The Presence 12-String Electric Guitar

It's difficult to sample a 12-string. The core Presence content includes a 12-string acoustic guitar, but there are no 12-string electrics-so let's construct one.

One of my favorite guitars ever is the Rickenbacker 360 12-string. Back in my touring days, it travelled tens of thousands of miles with me (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: The mighty Rickenbacker 360 12-string guitar. Nothing else sounds like it.

I thought it would be a challenge to try and emulate that iconic sound with Presence. Listen to the audio example, and hear the results.

PreSonus Ric Audio Example by Craig Anderton

How It Works

The sound starts with one Presence instance, which uses a 6-string electric guitar preset. Then, we create a second, multi-instrument track with two Presence instances that use the same electric guitar preset. Transposing one of the instances up creates the octave above sound; however, a real 12-string guitar doesn't have octaves on the 1st and 2nd strings. So, we use the final Presence for a unison sound, and edit the ranges in the multi instrument so they don't overlap.

Step-by-Step Guitar Construction

Create an Instrument track with Presence, and load the Guitar > Telecaster > Telecaster Open preset. This guitar sound is closest to a Rickenbacker, but we'll do some EQ tricks later to get it closer.

Create a new Instrument track with Presence, and load the same preset. Drag a second instance of Presence into the same track. When asked whether you want to load the instrument or combine the instrument Presence, choose Combine. This opens the Multi Instrument window. Load the same preset into the new Presence instance as well.

In the multi instrument, drag the upper end of one Presence key range down to A#2 (we'll call this the Octave Presence ). Drag the lower end of the other Presence key range up to B2 (we'll call this the Unison Presence ). Fig. 2 shows the multi instrument window.

Figure 2: The multi instrument window has two instances of Presence-one for the octave above strings, and the other for the unison strings.

Open the Octave Presence preset. Set Transpose to +12, and Pitch Fine Tune to +5 cents. Then open the Unison Presence preset, and change Pitch Fine Tune to -2 cents.

Insert an Analog Delay in the multi Instrument channel , with the settings shown in Fig. 3. The reason for the 20 ms delay is because the higher string in a pair of strings gets hit just a little bit late. (We can't use the Delay in Presence itself, because the mix needs to be 100% delay-no dry sound.) Without this delay, the emulated 12-string doesn't sound right.

Figure 3: The Analog Delay emulates the delay caused by hitting the octave strings just a little bit later.

Note the High Cut setting-this reduces some of the brightness caused by transposition. The Width settings give a big stereo image, but for a more normal sound, turn ping-pong mode to Off.

Your mixer should look like Fig. 4, with two channels (basic guitar, and multi preset).

Figure 4: Mixer channels for the 12-string guitar.

Additional Tweaks

The Pitch Fine Tune settings in the multi instrument instances emulate the reality that a 12-string is seemingly never in tune, which accounts for that beautiful shimmering effect. Feel free to adjust your virtual 12-string so that it's more or less in tune.

Another important tweak is to set the multi instrument channel's fader about -6 dB below the main guitar sound. The octave strings on a 12-string are thinner than the strings with standard pitch, so they generate less output. This isn't true of the 1st and 2nd strings, but that's fine. With the octave strings a little lower, there's a better balance.

Bring on the EQ

And finally the coup de gr ce to get us closer to the iconic Ric sound. On the main Presence instance, use the EQ in the Bass range. Boost 3 dB 3200 Hz, and pull the lowest slider down all the way. On both multi instrument instances, pull down the highest and lowest sliders (Fig. 4). Then, insert a Pro EQ in each mixer channel.

Figure 5: These EQ settings help get the sound. Clockwise from top: EQ on main Presence, EQ on the two multi instrument Presence instances, and Pro EQ placed on both mixer channels.

The narrow cut in the Pro EQ at 3.27 kHz helps reduce what sounds like some bridge ping in the original Telecaster samples. But all the EQ settings shown are suggestions. Between the broad EQ in Presence and the surgical nature of the Pro EQ, you can shape the sound however you want.

LINK:	https://blog.presonus.com/index.php/2021/03/12/presence-12-string-elec...
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