At Frozen Sun Audio, one of our public services is Custom IR making. What is a Custom IR? Have you ever heard a song on the radio or heard an album by your favorite band and wanted to copy that guitar sound but you don’t know how, can’t afford the gear, or just simply want that tone baked into a convenient-to-use IR response? With Custom made IRs, you can.
We are experienced at tone matching and the IR making process, and will be able to closely approximate most tones you hear on the radio or classic albums. All you have to be able to do to be eligible for Custom IRs is to be able to make a high quality recording of the preamp stage (closest matching amp sim and overdrive/distortion pedal if applicable) to take care of the distortion and feel aspect of the tone. Record some rhythm riffing in a similar style at -12dB peak WAV format and with no cab IR or power amp emulation loaded, and include with it a piece of reference material so that we can get a feel for what you want and use your actual preamp tone to get you there.
We do not use digital automatic sampling methods such as match-EQ or similar processes, the way we approximate tones is using real gear and decades-old engineering competence. If available, we will research the type of gear that was used to make the original recording and try to emulate it. Upon payment for Custom IR making services, we will perform the previously stated methods and send Test IRs for comments and critique. It doesn’t matter how many IRs we have to make, we will consider the project complete when you have achieved your desired tone, or as close to it as reasonably possible (many sought after tones contain heavy outboard processing and/or tape saturation etc, and we try to emulate this all using only natural analog methods and engineering know how).
Know that we will not take on any jobs that we know outright we will not be able to achieve, so there is no risk in contacting about potential jobs. We may also refuse to take on a project on the basis of inadequate source material i.e. your reference material is a fuzz/distortion pedal tone into a clean amp and you provide us with a standard amp distortion tone instead. Know also that if the tone that you desire is a fuzz/distortion type tone and you do not own the unit, we may have the unit at our disposal to process your DIs through, send it back to you so you can run that through the clean amp of your choice and then send it back for Custom IR work. This way if you decide to pick up the pedal in the future you will already have the IR made for it, and in the meantime the IR will likely also find use.
Custom IR work costs $60 per project – this price is subject to availability and can change at any time. To contact about having IRs made, send an email to Support@FrozenSunAudio.com