Real amps vs modelling and plugin amps

[Uncle E]

Edit: I remember that there was a simple mod that was almost mandatory on the early run DG Stomps. It was just a matter of rerouting some wires inside the unit to eliminate squealing and other excess noise on the higher gain settings. There was an easy to follow tutorial, but that site has probably been gone for 25 years now.

Interesting! Maybe I'll open it up and try to figure it out. I was running it into my amp's power amp input but maybe it's just not a good fit for this amp. It's a rather odd amp, tbh.

- edit - Found this:

https://sevenstring.org/threads/dg-stom ... it.235887/

[Naillerz78]

I have both solid state amps, and now with the Yamaha preamp a digital amp, which disagrees with you. Transistors can add even-order harmonics when asymmetrical, and while I don't know how a digital amp works, harsh is about the last thing that comes to mind when playing the Yamaha though

My DG Stomp sounds nothing like this:

That’s a pretty good sound!
I’d be pretty happy with that

[zerocrossing]

Today I went though about 75% of the amps included in Amplitube 5 Max. Not for fun, but because I noticed on the Mesa Transatlantic model, there's a weird bug on channel 2, where if you have the gain low or mid way up for a crunch sound, there's the sound of a high gain amp at very low volume underneath the sound. Like there's a second high gain amp cranked bleeding though a tape channel. Anyway, I was going though them all to see if other models also did this, and it was really fun. In every single model, I was able to get it to sound great with a small amount of tweaking. Just a Steinberger GMT-4 (love that thing) into my Apollo's hi-z in, had the 1176 limiter to gently attenuate the loudest chord bashings, and that's it. Some amps had a Tonex model of an Xotic EP Booster to drive them harder, but that's it.

Not all the amps sounded great, or even good, off the bat. Some needed kind of extreme settings, like cranking them up full, or putting the treble all the way up. The reverb all basically sounds like sh!t. (why is this?) The amps, however, even the free basic ones, could all be made to sound great. Even the weird Solid State Fuzz model. OK, the Leslie models sounded crappy... maybe that's how they sound, but I ran the OCD emulation in front of them and got an interesting sound anyway.

What's my point, you might ask? My point is that I think a lot of people plug into their interface, load up an amp sim, cycle though a few presets, and then decide it's good or bad. It's a crap shoot. The truth is, there's so much about getting a good tone, the guitar, the interface, the gain setting in the interface, the gain setting into the amp sim. The settings of the amp sim, and not just the amp settings. The mic types, mic placements, etc. It's a lot. What madman would go through so many amps with so many settings? That guy must be an idiot. I think the people who try an amp sim plugin and decide they can never sound like the real deal are silly. Obviously they're not going to sound like an amp in the room, because that's not what they're emulations of, but if you can live with the sound of a recorded amp, you definitely can get great sounds from them, but don't be a lazy turd.

[stoopicus]

+1. I have hated most amp sim presets on every amp sim in my collection, not just Amplitube. I just use them like actual amps and have had great results.

[guitarzan]

Edit: I remember that there was a simple mod that was almost mandatory on the early run DG Stomps. It was just a matter of rerouting some wires inside the unit to eliminate squealing and other excess noise on the higher gain settings. There was an easy to follow tutorial, but that site has probably been gone for 25 years now.

Interesting! Maybe I'll open it up and try to figure it out. I was running it into my amp's power amp input but maybe it's just not a good fit for this amp. It's a rather odd amp, tbh.

- edit - Found this:

https://sevenstring.org/threads/dg-stom ... it.235887/

That’s quite a bit more involved than I remember, but it’s been a long time, and that reads like the person that posted it had access to that original how-to article… definitely tackling the same problem anyway… nice find! I copied the whole thing to the Notes app on my iPhone. I probably have the original article copied on an ancient hard drive somewhere.

edit: Another great thing about the DG Stomp is that it can be used as a MIDI foot switch to control pretty much anything, other pedals, loopers…

[Uncle E]

Yeah, I'm not going to do all that but I figure it'll be easy to do a before-and-after removing the screws. If that helps, I'll replace them with nylon screws.

[YnJ]

Good to hear. They're selling for too much here. Sadly, my DG Stomp just sounds bad, the only reason I kept it for so long is because it's a decent little multi-FX when the preamp is bypassed.

Rack mounted preamps are hard to sell here (Norway), unless it's a Mesa Boogie perhaps, so they go quite cheap

in that DG-1000 video the guy is running it through his own IRs (link in description) — the DG stuff was really designed to be run through an actual cab at the time

Does he even run it through a real power amp? Those lead sounds he gets are pretty harsh, and doesn't resemble the sounds I get at all. I run it through a Peavey 60/60 tube power amp and real cabs. I have thought about plugging the power amp directly into the innterface, and use IRs instead of a cab for recording though. Not sure if it will work out better than using microphones, wont harm trying, I think

[Naillerz78]

Today I went though about 75% of the amps included in Amplitube 5 Max. Not for fun, but because I noticed on the Mesa Transatlantic model, there's a weird bug on channel 2, where if you have the gain low or mid way up for a crunch sound, there's the sound of a high gain amp at very low volume underneath the sound. Like there's a second high gain amp cranked bleeding though a tape channel. Anyway, I was going though them all to see if other models also did this, and it was really fun. In every single model, I was able to get it to sound great with a small amount of tweaking. Just a Steinberger GMT-4 (love that thing) into my Apollo's hi-z in, had the 1176 limiter to gently attenuate the loudest chord bashings, and that's it. Some amps had a Tonex model of an Xotic EP Booster to drive them harder, but that's it.

Not all the amps sounded great, or even good, off the bat. Some needed kind of extreme settings, like cranking them up full, or putting the treble all the way up. The reverb all basically sounds like sh!t. (why is this?) The amps, however, even the free basic ones, could all be made to sound great. Even the weird Solid State Fuzz model. OK, the Leslie models sounded crappy... maybe that's how they sound, but I ran the OCD emulation in front of them and got an interesting sound anyway.

What's my point, you might ask? My point is that I think a lot of people plug into their interface, load up an amp sim, cycle though a few presets, and then decide it's good or bad. It's a crap shoot. The truth is, there's so much about getting a good tone, the guitar, the interface, the gain setting in the interface, the gain setting into the amp sim. The settings of the amp sim, and not just the amp settings. The mic types, mic placements, etc. It's a lot. What madman would go through so many amps with so many settings? That guy must be an idiot. I think the people who try an amp sim plugin and decide they can never sound like the real deal are silly. Obviously they're not going to sound like an amp in the room, because that's not what they're emulations of, but if you can live with the sound of a recorded amp, you definitely can get great sounds from them, but don't be a lazy turd.

I have a question -
It reads like you were dialling in the sim in real time whilst playing your steinberger (vs applying the sim to a pre recorded track in DAW) .

What’s the process of dialing in -I’m guessing play guitar-listen-stop&tweak-play-judge-stop&tweak more-replay-listen (etc etc) until satisfied.

That’d test my patience tbh.
How long did you spend on it in total..? What’s the average time to get an amp dialed in, how many tweaks are required. Curious.

You may be right re a lot of variables in getting a good sound. With all the options in AT5 tho it seems like it’d be a lottery to get the combination right. (!) Can you narrow down to what mics and placements you typically use and your settings for say the Dr Z Wreck. I want to give that sim another go.

[Uncle E]

[zerocrossing]

If those examples were just played to anyone on this thread and you didn't know it was Tonex, no one would guess, and if you argue that, I'm calling you a liar.

I never knew there was a IIC++, but now that I do, I do not like it at all. The Amplitube Mark IIC+ is my default model in Amplitube, and I love it for clean, crunch and high gain. That squashed modern metal sound is not for me.

[mutagen]

And there is this ongoing pro sim argument that goes like this ;
- sims = real tube amps , and not only that (!) sims offer a whole new world / toolbox of tones .they are their OWN thing now , they have the possibility of amazing BRAND NEW digital sounds to be created that we ain’t even imagined yet.

To which I’d say - oh yeah? Like what?
What new classic guitar sounds have been created with Sims. They are being used by top bands (and no doubt virtuoso guitarists in those bands) currently if I believe what I read .

So where’s the new sounds?

I'm only partway through this thread but I had to respond to this, it is something I've been looking for as well. I don't know that we'll think anything is a classic new sound until it has been around and imitated for 5 or 10 years. I gotta think there's some talented people doing some interesting things but they're just not making it out into the wider world due to a variety of factors.

Yonac Roxsyn on iOS is an interesting guitar syth thing that plays responsively and has a variety of interesting synth sounds. Of course I can get more variety from Serum but it feels better than a MIDI guitar and does some neat stuff.

The Archetype Rabea X Overlord Synth has promise but I didn't find it working well for me in the demo and wasn't inspired to buy. I got more milage out of the Archetype: Tim Henson X Multivoicer. Overall I found the NeuralDSP stuff to sound good for what it is but to not be very responsive to dynamic playing.

I bought the HATE distortion multi-effects plugin from Dawesome and messed around with playing my guitar through that. There was one ridiculous digital bitcrush distortion preset that I modified into a crazy noisefest that was a ton of fun to play through, I should record that or make a video or something. I wouldn't call it a classic tone of any kind but it was certainly something new.

[Naillerz78]

I bought the HATE distortion multi-effects plugin from Dawesome and messed around with playing my guitar through that. There was one ridiculous digital bitcrush distortion preset that I modified into a crazy noisefest that was a ton of fun to play through, I should record that or make a video or something. I wouldn't call it a classic tone of any kind but it was certainly something new.

I am not familiar with that plugin . Anything that’s a ton of fun to play is compelling tho can’t find a demo w guitars on YT just EDM music , so yes add a recording if you can

[Naillerz78]

DP

[fedexnman]

I have a 5 watt VHT special 6 ultra (tube amp) , Roland Cube 30x , and various plugins . The Cube 30x is my favorite . It has JC120 , Marshall , Triple Rec . Blackface , Tweed , Vox , 5150 , acoustic , and some basic effects . It's NOT to over the top for me , meaning too much tweaking ... And it's NOT too limited like the 5 watt tube amp . The settings I don't care for are the 5150 , Balckface , and Tweed ... I like the triple rec for heavy , I like the jc120 for clean (U2 police) , I like the Vox and Marshall for that classic and 80s rock sound . I don't know why I just didn't jive with the other amp models ?

[zerocrossing]

And there is this ongoing pro sim argument that goes like this ;
- sims = real tube amps , and not only that (!) sims offer a whole new world / toolbox of tones .they are their OWN thing now , they have the possibility of amazing BRAND NEW digital sounds to be created that we ain’t even imagined yet.

To which I’d say - oh yeah? Like what?
What new classic guitar sounds have been created with Sims. They are being used by top bands (and no doubt virtuoso guitarists in those bands) currently if I believe what I read .

So where’s the new sounds?

I'm only partway through this thread but I had to respond to this, it is something I've been looking for as well. I don't know that we'll think anything is a classic new sound until it has been around and imitated for 5 or 10 years. I gotta think there's some talented people doing some interesting things but they're just not making it out into the wider world due to a variety of factors.

Yonac Roxsyn on iOS is an interesting guitar syth thing that plays responsively and has a variety of interesting synth sounds. Of course I can get more variety from Serum but it feels better than a MIDI guitar and does some neat stuff.

The Archetype Rabea X Overlord Synth has promise but I didn't find it working well for me in the demo and wasn't inspired to buy. I got more milage out of the Archetype: Tim Henson X Multivoicer. Overall I found the NeuralDSP stuff to sound good for what it is but to not be very responsive to dynamic playing.

I bought the HATE distortion multi-effects plugin from Dawesome and messed around with playing my guitar through that. There was one ridiculous digital bitcrush distortion preset that I modified into a crazy noisefest that was a ton of fun to play through, I should record that or make a video or something. I wouldn't call it a classic tone of any kind but it was certainly something new.

Guitar synth sounds are definitely not new. The Roland GR-700 was released in 1977.