Seeking help getting a certain guitar tone...

[bemaha]

I am looking to get a certain guitar tone, and would like some help. Specifically, I am really liking this tone: https://draconiantemple.bandcamp.com/releases
and of course the Sunn O)))/Monarch type stuff. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment in the city, so getting a full rig to blast at full volume is out of the question. I'm not looking to match these sounds exactly, but at least get myself in the ballpark. I was thinking maybe get a tube amp (Sunn, etc.) and go the load box route into an interface. Not sure if that would do it. I've tried all kinds of amp sims, and although I've gotten usable tones, its not exactly what I want - its never quite "warm enough" or I can't quite get the overdriven tube distortion sound. I know some of you will say "its not possible without moving air", but I don't want to give up yet. Does anyone have any suggestions? Am I way off the rails here? I'm certainly no expert on amps and recording, so please excuse anything stupid I'm saying here. Thanks in advance.

[crochambeau]

To my ears, a lot of that sound is speakers moving air & post microphone gain staging/compression/EQ. You're up against a two part problem though, in that the instrumental/signal side of that performance sounds to be largely pulling from the room itself (guitars do different things when the room is loud enough).

I may very well be completely off base though.

In your shoes I think my attempt would be to employ a smaller (say 10-20 watt) tube amp or preferably an external speaker cabinet placed in an isolation box. Then I'd fuck with microphone selection and placement and drive everything a little hard. My reasoning behind this is that while it is true that amplifier distortion plays a part, speaker distortion/room envelopment has proven more important with my own experiments. At lower volumes I've also preferred larger speaker drivers, as they have an easier time coupling low frequencies with the air.

[ibarakishi]

it just isn't going to sound how you want it to sound honestly without a ton of cpu usage and plugin trickery. and even then, you most likely aren't going to be satisfied. like what curtis said above, and what you said you don't want to hear, is that moving air is kind of critical. doesn't matter if its solid state or tubes, it just needs to get loud to start really vibrating and doing interesting things, especially with feedback. load box is a not a good idea imo too, regardless of whatever way you cut it, they are a risk to your amp if not taken care of and monitored constantly and really run the risk of damaging your amp. to buy a tube amp to then do what you want to do with the load box isn't going to give you any better results that you could just do inside the box or with a solid state amp at low volumes anyways.

basically you just have to decide if you 1.) want to throw your money and dive into computerland and get some decent plugins to run in your DAW and commit to spending way too many hours staring a computer screen a/b-ing a reference track to see if you are in the right area or 2.) commit to throwing your money/time at someone to let you crank your amp for a few hours while you record stuff in a space that allows it

regardless you need some sort of fuzz/drive/both hitting your amp to get into fuzzland.

the whole tube vs. solid state for doom is ridiculous at this pointless unless you buy in with your own dollars to the club that worships gear over your ears. Sunn and Earth both used mostly solid state stuff early on for a lot of their most acclaimed albums, with Dylan from Earth being a pretty huge advocate of the 'i don't understand why people worship gear and gear history when you should just use whatever you can get a hold of' camp.

this is all coming from someone who has taken this journey already and has come out the other side with a lot of wasted dollars (and money well spent) trying to figure out what worked right for me in my life at the time with my own limits. i know how to get what i want now with what i have, along with being able to just rip stuff at full volume now that i live out in the middle of nowhere. So having lived both sides of it, i can honestly tell you there are multiple routes to get to where you want, its just whatever makes sense for you and how much time/money you want to throw at it all to get what you want and might not be the most sexy or pleasing route imagined.

[bemaha]

I'm aware of multiple routes that one can take here. Obviously, the easy way is to get a loud amp in a big room and mic it up and take a bath in feedback and distortion. I guess if I wanted to spend the money I could rent out the equipment and do it, but its not the most efficient or repeatable technique for me. If I was going to do it the plugin route, which plugins would I use? What cab IRS would you suggest? What EQ profile would you suggest? Which reverb plugin? etc., etc. I've been doing my own experimenting, but just looking for other to bounce ideas off of and maybe get some good pointers. If I was to use pedals into an interface, for example - which pedals? In what sequence? I'm not looking for the obvious suggestion here - I know about fuzz pedals (which I have), but the tone is much more than fuzz pedals...