Real amps vs modelling and plugin amps

[electro]

Plugging directly into an audio interface will often yield poor results. Even though my Apollo interface has "instrument" inputs, that are theoretically supposed to be optimal for a guitar, I get a better result if I go through a pedal first, even if they're in bypass mode. Currently I use a Blackstar HT-5 Dual Valve Distortion and a B.K. Butler Real Tube Overdrive. I get a noticable increase in tone quality. Not sure exactly why, but I suspect it has something to do with presenting the interface with impedance that is better.

IKMultimedia Z-Tone pedal?

As I said in a previous post, a lot of plugins have a cabinet modeling section that sounds a bit dead. For example, if I want an "amp in the room" vibe, I nearly always remove Amplitube's modeled cabinet and replace it with a stereo Ownhammer cabinet. Add a bit of Amplitube's room convolution and Bob's my uncle. (actually, my dad is named Bob and he's an only child. ) This can often be a night and day difference. I was playing with Amplitube's Brian May presets and I was sort of shocked at how bad they sounded. I tried messing with their EQ settings, but it wasn't getting me there. Swapped it out with an AC30 or similar IR, and all of the sudden I was smiling. Note: often a stereo IR sounds great for jamming, but too much in a mix, so I will often make two different presets for different situations.

IKMultimedia ToneX for Cab only captures? Maybe it needs a load box.

[Uncle E]

Awesome. You guys are GAS killers and I’m here for it.

[Naillerz78]

So I absolutely love the Zoom units as inexpensive multieffects and consider them to be among the best value a beginner can spend money on in music - consider that they contain a tuner, and (for the bass ones at least) drum loops. They are great practice tools for beginners and teaching tools for what various effects sound like.

Additionally I really liked many of their effects, especially for the price.

But you absolutely can't consider them to be faithful to the effects they are modeling. You have to think of them as kind of their own thing. And yeah, the distortions all suck for guitar. Might be kind of cool to stick after a synth though... but noisy.

Also - at least 80% of the Zoom presets are absolute trash.

Oh I forgot the drum loops
The drum tracks on the G1on were awesome. That was the highlight for me

[stoopicus]

Oh I forgot the drum loops
The drum tracks on the G1on were awesome. That was the highlight for me

Yeah! They are just really really good ideas for beginners to buy. You get everything you need to help practice timing and rhythm in a small cheap unit, and can really learn a lot about effects to be able to make an informed purchase later. Plus a tuner, which you need to have regardless, and a headphone amp. And they sound fine overall until you know what to look for that sounds better later.

These are a way better idea for a newbie to spend money on than some trashy disposable practice amp, IMO. A G1four is what, $75 bucks or something?

[Naillerz78]

Oh I forgot the drum loops
The drum tracks on the G1on were awesome. That was the highlight for me

Yeah! They are just really really good ideas for beginners to buy. You get everything you need to help practice timing and rhythm in a small cheap unit, and can really learn a lot about effects to be able to make an informed purchase later. Plus a tuner, which you need to have regardless, and a headphone amp. And they sound fine overall until you know what to look for that sounds better later.

These are a way better idea for a newbie to spend money on than some trashy disposable practice amp, IMO. A G1four is what, $75 bucks or something?

Yeah they cheap cheap. All good points.
I do dig having drums on a unit for the timing and getting a groove going. Maybe I’ll try one again 2nd hand. The Gt-1 was missing the drums if I recall. Very handy feature.

I like the Hotone stuff from what I’m hearing on demos . I’d like to try the Ampero One. Hopefully it has drums also. I’m off to the guitar shop today to test a few units the GAS has got me this month once again

[guitarzan]

There is that ‘hack’ that always sounded like a fun thing to do where you can install the Zoom effects from one model into another, there is room for many more than are factory installed (like you could cram dozens of extra effects from across the entire Zoom line into a cheap G1ON or whatever). It was talked about a lot, haven’t heard much about it recently.

Here’s a link to a resource site, but I don’t know how up to date it is:

http://andresdemarco.info/ZOOMFIRMWARE/

Awesome! Thanks! I had a G5n recently and hated it, but it was really the drives and expression pedal that turned me off. I never got past them far enough to explore the other effects.

According to what I’ve read you can use the Zoom Effects Manager software to replace effects that you are not interest in (like the drives or amp sims) by overwriting that memory with fx that you are interested in (EQ, modulation, reverb, delay, weird stuff only multi-fx pedals do…) as well as just add effects to the previously unused memory.

I think it would be cool to have a multi-fx pedal loaded with just the stuff you wanted and to be able to choose those fx from across a large chunk of the Zoom product line (MS-50G, MS-60B, MS-70CDR, G1on, G1Xon, B1on, B1Xon, G1on-AK, G1Xon-K, G1 Four, G1X Four, B1 Four, B1X Four, A1 Four, A1X Four). I wonder if any of those are MIDI capable?

Even the extra cheap G1on also has a pretty handy little looper that can be used along with the drum patterns to try different ideas.

I see a lot of current eBay listings are asking over the original retail price (I think the G1on was only like $40 new), but they probably aren’t actually selling too many at those prices — they do come up pretty cheap from time to time… I have at least a couple G1on’s, plus one or two of the ones with expression pedals, plus at least two of the bass models and I don’t think I paid more than $30 (including s/h) for any of them, and a couple of them were NOS.

I first heard of this hack during the pandemic and put the cheaper Zoom pedals on my watch list and bought them up when the price was right. The pandemic ended before I got around to trying the hack and the whole thing just got pushed aside and I never really thought about it again until this thread.

[YnJ]

I’d read the reviews of its operation firstly Ynj .. see my post above

Thanks, I did. I kind of lost interest in it when realizing it only had two analogue dirt pedals, and I already have both of them. With this additional info I'm crossing it off my list as well. As for TC Electronic I think I'll go for a G Major or a G Force instead. There is a G Sharp for sale really cheap, it looks excatly like the M350 I already have though, same effects and everything. I'm actually quite happy with the reverb and delay effects on the M350, which I guess it's mainly for

[Uncle E]

There's a thread going on TGP where they're talking about go-to IRs. Here's one they're talking about that's free:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/my-main-ir-lt-tv-91056054

And here's one they're talking about that's $1:
https://www.yorkaudio.co/product-page/m ... 30-limited

[YnJ]

Has anyone tried the Boss OD-200? It's described as an analogue and digital hybrid. It seems to be quite versatile, and even does midi. Does it sound as good as real analogue pedals though?

[YnJ]

I got the Boss GT-6 I payed 60 quid for to get the powersupply yesterday. The preamps are the same quality as the GX-700, and the digital overdrives is a huge step down in overall sound quality from the GX-700. It does have a huge amount of effects though, all in all I think I got a lot for my money

[Uncle E]

Has anyone tried the Boss OD-200? It's described as an analogue and digital hybrid. It seems to be quite versatile, and even does midi. Does it sound as good as real analogue pedals though?

The actual clipping stages are analog. Haven’t tried that one yet but all the 200 series pedals I’ve used have been Strymon-level.

- edit - Even though they're made almost 30 years apart, I can't think of anyone who would benefit less from the OD-200 than a GX-700 owner.

[Magic Russ]

I got the Boss GT-6 I payed 60 quid for to get the powersupply yesterday. The preamps are the same quality as the GX-700, and the digital overdrives is a huge step down in overall sound quality from the GX-700. It does have a huge amount of effects though, all in all I think I got a lot for my money

I had the 3 and the 8. For what you paid, I'd agree the 60 is a pretty good deal.

One thing I really didn't like about the GT-8 was the spring reverb. You expect some kind of sploshiness and doinkiness from a spring reverb, but in the 8 it was way out of control. I think they fixed that in the 10.

[Magic Russ]

Never heard of that one , I thought only went to ME-80. Must check it.. I do prefer to fiddle with knobs. Had an Me-50 , it wasn’t bad, but a bit of a tone sucker .

It's the most recent model, replacing the ME-80 I guess. I was thinking of getting an ME-90, I got the Line 6 multieffect pedal first though and was dissapointed with it as all the overdrives and distortions sounded the same, and then the GX-700 with analogue overdrives and distortions turned up, and I got that instead. If you guys think the COSM digital modelling of dirt pedals is good now, I might reconsider getting an ME-90 though

There are a few drawbacks with the ME-90

1. The display only shows you preset number. I'd prefer to see a full patch name.
2. You don't have any more than 3 controls for a given effect.
3. There are a lot of hidden effects that you need to use the Boss Tone Studio to access.

[Uncle E]

3. There are a lot of hidden effects that you need to use the Boss Tone Studio to access.

Jeez, you're not kidding. About 20 effects require the Boss Tone Studio, including some really good ones (CE-1, OD-1, Fuzz Face, Octave Fuzz, etc.). Also, even with those, it's missing some of the best effects from the 200 and 500-series pedals.

I had a play with the ME-90 today and got some good sounds out of it. The amp models are bad but the drives are good, albeit not accurate to the things they're emulating. In any case, it's super easy to use and I had no trouble getting great sounds when using it with my tube amp.

[YnJ]

Has anyone tried the Boss OD-200? It's described as an analogue and digital hybrid. It seems to be quite versatile, and even does midi. Does it sound as good as real analogue pedals though?

The actual clipping stages are analog. Haven’t tried that one yet but all the 200 series pedals I’ve used have been Strymon-level.

- edit - Even though they're made almost 30 years apart, I can't think of anyone who would benefit less from the OD-200 than a GX-700 owner.

It's a keeper, which is why I now also own a GT-6. While the GX-700 was in very good condition, it's power supply was looking pretty worn though, so I decided to get another just in case. The GT-6 uses the same power supply and seemed to be the cheapest option, and both the GT-6 and the power supply was in pristine condition. The GT-6 has some awful very audible aliasing on some of the sounds using medium or more gain btw. It's really a drop in quality from the GX-700, I never had any audible aliasing with that, even when going fully digital and using the high gain amp models. They don't sound good, no aliasing though

Anyway, the OD-200 has twelve drives compared to the seven drives on the GX-700, and it seems there is very little overlapping, so I still find it interesting. I was thinking I should get some proper quality effects btw, and the 200-series looks interesting. I was thinking of getting the MD-200. I'm a bit reserved when it comes to Boss reverbs and delays though, not questioning their quality, the digital reverb and delay pedals sound a tad too clean to me. I prefer the reverbs and delays on my TC Electronic to any of the Boss units I have, they sound warmer and more lush. I have the Hotone convolution reverb on order, so I might not need another reverb. Have you tried the RV-200 and the DD-200 though? I have no options to try them locally