DAMAGE GUITARS & DAMAGE ROCK GROOVES BY HEAVYOCITY
KK-ACCESS REVIEW
Damage is undoubtedly the product that brought Heavyocity to the attention of the music producing masses, and the ongoing demand and interest is still such for this series that Heavyocity are still continuing to add to it over a decade after the first release.
MAXIMUM DAMAGE
Damage Guitars is the newest addition, and what an addition it is.
Regardless of whether you happen to be an exponent of heavy rock guitar, a mere ten minutes of playing with this un caged monster will surely unleash your axe wielding self, and by this I am of course referencing someone like Eddie Van Halen rather than the character from The Shining!
DAMAGE ROCK GROOVES
Heavyocity have simultaneously released a complementary sister library at the same time. Damage Rock Grooves is another welcome addition, and is cleverly coordinated to work in harmony with Damage Guitars.
To avoid the risk of Damage Rock Grooves being overshadowed by it’s bigger brother, we will look at them both here, and particularly as there is an introductory offer which includes Damage Rock Grooves as a freebie when you purchase damage Guitars.
DAMAGE GUITARS, CONCEPTULISATION
As a former metal guitarist, Neil Goldberg from Heavyocity used his knowledge and expertise of the genre to bring about the realisation of the new Damage Guitars library.
Drawing from his extensive collection of guitars, the Heavyocity team set about recording from original sources like the Custom Shop Gibson, PRS, Fender, Jackson, and Ernie Ball models, all processed through an equally impressive line up of pedals and amps, before ultimately receiving the famous Heavyocity hallmark sound using their unique signal chain.
TECH SPECS
Damage Guitars runs in either the full version of Kontakt 6.7.1 and higher, or the same Free Kontakt player edition, it is compatible with Komplete Kontrol.
The library requires 9.57GB of hard drive space for installation, and uses the NCW compression format.
There are four master Kontakt NKI files, which cover the 3 recorded scales of D, A, & F#, the fourth NKI is the master for the Playable selection of presets.
The above NKI files work to additionally source the NKSN snapshot files, which we make use of within Komplete Kontrol, and there are a total of 117 of these.
Damage Rock Grooves follows the same Kontakt specifications, and has an installation footprint of 4.64GB.
There is a single master Kontakt NKI file, with a further 43 NKSN Kontakt snapshot files.
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION
The Heavyocity Portal application is required for the initial registering and downloading of both of these libraries, after which the same license keys are also used to authorise them within Native Access.
Finally, you will need to locate and confirm the product locations before hading to Komplete Kontrol. Once done, the auto rescan of KK from within your DAW will add the products to your browser, and you will be ready to rock!
KOMPLETE KONTROL PLUG-IN EDIT NKS PARAMETER MAPPING
DAMAGE GUITARS
PAGE ONE – Macro Control, Modulation
Knob 1 – Macro Knob %
Knob 2 to 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Modulation On/Off
Knob 6 – Modulation Rate, 1/4 to 1/64 Straight Timings
Knob 7 – Amount %
Knob 8 – Unallocated
PAGE TWO – Punish, Twist
Knob 1 – Punish On/Off
Knob 2 – Amount %
Knob 3 & 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Twist On/Off
Knob 6 – Amount %
Knob 7 – Tone %
Knob 8 – Rate Up to 1/16 including Triplets
PAGE THREE – Filter, Distortion
Knob 1 – Filter On/Off
Knob 2 – Cut-Off
Knob 3 – Resonance
Knob 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Distortion On/Off
Knob 6 – Drive
Knob 7 & 8 – Unallocated
PAGE FOUR – Chorus, Delay
Knob 1 – Chorus On/Off
Knob 2 – Rate expressed in Hz
Knob 3 – Depth
Knob 4 – Amount
Knob 5 – Delay On/Off
Knob 6 – Time, 1/1 to 1/32 including Triplets
Knob 7 – Feedback
Knob 8 – Amount
PAGE FIVE – Reverb, Channel 1
Knob 1 – Reverb On/Off
Knob 2 – Pre-Delay
Knob 3 – Size
Knob 4 – Mix
Knob 5 – Channel 1 Volume
Knob 6 – Channel 1 Pan
Knob 7 – Channel 1 Tune
Knob 8 – Unallocated
PAGE SIX – Channel 2, Channel 3
Knob 1 – Channel 2 Volume
Knob 2 – Channel 2 Pan
Knob 3 – Channel 2 Tune
Knob 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Channel 3 Volume
Knob 6 – Channel 3 Pan
Knob 7 – Channel 3 Tune
Knob 8 – Unallocated
DAMAGE GUITAR – PLAYABLE PRESETS NKS MAPPING
PAGE ONE – Dynamics, Delay, Reverb
Knob 1 – Dynamics %
Knob 2 – Delay On/Off
Knob 3 – Delay Time 1/1 to 1/64
Knob 4 – Feedback
Knob 5 – Amount
Knob 6 – Reverb On/Off
Knob 7 – Size
Knob 8 – Mix
PAGE TWO – Mixer
Knob 1 – Main Volume
Knob 2 – Main Pan
Knob 3 – Echoes Volume
Knob 4 – Echoes Pan
Knob 5 – Ambience Volume
Knob 6 – Ambience Pan
Knob 7 & 8 – Unallocated
PAGE THREE – Gate, Arp
Knob 1 – Gate On/Off
Knob 2 – Rate 1/4 to 1/64 Straight Time
Knob 3 – Smooth
Knob 4 – Range
Knob 5 – Arp On/Off
Knob 6 – Rate 1/4 to 1/32 including Triplets
Knob 7 – Arp Mode: 8 variations
Knob 8 – Arp Gate
DAMAGE ROCK GROOVES – NKS MAPPING
PAGE ONE – Send FX, Send Modulation
Knob 1 – Send FX On/Off
Knob 2 – Level %
Knob 3 & 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Modulation Send On/Off
Knob 6 – Amount
Knob 7 – Smooth
Knob 8 – Unallocated
PAGE TWO – Punish, Filter
Knob 1 – Punish On/Off
Knob 2 – Amount
Knob 3 – Response
Knob 4 – Tone
Knob 5 – Filter On/Off
Knob 6 – Cut-Off
Knob 7 – Resonance
Knob 8 – Unallocated
PAGE THREE – EQ
Knob 1 – EQ On/Off
Knob 2 – Low Gain
Knob 3 – Low Freq
Knob 4 – Mid Gain
Knob 5 – Mid Freq
Knob 6 – High Gain
Knob 7 – High Freq
Knob 8 – Amount
PAGE FOUR – Compressor
Knob 1 – Compressor On/Off
Knob 2 – Threshold
Knob 3 – Ratio
Knob 4 – Attack
Knob 5 – Release
Knob 6 – Make Up
Knob 7 – Mix
Knob 8 – Unallocated
PAGE FIVE – Saturation
Knob 1 – Saturation On/Off
Knob 2 – Drive
Knob 3 – Warmth
Knob 4 – Roll Off
Knob 5 – Output
Knob 6 to 8 – Unallocated
PAGE SIX – Delay
Knob 1 – Delay On/Off
Knob 2 – Time: 1/2 to 1/32 including Triplets
Knob 3 – Feedback
Knob 4 – Tone
Knob 5 – Quality
Knob 6 – Level
Knob 7 & 8 – Unallocated
PAGE SEVEN – Reverb
Knob 1 – Reverb On/Off
Knob 2 – Pre Delay
Knob 3 – Size
Knob 4 – Low
Knob 5 – High
Knob 6 – Mix
Knob 7 & 8 – Unallocated
ACCESSIBILITY
The NKS mapping for both Damage Guitars and Damage Rock Grooves I would cautiously suggest is perhaps a little less important than some other more sound designed Heavyocity libraries.
Sure, there are still things missing like Attack, Decay, Sustain & Release, access to the table of Reverb Impulse Responses, per Channel mixing for the Playable Guitars section, access to Macro assignments & sample selection, however having been used to their absence in other Heavyocity libraries, I cannot really in all honesty gripe too much about this here, and after working with the library for only a short while, these niggles were soon banished from my thoughts.
THE DAMAGE GUITAR ENGINE
As reflected by the master NKI files, Damage Guitars has four banks available which further serve their associated presets.
These are:
- 1. Damage Guitars D (in the key of)
- 2. Damage Guitars A (in the key of)
- 3. Damage Guitars F# (in the key of)
- 4. Playable Guitar Textures
The first three banks are concerned with the driving heavy guitar material, and each has a sub bank providing you with single instrument menus, and also guitar & bass combos.
Heavyocity have clearly worked hard to ensure that they offer the user every conceivable connotation in terms of stems and breakouts, for the Single Instrument Menus you are given the Heavy Guitar Riffs, Bass Riffs, Guitar Chunks, Bass Chunks, Guitar & Bass Transitions, Clean Guitar Riffs, Clean Bass Riffs, Clean Guitar FX, Reverse & Bloom, & also a bunch of Ambient style guitar riffs.
This comprehensive assortment is duplicated across the other two key signatures, so pretty much all use cases are covered, and with those beautiful clean and ambient sounds also included, you are not going to be destined to spend all of your time living in the Moshpit!
<pre class="wp-block-syntaxhighlighter-code"><br /><br />The Combination menus once again supply you with all of the above, but this time conveniently with each instrument type broken out into their own respective octave section on the keyboard, with their output assigned to each of the three available channels which will afford you greater control of the mix.</pre>
Helpfully keyswitched pitch control has been made available across a two octave range in the lower portion of your controller, this allows you to hold a combination of say a Guitar Riff and accompanying Bass part, and then change your notes.
I found that this worked best by restricting my note range, as attempting to play too high or low was a little detrimental to the authenticity.
PLAYABLE GUITARS
It’s very welcome to see that Heavyocity have seen fit to feature a nice selection of playable guitar presets within this library, which extend further than simply sampling each of the guitar models in clean and distorted variants.
Included are a extensive set of ambient, effectual and cinematic style presets, which give some good additional creative value to the product, and are a very nice cherry on the cake in rounding out what amounts to an already comprehensive library.
KEYSWITCHES
The playable guitars include keyswitches which are duplicated at the lower and top ends of the keyboard range, and are used to switch articulations on the fly while playing.
These keyswitch slots are pre-loaded, and although interchangeable for our sighted peers, in common with all |Kontakt sample libraries this element is not accessible to us.
I would perhaps slightly question the decision to assign the modwheel to volume control, which clearly would be the preferred norm for the more cinematic hybrid orchestral libraries, here I feel it would have been better served for introducing vibrato on those otherwise fantastic guitar timbres.
READY TO ROCK – THE DAMAGE GUITAR SOUND
It’s very difficult to avoid the use of stock phrases like ‘out of the box’, ‘mix ready’, ‘production ready’ and my personally most disliked quotation still remains ‘radio ready’, but it’s equally difficult to find an alternative.
The fact is that Damage Guitars does immediately sound impressive as soon as you load it up.
All the tricks and FX processing you would generally put in place yourself to achieve that hard metal sound, are already done for you, and to such a high quality that most would be hard pressed to replicate it.
The audio spectrum is fully occupied, from the grungy lows to the soaring highs, all the thrills and energy has been perfectly captured and work so well together.
DAMAGE ROCK GROOVES
Let’s now take a look at Damage Rock Grooves, which cleverly integrates itself for use alongside Damage Guitars, with a dedicated section of the drum loops and patterns having been specifically created to seamlessly work with the combo riff patterns from the Damage Guitars library.
There are three banks of grooves, Clean, Heavy & the aforementioned Damage Guitar Grooves, which offer a combined total of over 750 loops.
Just to be clear at this point, Damage Rock Grooves does not include any individually playable drum kits, this product is purely a loop & pattern based library, alternatively, the previously released Damage Drum Kit would be the one for this kind of scenario should you require it, and incidentally, Damage Drum Kit was used as the source for Rock Grooves so this will give you a good indication of what can be achieved.
Each bank features complete drum kit combo loops and breakouts, as well as low, mid and high drum percussion elements to give you the additional flexibility to still retain total project synchronicity, whilst benefiting from the creative luxury of placing each section on it’s own track if so desired.
There are some other little embellishments which add some nice touches to the whole proceedings, keyswitches have been assigned to let you trigger that classic machine gun stutter effect to the playing loop in various timings, from eight to sixty four note, effectively covering every possible barrage of beats you will probably ever need.
Some loops have a half time equivalent tucked away on a lower octave, whilst most loop pattern collections do repeat on a per octave basis, but each time with some subtle FX treatments maintaining the variety as a constant and moving commodity.
Also there are reverse cymbals that span various durations mapped to their own octave of the loop presets, which can work really well to punctuate a transition or section change within your composition.
PRODUCTION READY
As we have come to expect with all Heavyocity products, Damage Rock Grooves sounds great without really needing to do anything to the sound, but the options are there should you wish to customise things more to your liking.
The ability to turn off the reverb entirely giving you a dry kit, is always helpful to have, and it’s here, along with other FX bypass options.
The loops are all well balanced across the stereo field, with the kicks having a powerful punch that holds the bottom end together well.
Snares are crisp and snappy, and having those layer breakouts mean that you can apply your own choice of reverb to just this or indeed any layer you want in order to tailor the sound.
Do ensure that you checkout the comprehensive set of videos linked at the review footer, as it’s really valuable to hear the full range of both of these libraries.
CONCLUSION
Heavyocity have certainly unleashed a bit of a monster here, Damage Guitars is an outstanding library with a fantastic collection of rock solid metal riffs. The playable guitars feel like an added bonus that exemplify Heavyocity’s continued desire to maximise value and creativity for their customers.
Damage Rock Grooves brilliantly integrates with Damage Guitars, but is equally usable as the bedrock for your music compositions.
Together, Damage Guitars & Damage Rock Grooves make a formidable team, that can add some real power and hard edged gravitas to your scores, truly bang for your buck!
Damage Guitars & Damage Rock Grooves can be purchased directly from the Heavyocity website.
For a limited time, Heavyocity is offering Damage Guitars for $199 (reg. $249). In addition, owners of any one Heavyocity Kontakt Instrument will get an additional $20 off with serial
(FOUNDATIONS, FURY, PUNISH, and Reaktor products do not qualify for the additional savings). Damage Rock Grooves will be available for $39 (reg. $49) but will come FREE with the purchase of Damage Guitars. All offers end May 31, 2023.
Damage Guitars – Product Page:
https://heavyocity.com/product/damage-guitars/
Damage Rock Grooves – Product Page:
https://heavyocity.com/product/damage-rock-grooves/
Damage Guitars – Content Overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5_YG-C1rKw
Damage Guitars – Preset Playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xleSvVZpJxI
Damage Rock Grooves – Content Overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g79DhgVUM0
Damage Guitars – User Manual:
https://heavyocity.com/Downloads/DamageGuitars_Manual.pdf
Damage Rock Grooves – User Manual:
https://heavyocity.com/Downloads/DamageRockGrooves_Manual.pdf
(c) Chris Ankin
KK-Access.com
29th May 2023
Disclaimer
The author can not accept any responsibility for subsequent purchase decisions made as a result of this review,or Any inaccuracies found therein. All opinions and product functions stated are based solely on information perceived as a blind user whilst using the product and/or gathered from official factual sources such as the developer, web or supplied product manual.
About the Author
Based in Buckinghamshire, England, Chris Ankin has worked as a freelance review writer and contributor with articles published in Sound On Sound, Home & Studio Recording and ST Format Magazines.
He has also successfully worked extensively in and around the music, recording, film Soundtrack scoring, Game & media composition, the creative arts, Charitable trusts,publishing, music streaming and property investments since 1982 whilst continuously and deliberately managing to evade any mainstream recognition under his own name by the use of various pseudonyms.
E&OE
KK-ACCESS 