Amplitube 2 Jimi Hendrix RELEASED this month!!!

[fritzman]

FWIW, I'm gonna get GR2 next week. Will post some clips then.

Cool. Wanna hear them.

[Lunch Money]

NIce Sascha. I can't wait to hear what you'll play. I really enjoyed the GR2 demo but could not justify the price. I just wish I knew for sure if AT2 has a standalone mode.

You could always load it into MiniHost if not.

[Beardedone]

I do have Forte so no biggie. I did like the way GR2 works though.

[daGuru]

is there any kind soul who could post a quick (short mp3) of their older tube amp? say mildly distorted. its off topic, but its my fav. topic.

Haha, good try. You won't get these files, cause

(a) everybody would flame the poor poster for his guitar playing skills and

OK OK
here's me playing on freeware.freeware vst host freeware vst plugs.

is not quite a marshal stack but, feel free to flame.

http://h1.ripway.com/jackrabbit/fell.mp3

cyas

No offense, your server is LAME

Chuck it here plz http://www.filegone.com/

I'd like a listen

Rich

[jacksplat]

----=== excuse , mini cross post ahead ===---

No offense, your server is LAME

Chuck it here plz http://www.filegone.com/

I'd like a listen

Rich

Hi ya,
the link is
http://www.filegone.com/898t

but when u go to download it says 768 bytes. when u actually download it though, its the full size. (which is 768K)

it wouldn't hurt to see this sample of me playing in context, by reading :
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=117287

if u had the time .

------ end.

[daGuru]

Hmmm... sounds more fuzzy than warm... Lotta pickup noise, kinda like it's too loud at the pre-amp stage.

Lotta amp sims suffer this bug too. They don't seem to understand that the response of the amp changes drastically based on the tiny level coming from the guitar :/

i.e. Convolution alone is NOT enough

ps. Here's my latest venture into ultimate amp-sim tone... http://www.filegone.com/hqjw = GR2 + Juicy Clean ... Maybe add AT2's bottom and we might have something LOL

[seamoss]

A perfect example of how people develop psychosematic associations. Tubes are warm. Tubes are made of glass. They don't produce sound that is warm and sounds 'glassy'.

sure, I understand where you are coming from but in the end they are all just words used to describe something that is obviously subjective.


anyway, I have a question for you Greg...

Do you think solid state amps sound different than tube amps?

Obviously there is a time and place for both amps....but which do you prefer?

I only ask because I personally like tube amps and I think they sound much different and what I consider "warmer" than solid states. I think amp sims have a more "solid state" sound to them.

When I hear amp sims with overdrive, I hear this "fizz" type of distortion that I don't hear with an overdriven tube amp. all the amp sims seem to share this characteristic.

I think amp sims are cool and I think they have come a long way in the past couple of years but I don't think they have achieved a true tube sound yet. Listening to the demos, I don't think amplitube 2 is any closer either.

Anyway Greg, I respect your thoughts and maybe we just hear things differently. it's all in the ear of the beholder, eh?

[Funkybot]

When I hear amp sims with overdrive, I hear this "fizz" type of distortion that I don't hear with an overdriven tube amp. all the amp sims seem to share this characteristic.

Maybe you don't hear the fizz when playing an amp is because your ear is not an SM57, MD421, etc., pushed right up against the grill of a tube amp. I hear a lot of fizz on a lot of guitar records that were recorded with mics and tube amps. Listen to the intro to Sweet Child O' Mine, there's quite a bit of fizz there, but a) it's not all that bad, and b) the rest of the band entering drowns it out. I was listening to Wilco's Being There yesterday and also found quite a bit of fizz and at times what a lot of people would call harsh guitar tones, that made me think immediately of the AT2 demos posted so far. Being There was recorded with real amps/mics and to tape as well nonetheless.

Amp modelers don't aim to replicate the sound of playing a tube amp as much as they aim to replicate the sound of a recorded tube amp. That's a big difference.

And I'm not slagging you particularly, I hear this in the Line 6 forums and a lot of other places. Frankly, I just think fizz become the new buzzword to replace brittle and it's a bit overused. Sometimes there is a lot, yes, but a mic'd tube amp with a bright tone will also produce fizz all on its own. If you have a tube amp, try it yourself.

[Lunch Money]

Funkybot summed up my perspective perfectly. I mentioned in this and other threads that if you listen too closely to even your most cherished commercial tracks, the guitar tone isn't what you thought it was.

Tube amps can and often do have LOTS of fizz when overdriven. For some reason, when people hear this in amp sims they instantly think, "digital." But again, it's psychosematic. They hear the individual 'static-like' bits of fizz and think of them as digital spikes. Most of the best-loved tube amps also exhibit this characteristic, though.

To answer your question, I prefer a real amp over a sim, period. I prefer tube amps to solid-state for most of my 'preferred' solo sounds (clean and bluesey), though a solid-state pedal (ie. tube booster) in front is a nice sound, too. I also prefer a tube amp sound for most of my rhythm sounds (light-to-medium drive crunch!). But there's certainly a place for solid-state, too, particularly in certain kinds of metal. From what I understand (based on a post I saw here just within the past week, so I haven't followed up on researching it yet), even an amp like a Dual Rectifier wouldn't sound good without its solid-state component. I like the sound of a SansAmp, which emulates tube sounds but is solid-state.

I just like good tone. When I listen to demos, I'm always listening for my 'ideal' sound, which in my mind's ear is a tube tone. When I hear the fizziness, I know that I haven't found my ideal tone, and therefore I sometimes almost fool myself into believing that the amp sim isn't doing a good tube sound. See how the brain can develop its own faulty logic?

But then I listen to the radio, as I do 3 times a day when I take my dog for a walk, and I am reminded and even amazed by how fizzy some of those tones are and I remember that tube amps aren't always 'smooth' after all.

Greg

[johnnypig]

Which solid state component in the Recto makes it sound good? The only solid state device outside the footswitching is 4 1N4007 rectifier diodes which convert AC to DC to power the tubes when not in tube rectifier mode.

There is not a single solid state device in the Recto's audio path. Google for a schematic if you'd like to check for yourself.

You're right about fizzy tubes though. Especially modern Chinese and Russian tubes with very cheap materials bleh! On top of fizzy tubes there's fizzy as hell ceramic capacitors manufacturers use to save money.

Well thank god for the invention of the low pass filter, low bandwidth output transformers, and AM radio quality guitar speakers.

Most guitarists would fall over and die if they heard their marshalls with a dummy load direct to the board. Many rely on bandwidth limiting in the output transformer otherwise they'd have to design filters to remove the 100khz noise.

Cheers! -pig

[Lunch Money]

Turns out it wasn't THIS forum, but recording.org. And you're right, it was exactly the rectifier diodes that were being referred to. Obviously this has an important impact on tone, or the amp wouldn't be named after that aspect, no?

Something about sag prevention... beats me... I just read it, I can't pretend to understand it!

[Tubeman]

Turns out it wasn't THIS forum, but recording.org. And you're right, it was exactly the rectifier diodes that were being referred to. Obviously this has an important impact on tone, or the amp wouldn't be named after that aspect, no?

Something about sag prevention... beats me... I just read it, I can't pretend to understand it!

Actually the name Dual Rectifier refers to two rectifiers they have, ie. there are solid state and tube rectifier which is switchable. Single Rectifiers only have one rectifier.

With tube rect. plate voltage is lower and there might be some sag too so tubes act differently and sound is maybe more "blues" but most of today amps use solid state and its nothing new. Rectifier is not in the audio signal path and you can't say by listening which one it is. Mesa Rectos sound comes definitely from it's preamp.

[A3ntar]

..Still no updates on their website beside them removing their upgrades promotion that ended 31 December 2005.

I am not even sure that the release date is NAMM 2006. It might be just a yet other occasion for them to demo the product.

[Lunch Money]

@ Tubeman: heck, I don't know any more, and I admitted right from the start that I had no definitive information. Here's the thread:

Recording.org link

I don't think anyone would argue that the rectifier componenet WAS the source of tone, and that's certainly not what I meant to imply. What I'm saying is that if the information presented is correct, there's still a bearing on the tone.

I don't know what's in the water, but people are misinterpreting what I'm saying today and yesterday....

Greg

[fritzman]

Dual Rectifier:

Try using it with another Rectifier and listen how the sound changes. Somebody who says that the sound doesn't change with different rectifiers didn't flip that switch in the shop.
Somebody who says that the Dual Rectifiers sound does come "definitely" from the preamp should try using it with a different power amp.
The Mesa guys are really clever and they know what they're doing ...


Best wishes, FRitz