My junky drum bus already sounds pretty cool, but it needs a little Amp for grit. It’s placed after the Rough Rider (and before Cabinet):
I settled on the Rock model by ear and turned the Bass and Treble all the way down – the aggression I’m looking for is all in the midrange. Like the EQs on most amp simulators, these EQs have a unique flavor since they are modeled on the EQ knobs from an amplifier. In this case, getting rid of the Bass and Treble has a big impact on the sort of distortion coming out of amp.
It’s really nifty to have a Dry/Wet knob on both Amp and Cabinet. In this case, it’s allowed me to dial in just a little crunch from the amp before passing it to Cabinet, which is set to 100% wet.
Just like Cabinet, I’ve got the Output set to Dual to preserve the stereo image of the original drum group. Bear in mind that when in Dual mode, both devices use double the processing power. On my MacBook Pro, Cabinet and Amp in dual mode are using about 10% on the CPU meter – nothing to sneeze at. This makes them a bit heavier on the CPU than most Ableton effects, but still relatively lightweight for a convolution-based effect.
