Greetings Fellow KVRians:

Many of my posts are long. I'll try to keep this one shorter.

One of the tracks on my upcoming Gospel album is an authentic tribute, stylistically, to late 50s rockabilly . My 'focus' instrument is a kool ol' ES-335 tone through (Amplitude) Fender Princeton Deluxe amp sim. Complete with light amp reverb and Fender tape echo (for slapback). To keep it "leveled" with minimal compression pumping, it's being routed through IK's Vintage 670 (Fairchild) compressor. I've always had some appropriate bandpass filtering, but the tone was a little too "warm", and was actually on the brink of sounding muddy. I really like the sonic character of the 670 plugin, but it does "warm" things up a lot.

Try other compressor plugins . . . no mud, but no 'magic' either. The Fairchild "sound" is so lovely. Add EQ? Nah. No matter what EQ processor I tried, it always ended up creating thin, shrill tone by the time I knocked off low mids and added a bit of upper frequency boost.

My solution:

Immediately following the IK 670 plugin, I added SKnote's Presence.

No low band harmonics added.
Slight additional HiPass filtering.
Conservative upper band harmonics increased. (25%) @ 9Khz.

My guitar track retains the "sound" of a classic 'blackface' Fender amp happily leveled through a Fairchild compressor; complete with the Fairchild's magical warmth and rich sonic body. SKnote Presence keeps the attack and "zing" comfortably coasting on top. The addition of subtle upper frequency harmonics really, really adds an aural synergy, in this instance.

I struggled to "nail" a truly vintage tone that would remain faithful to the late 50s/early 60s musical era; without the guitar track getting muddy or shrill sounding. After trying many amp sim combinations, various compressors, EQs, etc., this combination just totally . . . . works!

FYI:

The lead guitar track is the same guitar processed through the Amplitude Fender '59 Bassman w/ Fender '63 Reverb tank & IK Black 76 compressor. It's rich sounding, but very 'alive'.

Yes, I had even more typed here but I edited and deleted some lines. In effect, I did make this post 'shorter'