I think I finally hate amp sims!

[Hink]

I get "there" just fine with the J Station thank you very much...........It get's me to my happy place.....which is why I use it

what if your J statiion dies?

[trimph1]

I get "there" just fine with the J Station thank you very much...........It get's me to my happy place.....which is why I use it

what if your J statiion dies?

Then he'll look for another one maybe?

I think that it is great if one has found their sound, it is just that they may need to be prepared for the eventual die-off of the sound device...

Me? I like my lotus flower approach--I've got many different ways of getting my many sounds...

[Teksonik]

I get "there" just fine with the J Station thank you very much...........It get's me to my happy place.....which is why I use it

what if your J statiion dies?

I'll buy another one....saw one at the local Sam Ash......almost bought it as a back-up.........What if your equipment dies?

[Teksonik]

Ok Damit............. You guys got my curiosity up.....I just downloaded the Vandal demo. Too late this evening to give it a proper go but I 'll give it a play tomorrow.

[Hink]

I get "there" just fine with the J Station thank you very much...........It get's me to my happy place.....which is why I use it

what if your J statiion dies?

I'll buy another one....saw one at the local Sam Ash......almost bought it as a back-up.........What if your equipment dies?

well my amps would get repaired, not much to fixing a tube amp (I plan on building one eventually)...if both my pods die I'd either replace it used or step up. If my computer dies I have a back up in my laptop and then from there I'll probably be replacing my current machine in the next year and a half or so. I more worried about all my gear getting stolen then dying all at once (I have been broken into once in the mid 80s and lost everything), thankfully I prefer to be home more than out...I would do fine being a recluse

I remember way back reading an interview with Gary Moore where he talked about the sound he got from a lexicon delay I believe. He was so worried that he wouldn't be able to replace it he bought 10. I would love to know where they are now, I'm sure they are way too noisey by today's standards.

I have an Alesis midiverb4 I use to love, now all I hear is how noisey it is...btw other paths I have found in the last year or so is finally building that dulcimer and I built a tele baritone which is a ball to play. I know you get that because you're a synth guy too, so you already have more than one path

[Unfocused]

so you haven't tried Vandal yet I see...preach on my brother as I know how you feel and worse I got a lot of sims in a relatively short time (AT3, GR4 and GTR3) so that's all I did. Those are now delegated to re-amping, Vandal...not an amp sim...an amp emulator...two models, bass and guitars...limited cab and speaker selection...you open it and you have an amp (be sure to look at the sub menu under the wrench switch), there are presets and you can save them but better still you just hve an amp with amp controls and thanks to a sag control (sub menu) it does not play like a sim would, he reacts to your playing in the most natural way I have found.

After reading this, Hink, I DL'ed the Vandal demo and I have to say I agree. Vandal is the best sounding, most straightforward amp "sim" (or whatever) I've tried. I only really use a handful of sounds myself so the limited controls are just what the doctor ordered to leave the tweaking behind and actually PLAY.

That being said, I will probably never get Vandal because I can come *close* to the sounds I want with Izotope Trash and the AuraPlug freebie, California Sun. Vandal is just too expensive for me at this point, and quite frankly, I get the BEST results (for me) when lining out from my Roland microCube as a DI box/amp modeler for clean sounds. Sounds crazy I know, but I don't have to mic my real amps, or tweak my sims, and I get a great sound that I can work with.

I also agree to an extent with the OP--I like amp sims, but I'm tired of twiddling parameters in sims to develop a usable sound that exploits the character of my guitar. Give me a handful of one-trick ponies and I'm fine. I want to get back to playing--right now that works best for me with my guitar plugged straight into a real amp (tube or solid-state). I've never before been in the "real amp camp" for digital recording, but I am now as a direct reaction against having too many options with amp sims. I'm tired... make it stop


-u

[Hink]

Ok Damit............. You guys got my curiosity up.....I just downloaded the Vandal demo. Too late this evening to give it a proper go but I 'll give it a play tomorrow.

don't forget the little wrench icons, they open more features and key features like sag

[Unfocused]

Ok Damit............. You guys got my curiosity up.....I just downloaded the Vandal demo. Too late this evening to give it a proper go but I 'll give it a play tomorrow.

Haha! I just did this three hours ago, for the same reason. Posted my semi-review right above this. I think you'll like it

...but too expensive for me at ATM...


-u

[Hink]

so you haven't tried Vandal yet I see...preach on my brother as I know how you feel and worse I got a lot of sims in a relatively short time (AT3, GR4 and GTR3) so that's all I did. Those are now delegated to re-amping, Vandal...not an amp sim...an amp emulator...two models, bass and guitars...limited cab and speaker selection...you open it and you have an amp (be sure to look at the sub menu under the wrench switch), there are presets and you can save them but better still you just hve an amp with amp controls and thanks to a sag control (sub menu) it does not play like a sim would, he reacts to your playing in the most natural way I have found.

After reading this, Hink, I DL'ed the Vandal demo and I have to say I agree. Vandal is the best sounding, most straightforward amp "sim" (or whatever) I've tried. I only really use a handful of sounds myself so the limited controls are just what the doctor ordered to leave the tweaking behind and actually PLAY.

That being said, I will probably never get Vandal because I can come *close* to the sounds I want with Izotope Trash and the AuraPlug freebie, California Sun. Vandal is just too expensive for me at this point, and quite frankly, I get the BEST results (for me) when lining out from my Roland microCube as a DI box/amp modeler for clean sounds. Sounds crazy I know, but I don't have to mic my real amps, or tweak my sims, and I get a great sound that I can work with.

I also agree to an extent with the OP--I like amp sims, but I'm tired of twiddling parameters in sims to develop a usable sound that exploits the character of my guitar. Give me a handful of one-trick ponies and I'm fine. I want to get back to playing--right now that works best for me with my guitar plugged straight into a real amp (tube or solid-state). I've never before been in the "real amp camp" for digital recording, but I am now as a direct reaction against having too many options with amp sims. I'm tired... make it stop


-u

I'd like it to stop too...too much to do and not enough time to do it

[trimph1]

Ok Damit............. You guys got my curiosity up.....I just downloaded the Vandal demo. Too late this evening to give it a proper go but I 'll give it a play tomorrow.

don't forget the little wrench icons, they open more features and key features like sag

[futurefields]

I've never before been in the "real amp camp" for digital recording, but I am now as a direct reaction against having too many options with amp sims. I'm tired... make it stop

I don't understand this mentality. You tweak the amp sim until it sounds good, and then you save the preset. Then when you want the sound again, you pull up your preset. It's pretty easy.

What do you do with your Microcube? I'm assuming you probably move the knobs until it sounds good...

What do you want the amp sim to do? Measure your guitar tone and dial in a tone for you? I don't know what could be easier than saving presets...

[metalifuxx]

What about the hybrid approach, of using a line out or a DI/Attenuator from a tube amp into a cab sim, or sending your ampsim signal (no cab sim) to an FX return on your tube amp or to a power amp and with a real cab, mic it up and record it.

I have gotten good results with using the line out approach and a cab sim. You get the real feedback, tube harmonics, amp response, and no aliasing from the tube amp. That's of course using your amp's cabinet too. You better send a dummy load to the head using an attenuator/DI if you don't connect your head to the speaker cab, or you blow your output power transformer or seriously damage it. There has been this discussion many times on KVR already.

That's if you can live with the sound and settings you had on the amp. I have also tried this with an ultra clean setting on my Soldano head and fed it into a distorted higher gain amp sim or pedal sim before the cab sim with good results too.

I love amp sims too. When I was younger and I would be jamming earlier in the evening and then lose track of time, my parents would come into the room and yell at me to turn it off because they were going to bed. They would say "Can't you use headphones or something...". This was before the amp modeling processors were common. I had a Zoom 1010 processor I could theoretically use with headphones, but it was mono out, and the "amp sounds" it had were prehistoric and raw with not really a cab sim.

[Hink]

I use a weber attenuator with my boogie, it can run a dummy load so you can run it at zero. run with a cab impulse it's really good. The weber uses a speaker motor instead of a resistor so it reacts more natural.

[Unfocused]

I've never before been in the "real amp camp" for digital recording, but I am now as a direct reaction against having too many options with amp sims. I'm tired... make it stop

I don't understand this mentality. You tweak the amp sim until it sounds good, and then you save the preset. Then when you want the sound again, you pull up your preset. It's pretty easy.

Yeah. I had just that before all my guitars got stolen from my house (along with anything else worth anything that was easy to carry ). Now I have to do it again because those patches don't sound right with the new guitars, esp. a custom hollowbody that is a tonal chameleon with a real amp, but never seems to give me a good reproduction of a clean amp combo with my amp sims, i.e. I spend too much time trying to find that sound and not enough time playing.

What do you do with your Microcube? I'm assuming you probably move the knobs until it sounds good...

Yeah. There's a tone knob and a gain knob--that's it. I don't have much control over the sound because you don't need to. It just sounds good.

What do you want the amp sim to do? Measure your guitar tone and dial in a tone for you? I don't know what could be easier than saving presets...

Yes. That's exactly what I want an amp sim to do...
My experience is that it takes more work for me to diddle with MY amp sims to get a passable sound for my new guitar than to play through MY real amps. My previous main guitar (an original Steinberger GL4TA) relied on signal processing for most of its tonal character--it was a fairly neutral sounding guitar. My new guitar produces a wider range of subtly different (beautiful) tones that I have found hard to capture without a real amp. Do you understand my mentality with more context?


-u

[blueman]

Hey Blueman. Overloud has released TH2. Surely that has to be the one ? hehe

Don't tempt me! I already own TH1