Best Low-End Metal Guitar Chugs (Palm Mutes)?

[dsblais]

Hello. I’m wondering what VI people would recommend for heavy palm muted riffs, especially with repetition variations. I’m not looking for a phrase library, but something to compose with. I played guitar over 30 years but I don’t want to get one out and plug in every time I’d like a little heavy tension in a piece. I have Shreddage, VSL, Orange Tree, and Heavier 7 Strings, but all seem to be lacking a bit in the palm mute department (a good heavy metal palm mute requires a very specific technique). Any ideas? TIA.

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[dzilizzi]

UJam's Virtual Guitarist Iron does great chugs with variations including a lot of mutes. In fact, I was trying to use it on a song I'm doing and it's hard to find a non-palm mute strum preset. I may switch to Silk or Sparkle for some of the piece. Iron is their heavy metal style guitar. They seem to be on sale pretty regularly also.

Virtual Guitarist IRON | Electric Rock Guitar Plug-in | UJAM

Virtual Guitarist IRON is an exciting plug-in from ujam, providing satisfyingly hard and roaring power chords within your DAW.

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[Heizenhaus]

I rather liked Uproar by Chocolate Audio.

 

[Dex]

What about shreddage is limiting for you, exactly? It has a bunch of layers, a bunch of rr's, upstroke/downstroke control, etc.

 

[dsblais]

What about shreddage is limiting for you, exactly? It has a bunch of layers, a bunch of rr's, upstroke/downstroke control, etc.

The palm mute appears to be too lightly held for a deep and tight heavy metal sound (I do like other aspects of Shreddage though, and have "collected" Jupiter, Rogue, and Serpent). When I play a palm muted metal riff in real life, I contract the muscles in my right hand in order to harden the palm and make it more consistent. I hold my palm quite firmly against the strings while playing quite hard with a pick. The effect of this is both to alter the tone and to hold the strings in place in order to allow very fast playing.

In contrast, if I'm palm muting during a solo or with a more clean sound, I'd be trying to bring out a contrasting percussive resonance with more harmonics than a regularly sounded note.

 

[erica-grace]

Check out AI's Trailer Guitars 1&2

 

[xguitaristx]

Honestly? I've yet to hear a sample library pull off a convincing guitar that excels at heavy music. They all sound fake to me. I've been playing for 25 years, so these ears are a bit difficult to fool. Your average listener probably won't even notice though!

Since you already know how to play, I'd rather just plug directly into an interface and use a high quality amp sim like this one.

Fortin NTS Suite - Neural DSP

A perfect model of one of metal’s most coveted amplifiers.

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If your guitar has nice pups, you'll be in good shape. You could even add a cab sim (like a Mesa recto) and that would also help with your tone.

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Spend a little time eq'ing, and you'll be good to go.

Hell, I'd rather record the old fashioned way with an sm57 over using these sample libraries.

 

[thov72]

I do not own shreddage so I cannot compare, but I like
thrash di

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[davidson]

Hello. I’m wondering what VI people would recommend for heavy palm muted riffs, especially with repetition variations. I’m not looking for a phrase library, but something to compose with. I played guitar over 30 years but I don’t want to get one out and plug in every time I’d like a little heavy tension in a piece. I have Shreddage, VSL, Orange Tree, and Heavier 7 Strings, but all seem to be lacking a bit in the palm mute department (a good heavy metal palm mute requires a very specific technique). Any ideas? TIA.

As a guitarist I don't think you'll be happy with any of the current offerings, but if you happen to own Ark 1, that can get the job done as long as you don't need anything too intricate.

 

[dsblais]

As a guitarist I don't think you'll be happy with any of the current offerings, but if you happen to own Ark 1, that can get the job done as long as you don't need anything too intricate.

That's funny, because that's exactly been my "go to" for quick and easy power chords or tremolo picking that actually sound decent. It's a relief to know "it's not just me" and that other guitarists have encountered this same limitation with VIs. On the plus side, I think I will get that Fortin NTS sim Mike linked, in part for the hilarious review video.

 

[dzilizzi]

Even with a VI, I usually send them through outside amp sims. The sound is so much better that way.

 

[emid]

Honestly? I've yet to hear a sample library pull off a convincing guitar that excels at heavy music.

So true! I have Bias Fx and Amp pro both. With some tweaking I get convincing results. Even my old Digitech RP1000 gives a hell of a 'oomph' that any software could give.

OP, what about recording your own samples of your liking and use a sample player to play? This is what I mostly do.

 

[dsblais]

OP, what about recording your own samples of your liking and use a sample player to play? This is what I mostly do.

A fascinating idea.

 

[EvilDragon]

The palm mute appears to be too lightly held for a deep and tight heavy metal sound

There are multiple levels of palm mute tightness, and additional controls for tightness on TACT tab.

 

[dsblais]

There are multiple levels of palm mute tightness, and additional controls for tightness on TACT tab.

Interesting. I did not know that and will see if I can get a nice, towards-the-bridge kind of sound from it today. Thanks.

 

[MartinH.]

(a good heavy metal palm mute requires a very specific technique)

The palm mute appears to be too lightly held for a deep and tight heavy metal sound (I do like other aspects of Shreddage though, and have "collected" Jupiter, Rogue, and Serpent). When I play a palm muted metal riff in real life, I contract the muscles in my right hand in order to harden the palm and make it more consistent. I hold my palm quite firmly against the strings while playing quite hard with a pick. The effect of this is both to alter the tone and to hold the strings in place in order to allow very fast playing.

In contrast, if I'm palm muting during a solo or with a more clean sound, I'd be trying to bring out a contrasting percussive resonance with more harmonics than a regularly sounded note.

Thank you for the explanation of the technique! I too was in search of better low chugs etc. and bought the cheapest 8-string multiscale guitar that I could find. Now I feel like my playing technique might not be cutting it. My palm is rather soft, maybe I just need to press down on the strings harder?


How important is setting up the action high enough to avoid fretbuzz for the chug tone?


I'm unsure if I should switch the bridge pickup to an EMG808x. Currently it has a cheap passive pickup (for reference: the guitar costs only 159,- Euro, so you know it's gotta have really cheap pickups). Do you think it would be worth installing that 808x bridge pickup? I have no experience at all with actives. My 7 string has a duncan distortion pickup and the 6 string has whatever stock passives came with it.

Interesting. I did not know that and will see if I can get a nice, towards-the-bridge kind of sound from it today. Thanks.

Let us know if you succeed and how it sounds like! I still use shreddage 3 Jupiter for a lot of things out of convenience.

 

[dsblais]

Hi, Martin. Although my two electrics both have active pickups at the moment, I don’t think they are necessary for a good high gain tone. I played a Les Paul with passives for years and always liked the fat, high dynamic range it had. A nice sounding rig is more important for metal rhythm than a good or expensive guitar in my opinion (if you’re going to play lead, the guitar quality matters more). While cabinets, etc can be extremely expensive, if you’re happy enough wearing cans, amp simulators can get you pretty far.

A lot of players like a high action, but I actually like it set low as it makes fast lead playing easier (in my opinion at least) and can increase the gain a bit. The main problem with a low action is with >6 string guitars as far as I’ve heard anyway.

I did try adjusting the tightness in TACT and could hear the change, although it sounded like the player was up too high from the bridge to get the thumping pulse that I was looking for; instead it acted as a mute.

It did make me think that a lot of the disconnect with a VI may be that a live guitar player gets to know the palette their particular rig and guitar will produce for the assortment of subtle variations in notes they can produce, allowing for a surprising range of expressive variation for any given note. Reproducing this in a VI is hard to impossible because there isn’t the sonic feedback loop from the rig to the player that informs how exactly to play a passage to get “that” tone — a tone which will require different playing for different rigs. Hence prerecorded fully processed riffs like in MA1 often are the most realistic (if least versatile) as the player understood exactly what sound they were producing.

Thus I may very well go the self sampling route since it may be the best compromise between expression and easy composition.

 

[xguitaristx]

This is what every chug should sound like. Fat, meaty, yet not too loose or muddy. Jerry Cantrell perfected the chug with his guitar work in this track.

 

[emid]

Thus I may very well go the self sampling route since it may be the best compromise between expression and easy composition.

Go for it, dsblais . It will have 'your' signature sound which 'you' prefer/like. I'm slowly creating some ambient patches for background and even single notes for layering with other instruments. Fun stuff, lot of learning, trial and error and even hidden surprises.

 

[MartinH.]

@dsblais & @Mike Fox: I'm looking for really low chugs like this @0:27 (can you hear if this is quad- or double tracked?)




My 7 string and 8 string definitely sound very different when tuned down to low drop-E. But maybe different strings and different neck scale make up most of that difference. I listened to a lot of pickup comparison videos and I definitely can hear some differences. Based of forum entries the regular EMG 808 doesn't seem to be super popular, but the 808x seems to have some fans. But then I saw this and it made me question whether a pickup change is really neccessary:



I can hear a difference, but I'm not even sure I like the expensive one better and it certainly doesn't sound 10x as good as the cheap one.

So do you guys think I should keep the cheap stock pickups in the 8 string and experiment more with the plugins in the fx chain first and e.g. try multiband compression and EQ before the DI signal hits the ampsim? (I'm using TSE x50 by the way)
But if that really turns out to be the solution, I have to wonder why everyone is spending 200 to 300$ on changing pickups and possibly even trying out multiple ones in that pricerange?


P.S.: I know a lot of the final mixed djent sound comes from the bass, I'm not sure if maybe I'm looking for my sound in the wrong instrument and I would be better off buying a real bass to replace the VI bass instead of messing with the pickup on the 8 string guitar?