Guitar Effect Rack Pack for Ableton Live 12 — 6 Racks: DI Amp Tone, Rhythm Bus Glue, Lead Lift, Acoustic DI

6 guitar racks for Ableton Live 12, 27 devices, 110 printed control settings — every value shown with the reason behind it, so you can retune any rack to your own pickup and interface instead of guessing. Needs Live 12 Standard or Suite: every device used ships with Standard, so no Suite-only device and no third-party plug-in is required. Install: open Live and drag the .adg into Browser > User Library > Presets, or drop it straight onto a track (menu wording differs between Live versions and UI languages). 7-day full refund; when the Live device schema moves you get the updated pack free from this same listing; an email address is on the product page.

Racks in this pack (6)

DI Guitar Amp Tone

Electric guitar straight into the interface, no amp and no amp-sim: EQ and drive shaped into a mic'd-cab tone.

This is the free rack — it downloads on its own as a working .adg so you can hear the pack before paying. The order is the point: drive first, speaker filter last. A real cabinet is the last thing in the signal path, so the 5.2 kHz low-pass sits AFTER the Saturator, not before it; filter first and you simply remove the harmonics the drive was about to generate. The second high-pass at 110 Hz exists because saturation adds low-order harmonics below the played note — without it, a DI tone gets woolly as soon as you raise Drive. If your pickup is a humbucker, start by moving the 250 Hz cut to -5 dB; single coils usually need less.

Signal chain: EQ Eight → Saturator → EQ Eight → Utility

#	Device	Control	Value	What it does
1	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	A DI pickup carries subsonic rumble and body thump that turn to mush once the Saturator adds harmonics. 12 dB/oct is gentle enough to keep the low E fundamental (82 Hz) intact.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	90	Sits just under the open low E at 82 Hz, so it removes rumble without thinning the lowest note you can actually play.
		`Band 2 - Frequency (Hz)`	250	The low-mid region where a direct pickup sounds boxy compared with a mic in front of a speaker.
		`Band 2 - Gain (dB)`	-3.5	Taking 3.5 dB out here before the drive stops the distortion from multiplying the boxiness instead of the note.
		`Band 2 - Q`	1.2	Narrow enough to leave the body of the guitar alone, wide enough not to sound like a notch.
		`Band 3 - Frequency (Hz)`	1800	The pick-attack region. Feeding the drive a little more of it is what makes the saturation sound like a driven amp rather than a fuzz.
		`Band 3 - Gain (dB)`	2.5	A pre-emphasis boost: the drive reacts to it, then the cabinet filter later tames whatever became harsh.
		`Band 3 - Q`	0.9	Wide, because this is a tone tilt, not a problem being fixed.
2	Saturator	`Drive (dB)`	9	9 dB is a crunch, not a lead tone: enough harmonic content for the guitar to read as amplified, low enough that chords still resolve instead of turning into a wall.
		`Dry/Wet`	0.85	15% dry keeps the original pick transient. Fully wet saturation rounds the attack and the part stops sounding like it was played with a plectrum.
3	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	A second high-pass after the drive, because saturation generates new energy below the note that was not there on the way in.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	110	Higher than the pre-drive filter on purpose: post-drive low end is harmonic mud, not fundamental.
		`Band 6 - Frequency (Hz)`	3400	The honk region. Drive pushes this band forward and it is the frequency people describe as 'harsh' or 'nasal'.
		`Band 6 - Gain (dB)`	-4	4 dB out is usually the difference between a tone you can listen to for an hour and one you turn down.
		`Band 6 - Q`	2	Deliberately narrow: the harshness is a peak, so a wide cut would just make the guitar dull.
		`Band 8 - Filter type: Low Pass 48 dB/oct`	7	The single most important move in this rack. A guitar speaker produces almost nothing above this point, so a steep 48 dB/oct slope is what makes a DI stop sounding like a DI.
		`Band 8 - Frequency (Hz)`	5200	The fizz that a DI plus distortion generates lives above 5 kHz and no real cabinet reproduces it. Raise towards 6.5 kHz for a brighter, more modern cab; drop to 4 kHz for a darker one.
		`Output gain (dB)`	-2	Drive raised the level; this puts it back so switching the rack on and off is a fair comparison rather than a loudness trick.
4	Utility	`Gain (dB)`	-3	Leaves headroom on the track so the rack can be printed or bussed without clipping the next stage.

Rhythm Guitar Bus Glue

Glue for a bus of 2-4 layered rhythm takes so they sit under the vocal and above the bass without mud.

Ceiling is -1.0 dB, not 0.0. A limiter that stops exactly at 0 dBFS still overshoots once the file is encoded to MP3 or AAC, because the encoder reconstructs peaks between the samples it was given; -1.0 dB is the margin that survives that. Release is 250 ms — long enough that eighth-note strumming does not modulate the level between chords, short enough to let go before the next bar at most tempos. The Saturator runs at 40% wet so the glue is parallel: the pick transient passes through untouched while the sustain thickens. Put this on a group track with your rhythm takes routed into it, not on each take.

Signal chain: EQ Eight → Saturator → Utility → Limiter

#	Device	Control	Value	What it does
1	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	Layered guitars stack their low end. Two takes at the same level below 85 Hz are 6 dB of energy the bass guitar has to fight.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	85	Just under the open low E, so drop-tuned parts keep their fundamental. Move up to 110 Hz if the bass still feels crowded.
		`Band 3 - Frequency (Hz)`	320	Where stacked guitars and a male vocal chest register collide.
		`Band 3 - Gain (dB)`	-3	A small cut on the bus beats a large cut on each take, because the buildup is a sum, not a fault in any one performance.
		`Band 3 - Q`	1.1	Broad enough to act as a tilt across the muddy region rather than a surgical dip.
		`Band 5 - Frequency (Hz)`	3000	The band the ear is most sensitive to and the one that makes a guitar bus tiring at volume.
		`Band 5 - Gain (dB)`	-2.5	This is also where vocal consonants live, so pulling it back on the guitars buys intelligibility without touching the vocal.
		`Band 5 - Q`	1.4	Focused on the problem so the pick definition at 5 kHz is left alone.
		`Band 7 - Filter type: High Shelf`	5	A shelf, not a bell: air should be a tilt across the whole top end, otherwise it sounds like a resonance.
		`Band 7 - Frequency (Hz)`	8000	Above the harshness the previous band removed, so the two moves do not cancel each other.
		`Band 7 - Gain (dB)`	1.5	1.5 dB is enough to restore the sparkle the mud cuts took away. More than 3 dB and amp hiss comes up with it.
		`Band 8 - Filter type: Low Pass 12 dB/oct`	6	Gentle, unlike the DI rack: these takes were probably already recorded through an amp or a cab sim, so this only removes what nothing musical occupies.
		`Band 8 - Frequency (Hz)`	13000	Above the top of a guitar's useful range; keeps interface hiss and cymbal bleed from accumulating across layered takes.
2	Saturator	`Drive (dB)`	4.5	Low drive on a bus is about shared harmonics, not distortion — it is what makes separate takes sound like they were recorded together.
		`Dry/Wet`	0.4	40% keeps the attack of every strum intact. Bus saturation that is fully wet flattens the difference between the takes you spent time layering.
3	Utility	`Width`	1.25	125% pushes the hard-panned layers slightly further out. Stay under about 140% or the bus loses body when the mix is summed to mono on a phone speaker.
		`Gain (dB)`	-1.5	Feeds the limiter below its ceiling so the limiter shapes peaks instead of acting as a compressor on everything.
4	Limiter	`Ceiling (dB)`	-1	-1.0 dB, not 0.0. Lossy encoders reconstruct peaks between samples, so a file that measures 0.0 dBFS clips after conversion to MP3 or AAC. This is the standard margin that survives it.
		`Release (ms)`	250	250 ms rides over eighth-note strumming instead of pumping between chords, and still lets go before the next bar at typical tempos. Shorten towards 120 ms for fast palm-muted parts.

Lead Guitar Solo Lift

Lifts a solo above a dense rhythm bed: midrange push, controlled drive, short tail, peak-safe output.

The 450 Hz cut is what makes the boost work. Most people only add 2 kHz, and the solo gets louder and harsher without getting clearer — because the boxy layer at 450 Hz is already owned by the rhythm bed, and the ear reads the overlap as clutter. Take 3 dB out there first and the 2 kHz push suddenly has somewhere to go. Reverb decay is 1.8 s, deliberately short: long tails smear fast lines, and a solo that cannot be followed does not sound big, it sounds distant. High-pass at 140 Hz is high for a guitar, and intentional — a lead does not need the low end it is competing with.

Signal chain: EQ Eight → Saturator → Reverb → Utility → Limiter

#	Device	Control	Value	What it does
1	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	A lead line needs presence, not weight. Everything below the filter is competing with the rhythm bus for the same space.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	140	Higher than you would use on a rhythm part. Lead phrases usually live above the fifth fret, so nothing musical is lost.
		`Band 4 - Frequency (Hz)`	450	The boxy layer the rhythm guitars already occupy. Removing it is what creates the gap the solo sits in.
		`Band 4 - Gain (dB)`	-3	Cut before boost: it raises clarity without raising level, so the solo reads as closer rather than just louder.
		`Band 4 - Q`	1.5	Tight enough to leave the note's body while removing the congested part of it.
		`Band 5 - Frequency (Hz)`	2000	The frequency the ear uses to judge how close a sound is. This is the actual 'lift'.
		`Band 5 - Gain (dB)`	4	4 dB is a real move and it works only because 450 Hz was cut first. Applied on its own it turns into harshness.
		`Band 5 - Q`	1	Moderately wide so the boost reads as a tone change, not as a resonant peak on one note of the scale.
		`Band 8 - Filter type: Low Pass 48 dB/oct`	7	Steep, because the drive stage that follows generates fizz well above the useful range of a lead tone.
		`Band 8 - Frequency (Hz)`	7000	Higher than the DI rack's 5.2 kHz: a solo needs more top than a rhythm part to stay audible over a full arrangement.
2	Saturator	`Drive (dB)`	12	12 dB compresses the note envelope as a by-product, which is what makes bends and vibrato hold instead of dying after a second.
		`Dry/Wet`	0.9	Almost fully wet, but the 10% dry keeps a trace of the original attack so fast picking stays articulate.
3	Reverb	`Decay time (s)`	1.8	1.8 seconds. Long enough to hear the space, short enough that sixteenth-note runs do not overlap into each other. This is the number most solo presets get wrong.
		`Diffuse level`	0.45	Raised above the default so the tail is a smooth wash rather than distinct reflections, which would compete with the notes for attention.
4	Utility	`Gain (dB)`	-2	Compensates for the drive and the 2 kHz boost so you can A/B the rack honestly.
		`Width`	1.15	A restrained 115%. A lead should stay near the centre; width here only opens the reverb tail, not the note.
5	Limiter	`Ceiling (dB)`	-1	Same -1.0 dB margin as the bus rack, so a bounced solo stem survives lossy encoding without clipping.
		`Release (ms)`	180	Faster than the rhythm bus because a lead is one note at a time — the limiter can recover between notes without the level audibly breathing.

Clean Funk Comp Mover

Clean comping and funk chords: tightened low end, pick snap, and slow auto-pan movement that keeps the centre.

Auto Pan at 35%, not 100%. At full amount the part disappears from the centre on every cycle, and on a mono club system or a phone speaker it drops out entirely; 35% reads as movement while the chord stays present. Rate is 5.5 Hz, above normal strumming speed on purpose — set it slower and the movement fights the groove instead of decorating it. The Auto Filter is used as a fixed tone control at 2.6 kHz rather than as a sweep, because the pick attack is what carries a funk part and a moving filter keeps eating it. If you want the classic sweep, the filter cutoff is the one control to automate.

Signal chain: EQ Eight → Auto Filter → Auto Pan → Utility

#	Device	Control	Value	What it does
1	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	Funk comping is a rhythmic part. Low end blurs the gaps between chords, and the gaps are the groove.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	120	High enough to clear the kick and bass completely, since a comping part rarely plays below the fifth string.
		`Band 2 - Frequency (Hz)`	220	The remaining thickness just above the filter, which makes fast chord stabs sound smeared.
		`Band 2 - Gain (dB)`	-2.5	A modest cut keeps the chord voicing recognisable while sharpening the rhythm.
		`Band 2 - Q`	1.2	Wide enough to shape the whole low-mid area rather than notch a single string.
		`Band 6 - Frequency (Hz)`	2800	Where the plectrum hitting the strings actually lives. This band is the 'snap'.
		`Band 6 - Gain (dB)`	3	Boosting the attack rather than the sustain is what makes a clean part cut through without adding volume.
		`Band 6 - Q`	1.2	Wide enough that the boost follows the chord instead of highlighting one note in it.
		`Band 8 - Filter type: Low Pass 12 dB/oct`	6	Gentle: a clean tone has real content up high, so a steep slope would kill the sparkle this part depends on.
		`Band 8 - Frequency (Hz)`	9500	Removes single-coil hiss and amp noise that a clean, quiet part exposes more than a distorted one.
2	Auto Filter	`Frequency (Hz)`	2600	Set as a static tone control just above the snap band, so it colours the part without swallowing the attack. This is the one control worth automating or assigning to a macro for a sweep.
3	Auto Pan	`Amount`	0.35	35%, not 100%. At full amount the chord leaves the centre on every cycle and vanishes on a mono system; at 35% you hear movement and still hear the chord.
		`Rate (Hz)`	5.5	Above normal strumming speed, so the movement is perceived as texture. Slower rates start competing with the rhythm of the playing.
		`Shape`	0.3	Slightly squared off from a pure sine so the part spends more time out at the sides and less time crossing the middle — the movement is clearer at a lower Amount.
4	Utility	`Gain (dB)`	-1	The 2.8 kHz boost adds perceived level; this puts the fader back where it was.
		`Width`	1.1	110% only. The Auto Pan is already creating the stereo interest, and stacking width on top of it makes the part unstable in mono.

Ambient Octave Wash

Sustained ambient beds from single notes: octave-up grains into a long tail, filtered so it never turns to mud.

There is a high-pass before the grains and a second one after the reverb, and that is the whole trick. Pitching low strings up an octave and feeding them into a 4.5 second tail is exactly how ambient patches turn to porridge: every repeat adds low-mid energy that never fully decays, and it accumulates for as long as you keep playing. Cutting at 160 Hz on the way in and 180 Hz on the way out keeps the wash in the register where the ear reads it as a pad. Grain frequency is 32 Hz — high enough that the octave sounds continuous instead of stuttering, low enough to keep the grainy character you are here for. Play single notes and let them ring; chords overload this rack by design.

Signal chain: EQ Eight → Grain Delay → Reverb → EQ Eight → Utility

#	Device	Control	Value	What it does
1	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	Anything below this point is about to be repeated and layered dozens of times. Removing it here costs one filter; removing it later is impossible.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	160	Aggressive for a guitar, correct for a pad source: the octave-up output does not need the original low end at all.
		`Band 5 - Frequency (Hz)`	900	The nasal region that becomes obvious once a sound is sustained rather than plucked.
		`Band 5 - Gain (dB)`	-2	Small, because a long tail exaggerates every resonance — what is inaudible on a dry note is fatiguing after 4 seconds of decay.
		`Band 5 - Q`	1	Broad, treating the whole nasal band rather than one frequency.
2	Grain Delay	`Pitch (semitones)`	12	+12 semitones is exactly one octave, so the result stays in key no matter what you play. Any other value locks the rack to a single chord.
		`Frequency (Hz)`	32	The grain rate. At the default the octave stutters audibly; at 32 Hz the grains overlap enough to be heard as a sustained tone rather than as repeats.
3	Reverb	`Decay time (s)`	4.5	4.5 seconds is long enough that single notes overlap into a chord as you play, which is what turns a guitar into a pad. Shorten to 2.5 s if you play more than about one note per bar.
		`Diffuse level`	0.55	Raised well above the default so the tail is a continuous wash with no identifiable reflections — distinct echoes would expose the grain repeats.
4	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	The second cut, after the reverb. Reverb generates its own low-frequency energy from the grains, which the input filter never saw.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	180	Higher than the input filter on purpose: the accumulated tail needs more clearing than the dry note did.
		`Band 8 - Filter type: Low Pass 48 dB/oct`	7	Steep, so the wash sits behind the rest of the arrangement instead of competing with cymbals and vocal air.
		`Band 8 - Frequency (Hz)`	6500	Darkening the tail is what makes a pad feel like distance. A bright ambient wash sounds like an effect; a dark one sounds like a room.
		`Output gain (dB)`	-1.5	The grains and the long tail sum, so the rack leaves the track hotter than it entered. This corrects it.
5	Utility	`Width`	1.35	135%. A pad is one of the few guitar sources where wide is right, because it is meant to sit around the mix rather than in a location within it.
		`Gain (dB)`	-2	Sets the bed below the dry parts. An ambient layer that is level-matched with the performance stops being a bed and becomes a distraction.

Acoustic Guitar DI Polish

Acoustic guitar taken by piezo pickup or DI box: removes body boom and piezo quack, then adds air and peak control.

The 2.5 kHz cut with a Q of 2.2 is the piezo notch, and it is the reason this rack exists. An under-saddle pickup has a hard, glassy peak in that region — the sound people call 'quack' — and no amount of air on the top end will hide it. It is narrow, so a wide bell just makes the guitar dull instead of fixing anything; the tight Q is the whole point. Saturator runs at 25% wet with only 3 dB of drive, enough to round the transient of the pick without ever being heard as distortion. Auto Release is switched on because fingerstyle dynamics vary far more than strumming does, and a fixed release either pumps on the loud passages or clamps the quiet ones. If your guitar has a soundhole magnetic pickup rather than a piezo, start by halving the 2.5 kHz cut — the quack is a piezo problem.

Signal chain: EQ Eight → Saturator → EQ Eight → Utility → Limiter

#	Device	Control	Value	What it does
1	EQ Eight	`Band 1 - Filter type: High Pass 12 dB/oct`	1	Piezo pickups are contact microphones: they hear the player's body, the chair and the floor as much as the strings.
		`Band 1 - Frequency (Hz)`	70	Set low, because an acoustic's low E at 82 Hz is a large part of its character. This clears handling noise only.
		`Band 2 - Frequency (Hz)`	180	The body resonance of a dreadnought. It is the boom that makes a recorded acoustic sound like it was played in a box.
		`Band 2 - Gain (dB)`	-4	The largest cut in this rack. Body resonance is the single loudest thing a piezo picks up and it masks everything else.
		`Band 2 - Q`	1.6	Reasonably tight, because the resonance is a peak. Sweep this band between 150 and 220 Hz with a boost first to find where your own guitar booms, then invert the gain.
		`Band 4 - Frequency (Hz)`	2500	The piezo quack: the hard, glassy peak that identifies an under-saddle pickup instantly.
		`Band 4 - Gain (dB)`	-3.5	Cutting it is what makes a DI acoustic start sounding like a microphone in front of a soundhole.
		`Band 4 - Q`	2.2	The narrowest cut in the pack, and deliberately so. The quack is a narrow peak; a wide bell here removes the guitar's presence along with the fault.
2	Saturator	`Drive (dB)`	3	3 dB is barely distortion. On a piezo it softens the spiky leading edge of every note, which is the other half of why DI acoustics sound electronic.
		`Dry/Wet`	0.25	25% wet keeps this parallel. An acoustic must never audibly distort, so the effect is added underneath rather than applied to the signal.
3	EQ Eight	`Band 6 - Frequency (Hz)`	5000	Finger squeak and string noise on wound strings concentrate here, and a piezo exaggerates both.
		`Band 6 - Gain (dB)`	-2	A small dip removes the distraction without dulling the strings. Cutting more than 3 dB starts to remove the pick as well.
		`Band 6 - Q`	1.8	Tight, so the air shelf above it is unaffected and the two moves stay independent.
		`Band 7 - Filter type: High Shelf`	5	A shelf so the sparkle is a tilt across the whole top octave — the way distance from a microphone actually behaves.
		`Band 7 - Frequency (Hz)`	9000	Above the string-noise cut, so adding air does not put the squeak back.
		`Band 7 - Gain (dB)`	2	2 dB restores the shimmer a piezo cannot produce. Push past 4 dB and you amplify the noise floor of the preamp instead.
		`Output gain (dB)`	-1	Keeps the rack roughly level-matched so the bypass button is an honest comparison.
4	Utility	`Gain (dB)`	-1.5	Leaves headroom into the limiter so it only catches peaks instead of riding the whole performance.
		`Width`	1.1	110%, kept small on purpose. A solo acoustic should sound like one instrument in one place; heavy widening on a mono DI causes phase problems rather than space.
5	Limiter	`Ceiling (dB)`	-1	The same -1.0 dB margin used across this pack, so a bounced acoustic stem survives MP3 or AAC encoding without inter-sample clipping.
		`Release (ms)`	300	Slower than the electric racks. Acoustic notes decay naturally over a long time, and a fast release audibly lifts the tail of every note.
		`Auto release`	True	Switched on because fingerstyle dynamics swing far more than strumming. A fixed release either pumps during the loud passages or clamps the quiet ones; auto release adapts between them.

Guitar Effect Rack Pack for Ableton Live 12 — 6 Racks: DI Amp Tone, Rhythm Bus Glue, Lead Lift, Acoustic DI

Racks in this pack (6)

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