Real amps vs modelling and plugin amps

[zerocrossing]

Really? I’ve played one at a rehearsal space and not too loud. Slightly dirty. with the reverb and Tremelo on it was Instant early era Rolling Stones / British Invasion sounds. Like SO good. I was very happy for those hours.

It's probably that "not too loud" for a rehearsal space is still "way too loud" for a quiet suburban neighborhood. There is zero dirt at any level I can play it at.

Those things are really designed to be played on stage, no doubt about it. When I was a teenager I had a Vox Buckingham. I got it cheap because the shop thought it was the transistor variant and didn't know better. It's basically an AC30 in a head-cabinet format, but in those ultra cool metal scaffolding racks. So killer. I had no idea it could get dirty, as I wasn't allowed to play it in the house at loud levels, so I used to use a MXR Distortion plus with the distortion down and the gain up to get it to crunch, but I wasn't really getting a lot of high gain sounds from it in those days. If it didn't sound like it was on a Beatles or Who album, I wasn't into it. I'm so different now, but I still do love that tone.

[zerocrossing]

One pro told me he stopped taking his vintage Tweed Bassman on tour after he profiled it with his Kemper. Add wear and tear (both on the amp and on the person having to lug it around) to the list of reasons to go digital.

That's what roadies are for, just make sure to have them wrap the amps in velvet before putting them in their anvil cases and loading them onto the bands 757. Problem solved!

*An extra ticket for the Spa and band's personal trainer/massage therapist for the roadie and with the amp's maint cycle, a complete teardown and rebuild is always just a concert or 2 away, so no worries!

*My friend Dan, is a personal Massage Therapist for a billionaire (not a band), he works on a superyacht most of the time, and handles all the massages. True story, poor guy.

I played with a bassist who wouldn't do a gig without his SVT rig, with the 8x10 cab. He actually had two of them, but at least he'd leave one at home. Unless we were outoors at a festival, his stage volume was always a problem, so I took to getting him to send a DI to the PA, and when he wasn't looking, I'd turn down his amp completely and add a healthy amount of bass to the monitors. I think a full year went by without him noticing. He then got a tube preamp deal and a small wedge for direct monitoring. We never had to haul that refrigerator around again.

[zerocrossing]

Actually that POD sounds great if you open your mind and not care about absolute fidelity to the original, and just look for having some good and usable sounds. Those would all sound fine live or in a mix.

Then again nearly anything will sound good live. Most smaller venues have truly awful acoustics.

It doesn't help that guitarists love to bring their AC30s and Plexi's to those gigs and crank them to a point where it's nearly impossible to get a good mix where the guitars aren't bleeding into the drum and vocal mics.

[zerocrossing]

Actually one of the reasons I decided to go fully ITB for amp/cabsims is specifically that properly miking to get a tone as good as I could get with the sim was not trivial at all.

What I find interesting is that the "TUBE AMPS UBER ALLES" crowd never posts any examples of their awesome tones. There used to be a dude here, we all knew him, who had an amazing list of classic instruments and amps that he constantly bragged about. One day he posted something and I honestly thought it was a joke. Sounded like he picked up the guitar for the first time a month before and setup a table top Motorola cassette player in the room and hit record. Truly embarrassing, yet he talked a great game. Not that there's anything wrong with dabbling, and I'll fully admit that I'm no virtuoso, but have a bit of humility and don't criticize how other people get their sound.

[Naillerz78]

Have you posted your awesome Tonex tones yet ZC?

Looks like Tim Pierce gives the Tonex a big thumbs up
I should expect he will profile and then sell his arsenal of awesome tube amps in the near future to make lotsa $$$ and save all that space.
Seems like a logical next step in this case.
As he now will have those sounds all handy, in the awesome Tonex box. I will keep a close eye on his channel to check if that happens

Hone$tly…



Funny, I picked the real amp in the A/B - but only cos i liked it a teeeeny bit better. And it was played firstly probably. Not much difference.
I’ve interested if Guitzan can hear the “ck” sound in that video also. Can you GZ?

Ps - how is he routing the Tonex can anyone see - direct into a power amp and cab or what.

[guitarzan]

I’ve interested if Guitzan can hear the “ck” sound in that video also. Can you GZ?

Youtube has its own problems, but I don’t really hear anything.

Most of the brighter tones that he’s using (which would be more to my liking) are as clean or even cleaner than the pushed clean tone that I use on ToneX because I don’t hear the noise with it at that level of drive, and the heavier overdriven tones he uses are quite a bit darker than I would use, plus I pretty much never use humbuckers and I think all the guitars used for the overdrive tones are humbuckers?

Anyway, no, on that video I don’t really hear the sound, but it is always harder to hear on a recording — while playing it’s right there in your face right at the beginning of every note and since it sounds like a bridge rattle to me I’m constantly trying to change my picking to make it go away — it’s just reflex — but nothing changes it a bit, that’s why it’s irritating. It’s as much or more about behaving in an unnatural way as it is about the sound itself (though the sound is not pleasant).

Recorded it kind of just sounds like pick attack, just like minor bridge buzz would blend in no matter how much it bugged you while playing, especially with these darker tones probably, and YouTube would make it even harder to pick out.

The captures used probably also make a difference, I’ve been reading up on minimizing aliasing when making your own profiles (mostly on NAM, but in general too), so there are things that can be done.

I like the idea of NAM, open source rather than controlled by the least responsive developers in the business. There are cheap NAM players cropping up too, hopefully someone really steps up!

[Naillerz78]

I’ve interested if Guitzan can hear the “ck” sound in that video also. Can you GZ?

Youtube has its own problems, but I don’t really hear anything.

Most of the brighter tones that he’s using (which would be more to my liking) are as clean or even cleaner than the pushed clean tone that I use on ToneX because I don’t hear the noise with it at that level of drive, and the heavier overdriven tones he uses are quite a bit darker than I would use, plus I pretty much never use humbuckers and I think all the guitars used for the overdrive tones are humbuckers?

Anyway, no, on that video I don’t really hear the sound, but it is always harder to hear on a recording — while playing it’s right there in your face right at the beginning of every note and since it sounds like a bridge rattle to me I’m constantly trying to change my picking to make it go away — it’s just reflex — but nothing changes it a bit, that’s why it’s irritating. It’s as much or more about behaving in an unnatural way as it is about the sound itself (though the sound is not pleasant).

Recorded it kind of just sounds like pick attack, just like minor bridge buzz would blend in no matter how much it bugged you while playing, especially with these darker tones probably, and YouTube would make it even harder to pick out.

The captures used probably also make a difference, I’ve been reading up on minimizing aliasing when making your own profiles (mostly on NAM, but in general too), so there are things that can be done.

I like the idea of NAM, open source rather than controlled by the least responsive developers in the business. There are cheap NAM players cropping up too, hopefully someone really steps up!

To me, the cleaner sounds hes demoing (he’s not demoing many tbh which is suspect to me) are basically the same sound .
This is the thing with the videos I’ve watched. The screen panel shows a patch name and reviewer will say “ here we have a /13 X model boutique amp/ vintage Hiwatt Y model / rare Gretsch Z amp”
To my ears they all basically sound the same. There’s only a slight difference.

Same with the Marshall style gained sounds.
And the heavier models .

There is not much variation between a lot of the clean EOB and gained tones.
I can’t quite believe this is also the case in real life with these amps. It can’t be “because it’s the sound of the amps mic’ed up”. Unless the mic imprints its EQ on all the amps, and narrowing all the differences.

So I can have a unit with 26,000 profiles of the world’s greatest guitar amplifiers. But in reality 4 core sounds with some variations. It all feels like a trick / delusion /scam to me. And a massive waste of time downloading and cycling through 100s of profiles /presets or whatever.

Rhett Shull points that out in his video.

Here’s how that may work -I could take a JCM800 base preset , move the mic to a different position with the software, then rename it a Silver Jubliee profile, and again and call it Marshall XYZ boutique variant . I’m pretty sure that’s actually what’s happening and there is no detailed behind the scenes work happening to model or profile these real amps. It’s too easy to do what I’ve outlined above and that’s easy money.

Pretty sure that’s what was going on with the older sims. Not sure how profile software works but it’s code also so no problem tweaking parameters in model code and renaming it as something else.

TLDR : I think it’s all Bollocks and basically akin to a magic trick or illusion.

[guitarzan]

The thing the profiles offer over any other solution is feel, like the tweed deluxe profile I use.

It is factory included and it pretty much sounded kind of awful to me, but I could hear the sag that no other modelers have ever got right, and it also has the very slight dynamic chorusing sound that comes from a pushed transformer (I think it has to do with flyback) — these are things I have been trying to get at low volumes for 40 years, and while I’ve gotten good tones I’ve never been able to get anything like that kind of behavior (getting fairly good sag with recent analog pedals, but never in the box stuff, and not this complete where everything seems there), so it was worth spending the time tweaking the profile to my liking.

No, profiling is real. I think most algorithmic based modelers really do as you say, recycling the same basic model with slight tweaks. Even if they don’t they might just as well, but nothing has ever done this dynamic power amp/output stage stuff for me at anything other than ear splitting volume, not tube stuff (tried every type of load box, etc), not analog stuff, none of the algorithm based modelers — not even close.

I’m happy even if I’m stuck at this one profile because I reamp out of ToneX (for now) and go into other pedals for more drive and sag — these pedals are running at 18v for more headroom to retain all the chime, into a small analog power amp into a vintage cab.

It’s far from silent, but it’s no louder than a TV with a decent speaker system turned up, it doesn’t shake the walls — but it has the realistic feel and tone.

Try ToneX or one of the other profilers — there are free options. It’s way different. Feels more like a cranked tube amp than even all of the low volume actual tube amp solutions I’ve tried. So very responsive!

[Naillerz78]

The thing the profiles offer over any other solution is feel, like the tweed deluxe profile I use.

It is factory included and it pretty much sounded kind of awful to me, but I could hear the sag that no other modelers have ever got right, and it also has the very slight dynamic chorusing sound that comes from a pushed transformer (I think it has to do with flyback) — these are things I have been trying to get at low volumes for 40 years, and while I’ve gotten good tones I’ve never been able to get anything like that kind of behavior (getting fairly good sag with recent analog pedals, but never in the box stuff, and not this complete where everything seems there), so it was worth spending the time tweaking the profile to my liking.

No, profiling is real. I think most algorithmic based modelers really do as you say, recycling the same basic model with slight tweaks. Even if they don’t they might just as well, but nothing has ever done this dynamic power amp/output stage stuff for me at anything other than ear splitting volume, not tube stuff (tried every type of load box, etc), not analog stuff, none of the algorithm based modelers — not even close.

I’m happy even if I’m stuck at this one profile because I reamp out of ToneX (for now) and go into other pedals for more drive and sag — these pedals are running at 18v for more headroom to retain all the chime, into a small analog power amp into a vintage cab.

It’s far from silent, but it’s no louder than a TV with a decent speaker system turned up, it doesn’t shake the walls — but it has the realistic feel and tone.

Try ToneX or one of the other profilers — there are free options. It’s way different. Feels more like a cranked tube amp than even all of the low volume actual tube amp solutions I’ve tried. So very responsive!

Well if the feel and sag etc are there now that’s great. I’ve tried NAM and will experiment with that more now. Wiped most of the older sims off my laptop now finally (that was quite a relief tbh)

I will steer clear of Tonex for a few reasons, everything im reading re the backend software etc sounds like a massive PITA for me. Plus watching videos discussing setting Input Gain or else profiles sound like garbage etc. No way Jose! I’m not buying another problem.

I’ll wait for a cheaper Mooer /NUX version to come out with a simpler and functional software experience and test those.

[guitarzan]

…

Well if the feel and sag etc are there now that’s great. I’ve tried NAM and will experiment with that more now. Wiped most of the older sims off my laptop now finally (that was quite a relief tbh)
…

All that said, profilers are just the best thing I’ve tried so far… there is still at least one more analog solution I want to try and that’s the AXiom PAE-2 Power Amp Emulator.
https://axiomeffects.com/products/power ... ator-pae-2

IMG_0827.jpeg

There is a thread on The Gear Page called We got fancy preamp pedals and IR speaker emulation but is something missing where the builder (AXiomatic) pops in a lot and offers more technical insight into things like sag and flyback and all that than I’ve ever seen in one place.

A lot of this stuff was hard to get anyone to even acknowledge that it existed earlier than five years ago or so. It was so frustrating — developers pretty much ignored the power amp and output transformer altogether.

It’s fairly expensive and there is a long wait list, but I will try a PAE someday. As good as it is to have a solution in hand with profiling I would welcome a chance to go all analog again just to be rid of the headaches that come with digital (higher power requirements, aliasing, phase issues with split signals from latency, digital noise, digital distortion, lower headroom, etc).

I’m only really interested in having one core tone with varying degrees of drive (cleanish, crunch, lead, insanity), having thousands of amp sounds doesn’t appeal to me at all beyond the choices it brings in selecting that core tone.

It never ends, but it is good to be at a resting place for a while anyway.

[Uncle E]

Looks like Tim Pierce gives the Tonex a big thumbs up
I should expect he will profile and then sell his arsenal of awesome tube amps in the near future to make lotsa $$$ and save all that space.

OK, have to hand it to you on that point, it's been 2 years and he's still using amps.

[Uncle E]

So I can have a unit with 26,000 profiles of the world’s greatest guitar amplifiers. But in reality 4 core sounds with some variations. It all feels like a trick / delusion /scam to me. And a massive waste of time downloading and cycling through 100s of profiles /presets or whatever.

FWIW, that's not me at all. I quickly went through all the presets and expansions packs (easy to do when you have the pedal), decided the Satriani expansion was the one for me, and basically just stick to that now.

[Uncle E]

I’ll wait for a cheaper Mooer /NUX version to come out with a simpler and functional software experience and test those.

Be careful because some (all?) of the pedals seem to be using a cut down version of NAM.

[zerocrossing]

Looks like Tim Pierce gives the Tonex a big thumbs up
I should expect he will profile and then sell his arsenal of awesome tube amps in the near future to make lotsa $$$ and save all that space.

OK, have to hand it to you on that point, it's been 2 years and he's still using amps.

Tonex solves a problem that he doesn’t have. It also introduces new problems. On some amps, tone stacks and EQs are often interacting with gain controls in both subtle and drastic ways. This isn’t captured by Tonex, or any other technology. I’m not sure if it could, considering how many possible settings are available on a simple gain-bass-mid-treble-presence-volume amp. This is where modeling shines, because one can mathematically model an amp on a circuit level. Maybe it’s accurate, maybe not, but it’s a better approximation than the simple EQ controls of Tonex and other capture devices. I could see keeping amps so that new sounds can be made, and then using the Tonex to capture those tones for live use, or whatever.

[zerocrossing]

So I can have a unit with 26,000 profiles of the world’s greatest guitar amplifiers. But in reality 4 core sounds with some variations. It all feels like a trick / delusion /scam to me. And a massive waste of time downloading and cycling through 100s of profiles /presets or whatever.

FWIW, that's not me at all. I quickly went through all the presets and expansions packs (easy to do when you have the pedal), decided the Satriani expansion was the one for me, and basically just stick to that now.

No one really spends much time after an initial survey on finding their sound. What I’ve done is made a set of “default” presets, based on different types of amps that I find good. I mostly stick to Amplitube models, because I find enough of each type, that even if they’re uneven, I can find great quality results for each “type.”

Then I use Tonex for the more exotic and rare stuff. There’s a great Magnatone capture. I found a Marshall modern combo amp capture that is pretty unique sounding. I’m sure I’ll use it. A lot of the Victory captures are soon to become among my favorites.

My method is to incorporate it into my practice. The monotony of practice can be a problem, but spending break time, between chunks of scale runs, going through Tonex captures can be fun and spice things up. Most of it is similar, even if it’s great, but from time to time you find something kind of unique and great. Little bit of dopamine helps keep practice fun.

Then, I’ll go through my finds and incorporate them into Amplitube presets, adding effects and refining things.