I'm a rather bad guitar player who has been playing on and off for years.
Recently, I discover the world of amp sim and it got me hooked at once. For me who never have more than a disto pedal, to use all these delay, chorus, phaser, echo, or even micro-synth and to test a marshall, a twin reverb, a mesa boogie sim... it's a dream.
I've started with "chainer" but the free version doesn't save the presets and stuff.
Since I just want to do it for fun, I don't intend to record myself, I've searched another free vsthost and found, why, VSThost from Hermann Seib. Although it's a little old, it's very neat and I'm surprised it's free.
So anyway, I wanted to have some recommendations on how to use it.
1) Should I plug my guitar directly in the mic input of my laptop or is it better to plug it in my disto pedal (on power supply) and plug the pedal in the input mic? I'm asking because I've read somewhere that it was better to use a pedal and then I read the contrary so...
Note: I use the asio4all driver on wave device.
2) What's the best order for the chaining?
So far I'm doing: input engine -> univibe -> vintager troy -> rednef twin -> jcm900 -> poulin lecab2 -> output engine.
Sometimes I add more effects.
All the effects must be chained in serie? In any order? I guess the effects are never after the amp, right?
And what about the amps? Is it ok to chain 2 amps in serie or should I do otherwise?
Should I add a noisegate just after the input engine? Something else?
Everything works pretty well but I found the sound a little weak, even when I put 4 or 6 cabs in poulin lecab2.
Oh, and microsynth bugs a little. It works well the first minute, then the volume low down and you can't hear anything. weird.
As I said it's just for fun, I don't want to record anything, or maybe I will but nothing professional, just a stupid mp3 for me and my friends.
That's a lot of questions, I stop there.
Thank you.