Can You Make an Electric Guitar Truly Sound Like an Acoustic Guitar?

Have you ever dreamed playing your electric guitar with a genuine acoustic guitar sound like this?

In this tutorial we are going to create an monster acoustic guitar simulation preset using a simple coil neck pickup as input and 2 independent Re-Guitar setups, using only Axiom‘s internal Amps and FX (free preset download included), check it out!

Step 1: Open Axiom and load the Re-Guitar plugin in the PRE FX A section. Then open de Re-Guitar editor window.

Step 2: We’ll use two independent signal paths inside Axiom. The idea is to have a good attack from a piezo pickup mixed with the sound of an acoustic guitar simulation for a nice and powerful dynamic setup.
As you can see I use the Single Coil Bright pickup as input for Re-Guitar, but on my guitar I use the Mid and Neck single coil pickups together to get best results. Feel free to experiment with other options!
In the Re-Guitar editor use the following settings:
– in the – FROM – section = use Single Coil Bright
– in the – TO – section = select the Acoustic icon
– in the Pickup Model section, choose Piezo with the basic parameters
– now here is an important part: activate the “Hollow Body” option with the following settings: 100mm (Thickness) & 100% (Amount). This adds more body to your sound

Step 3: Close the Re-Guitar window and work on the AMP A section of Axiom: let’s start with a good basic preset called Piezo Solo (Factory Presets > Guitar Piezo > Piezo Solo) and then load the AMP A (= Destructor) editor. De-activate the Post-Filter section and use the settings displayed in the image in your editor.

Step 4: Close the Destructor (AMP A) editor and copy this A section and paste it into the B section like in these pictures. Then activate and select the B channel.

Step 5: Use the following settings for the A and B channels (Volume and Pan)
A VOL = + 6dB; PAN = -29%
MIX = 0%
B VOL = + 6dB; PAN = +29%

Step 6: The purpose is to create a slightly different B channel for a richer stereo image. Therefore, let’s adjust Re-Guitar (B channel) with these settings:
– in the – FROM – section = use Single Coil Bright
– in the – TO – section = select the Acoustic Custom icon
– in the Pickup Model section set the cursor to the bottom center position like in the image, but feel free to experiment other settings as well: this tool is really powerful and can help you create tones way beyond the other pickup options.
– use 59mm (Thickness) & 100% (Amount) in the Hollow Body section and close the editor.

Step 7: You should already start to hear a nice basic acoustic simulation, but the fun doesn’t end here! In the Master section we’ll use 3 additional FX to spice up our tone even more.

Step 8: Insert the EQ & IR Loader (built-in EQ & filters > EQ & IR Loader) into the first Master slot. and use the following settings (see image).

Step 9: In the next slot insert the Compressor (Built-In Dynamics > Compressor) with these settings :
Threshold = -14 dB
Ratio = 2:50:1
Attack = 12.0 ms
Release = 300 ms
Makeup Gain = 5 dB

Step 10: Now for the icing on the cake, insert the Reverb (Buil-In Delay & Reverb > Reverb) plugin into the next Master slot with these settings.
Density = Very High
Pre Delay = 46 ms
Length = 5.2 s
Reflectivity = 95 %
Lo-Cut = 60.0 Hz
Hi-Cut = 13.8 Hz

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed this new tutorial. You can now listen again to the demo with this preset, and download the Axiom preset for this tutorial: Download Acoustic Monster Free Preset For Axiom.

Do not forget to adjust the settings to your own pickups and playing style!

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