3rd part IRs to
be completely honest, but luckily for me there are EQ-Match softwares out there.
So the first thing I did was capture the EQ curve of my “Bilo II” guitar tone, Gojira and
John Petricci’s guitar tone. Blended all of it together and VOILA… the seed has been
planted (pun intended).

This particular IR was originally called “BILO CAB” on my AxeFx II but I decided to
rename it for the purpose of this library.

FUN FACT: This same IR was used on a record “Divulgence” by Organized Chaos.

Unlike “BILO CAB”, “Flower” was re-captured for LITTLE CUBES_1with purpose to work
with most amp models without a crazy amount of tweaking.

 VODA

Oh man, this one has so much attitude to it! \m/

IMO, probably the darkest/deepest sound I’ve ever had. With that being said “voda”
means water in my native language.

Remember how I said that “the seed has been planted” previously? Well the exact
same IR that was used on “Bilo III” was heavily modified with tools available within the Cab
Block on the AxeFx and then re-captured under a name “ECO CAB”.

I absolutely adore this IR! Voda v2 on leads with some 4kHz taken out just glides
through the mix and feels so nice under the fingers. Idk… I just love this one.

 MOON

This has been my go-to IR from mid 2016 until late 2018, both live and in the studio.
I do have a new tone set for my next record, but I gotta tell you… it’s been pretty hard for
me to resist using it on yet another record. With that being said, you can expect some
Moon dust on Bilo IV.

Remember when I said th… you know, the seed and stuff… This one is yet another
step in the evolution of what originally started as a “BILO CAB” (aka the “Flower”).
Combination of “Voda” and an IR capture of my friend’s ENGL cabinet with V30 speakers.

I gotta say I feel a little jealous giving this one away. Oh and it mixes really well with all
the other cabs in this pack, so have fun with it!

 LUN+

I think it’s quiet obvious what this IR is all about.

If my memory serves me right, this IR was made by mixing the “Flower” and EQ Match
of some kick ass guitar sound from some old YouTube video clip of a guy trying out his
Orange Cab.

I was never happy how “LUN” mix turned out to be, but I think some of the guitar
tones on that record are pretty damn sweet. I got pleasantly surprised when I revisited this
one. Probably the most tone I’ve ever used. Didn’t work that well live imo.

“LUN+” is a slightly beefed up version of the original LUN tone.


 PVD212

This one is quite different from all of the above because this is the one of the two that
I’ve captured in a more traditional way.

This is the IR of my personal 2x12 Peavey cab, captured in 3 different mic positions
with the Shure SM7B (probably one of the most underrated mics for this purpose).

Each position by itself doesn’t give the most spectacular sound, but when combined
with one another or with any other IR from this pack… that’s when these IRs shine.

Let me tell you something… I’ll be using one of these in combination with one of the
above IRs for my lead sounds on “Bilo IV”. Probably the best lead sound I’ve ever had!
Can’t get enough of it.

This one is for you to get creative with. Hope you like it.

 AIR

This one is just me being an idiot. A buddy of mine had this little Fender combo
practice amp, so I got an IR from that and mixed it with an IR capture of my old JBL Hi-Fi
speaker that I treated with an EQ on the way out to give it a little bit of a guitar speaker
character. Result… well it works. And it’s pretty interesting I must say!

I love combining this one with Fender type amps, or anything leaning on a cleaner
side with tons of reverb and delay and other mumbo jumbo.

This is a pretty experimental IR, so make sure to give it justice when making your own
patches and get creative yourself.

COMPLETE IR LIST

COMPLETE IR LIST
 HELIX FLOOR, HELIX LT, HELIX RACK, HELIX NATIVE

PRESETS
LIST OF PRESETS AND THEIR CO-RESPONDENT IRS

LIST OF PRESETS, THEIR CO-RESPONDENT IRS AND A NUMBER OF SNAPSHOTS

PRESET X Y NUMBER OF SNAPSHOTS

BILO I - Rhythm Heartbeat v1 (60) 2

BILO I - Lead Heartbeat v2 (61) 4

BILO I - Clean Heartbeat v3 (62) 4

BILO II- Rhythm AFAR v1 (63) 3

BILO II - Lead AFAR v2 (64) 4

BILO II - Clean AFAR v3 (65) 4

BILO III - Rhythm Flower v1 (66) 3

BILO III - Lead Flower v2 (67) 4

BILO III- Clean Flower v3 (68) 4

EGO & ECO - Rhythm Voda v1 (69) 4

EGO & ECO - Lead Voda v2 (70) 4

EGO & ECO - Clean Voda v3 (71) 4

Who Bit The Moon - Scenes Moon v1 (72) Moon v2 (73) 8

LUN+ LUN + v1 (74) LUN+ v2 (75) 5

PVD212 PVD212 Mix1 (76) PVD212 Mix2 (77) 8

Air115 Air115 (82) 4

LOL_yep AFAR v1 (63) / PVD212 v3 (81) 2

 AUTENTICITY

*This is the only authentic Preset and IR collection of my own presets and can be
only be obtained through my official website and online store.

LITTLE CUBES_1? WHAT ABOUT _2?

As the title of this library suggests this is only the first one of what I hope to be more
than few IR and Preset libraries released under this name. And if this goes well, who knows,
maybe the 2nd one will come sooner then I myself or any of you guys are expecting. With
that being said, I would love to try some traditional ways of capturing IRs as well, but you
can always expect from me to go a little crazy with the experiments, otherwise this would
just turn out to be one of many MANY boring IR/Preset libraries out there.
If you ever have any suggestions as to what you’d like to see in the future, feel free to
get in touch and send your suggestions. I’m making some to-do (or to IR capture) lists
already :)

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