Help with Van Halen “Drop Dead Legs” settings on H9

[garbeaj]

Hello all! I’ve been trying to get a good approximation of the sounds on Van Halen’s “Drop Dead Legs”. I’ve gotten some good results with the ‘GUITARBASSCHORUS’ preset…I just adjust both the A and B pitches to 1.00 and it sounds pretty good.

When I first got my H9, I had a nice sound for this tune out of the DropDeadLegs preset (as one would think would be the best for this song) but I was missing the sub-octave effect which you can really here on the outro backing guitar playing the vamp….that sub-octave effect might be on the entire song and I’m just missing it?

Anyway, just curious for any of your advice or experience with achieving this sound? I’ve had my Core with several added algos for over 4 years and I’m still perplexed by it most of the time!

[bohan]

garbeaj wrote:

Hello all! I’ve been trying to get a good approximation of the sounds on Van Halen’s “Drop Dead Legs”. I’ve gotten some good results with the ‘GUITARBASSCHORUS’ preset…I just adjust both the A and B pitches to 1.00 and it sounds pretty good. When I first got my H9, I had a nice sound for this tune out of the DropDeadLegs preset (as one would think would be the best for this song) but I was missing the sub-octave effect which you can really here on the outro backing guitar playing the vamp….that sub-octave effect might be on the entire song and I’m just missing it? Anyway, just curious for any of your advice or experience with achieving this sound? I’ve had my Core with several added algos for over 4 years and I’m still perplexed by it most of the time!

You may try setting one pitch to 0.5 if you want that sub-octave sound. You may also need to adjust the feedback of that voice to 0.

[garbeaj]

I think I’m having trouble getting enough of the original sound in the mix. I reckon it will just take some more experimenting…I’m doing as you suggested and it works, but I just need to figure out how to dial in the exact amount of original signal in the mix. This is a great algo that I didn’t remember being on the H9 when I bought it. Back then, I had to get two H9’s to make this happen!

[garbeaj]

bohan wrote:

Quote:

You may try setting one pitch to 0.5 if you want that sub-octave sound. You may also need to adjust the feedback of that voice to 0.

I’ll try that again, but I think setting one of the pitches to .5 seems to get a sound that is TWO octaves below the fundamental, and I don’t think that’s what I hear on the record. I’ll try adjusting the feedback, but I’ll give it a go…Thanks!

[bohan]

garbeaj wrote:

I’ll try that again, but I think setting one of the pitches to .5 seems to get a sound that is TWO octaves below the fundamental, and I don’t think that’s what I hear on the record. I’ll try adjusting the feedback, but I’ll give it a go…Thanks!

If the pitch gets a sound of 2 octaves below, that's probably because the feedback is not 0. In H910/H949, every time the delay feedbacks, it goes through the pitch shifter again

[garbeaj]

bohan wrote:

j]If the pitch gets a sound of 2 octaves below, that's probably because the feedback is not 0. In H910/H949, every time the delay feedbacks, it goes through the pitch shifter again

Ahh…Ok. That makes sense. I’ll give that a try. I’m trying to use this sound to create a loop on my Ditto Looper for the vamp that I can play the leads over.

I wonder what the difference is in the chorus on this preset is versus the actual 1984-Legs preset which was meant to emulate “Drop Dead Legs”? The sub-octave effect is so critical to the sound on that track…I wonder why they left it off the preset named for the song?

[garbeaj]

bohan wrote:

garbeaj wrote:

If the pitch gets a sound of 2 octaves below, that's probably because the feedback is not 0. In H910/H949, every time the delay feedbacks, it goes through the pitch shifter again

As it turns out, the Feedback was already set to “0” from the original factory preset. I’m going mono into one amp and the mix is on “100” from the factory preset…maybe I can experiment with the Mix control. Whenever I go mono on the H9, I notice I always have to dial the Mix back quite a bit on every algo…maybe that’s what is giving me trouble?

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