BTW2 - This is an interesting thread, even though the analog vs. digital debate has been done to death and will never be resolved.
I am the typical "analog kid." I like feedback that turns crunchy and dissolves into little fuzzy pieces that slide down the back of your brain...yeah you can't quite get those with digital. And all of the little burps and belches and screeches and skronks that can come from anything analog, if it's turned up loud enough and it's got enough dust inside of it; it helps if it it ever got rained on somewhere in its past too or had a beer accidentally drained into it. I once had a Fender Power Chorus amp, which is a great……..example of a crappy-ass 1980’s solid state amp. Anyway once I left (forgot) it in the back of my truck after returning from some drunken gig, the next morning I poured about a gallon of water out of it because it had poured South Florida rain all night. I then left it untouched in a hot garage for about a month; it sounded much better after that. So if you too have a crappy 80’s amp, give it bath and it might sound a lot better.
But then again, that was a solid state amp - so we can now argue and debate and pontificate about tubes vs. solid state. As far as myself, I started playing right around the time when solid state amps were becoming the norm, anyway I couldn't afford a tube amp when I was 16. So I learned to play electric guitar on solid state amps. And lemme tell ya - some solid state amps can make some pretty disgusting skronks, and although I love the sound of the old tube amps I can't say that I have any warm fuzzy thoughts about owning one way back when, so I don't have the whole sentimental thing going on. I've managed to reconcile the whole ball of wax anyway - I can only afford one good amp, so I have a Fender Cyber Twin. It's got tubes, transistors, AND a computer. And it sounds damn good too. If you take the time to read about how it works, it's actually very interesting. It's not a modeling amp, although it can sound like all sorts of other amps. A modeling amp SOUNDS like other amps whereas the Cyber Twin BECOMES the other amps, to a point anyway. You gotta think a little bit outside of the bag for this one, I tried to explain it to somebody but they couldn't really get their mind around it. In its most stripped-down sense, a modeling amp has one set of circuitry to produce sound that is created by a computer. The computer creates the sound digitally and uses the amp to bring the 1's and 0's to life as sound that we can hear. There is also a preamp section that I -think- acts on the bits and bytes and adjusts them to the user's tastes. But the heart of the modeling amp is purely digital. On the other hand, Fender took a different approach towards getting many different sounds from one amp. Rather than use the computer to create sound digitally, the computer is used to store circuitry paths in the amp's wiring, and it changes the way that the signal is routed through the amp's circuitry to produce certain sounds. It also has two 12AX7's in there to help it along when replicating old tube amps. In a stripped down sense, the modeling amp -sounds like- a certain amp where the Cyber Twin -becomes- the certain amp. That's the theory, anyway.
In practice, neither one of them can sound exactly like something else, but they can come close. However, having owned both a Line 6 modeling amp and a Cyber Twin, I can say that the Cyber Twin sounds more "real" but more importantly, it plays more real - it reacts much better to the player’s more subtle nuances since it is actually a "real" sound that is being influenced by the player as opposed to a computer generated sound that at its worst is not affected at all by the player and at best is still not as real or warm as the Cyber Twin.
Thus ends my non-scientific seat-of-the-pants analysis of Line 6 amps vs. Cyber Twins, which was a tangent that I went off on anyway and really does not have a lot to do with the subject at hand.
Actually I am not sure what the subject at hand is, but it has something to do with analog vs. digital. My take on it is that, like anything else, either one of them can be great, and either one of them can suck. I guess that the bottom line for me is that thanks to digital “modeling” technology, I can have, right in my own home, a collection of vintage amps and effects that otherwise I would not have a chance in hell of even dreaming about, much less actually owning. But of course there is a rub, there’s always a rub, and the rub is that these digital approximations are NOT real, and it’s NOT exactly like having that dream collection of amps and effects. But it’s a close as I will ever get to having it, and that’s worth something, because many of these digital boxes and computer programs come pretty damn close to sounding like the real thing. And they are getting better all the time. And the scope of the amps and effects that I “own” is huge. Between my amp, my modeling effects, and the stuff that I have on my PC, I have a collection that would best that of all but the largest of them. I’ve got hundreds of amps, hundreds of effects – there is no way that I could ever come close to it even if I had the money – some of these things are very rare. And then there is the fact that some of these old pedals etc. sound better when listened to through the mists of time and faded memory, a friend turned up at my house one day with a genuine old Big Muff and it didn’t sound as great as I remember. And I have a Line 6 delay modeler that does an awesome Echoplex that sound for sound is as good as the real thing most of the time – and the Echoplex is my all-time favorite effect. The modeler even has adjustable simulated tape degradation and head wear… But on the other hand, digital just does not have that nth degree of sound, where the stomp box, the guitar, the cable, the electrical outlet, the humidity, and everything else comes together in all the wrong ways and makes something magical. That, unfortunately, is just not happenin in the digital world (although I’ve had a few surprises pop out of the digital stuff that I wasn’t expecting). But it still doesn’t quite hit the spot that a big ol’ analog belch will.
But you can’t really plan those magical analog moments, they just sorta happen and then you can’t reproduce them either, so hopefully the tape was rolling. I’ve caught a few of them on tape, and I would just listen to them over and over and over again. But you can create a fairly magical analog tone, and replicate it again in a new location, if you get lucky enough to somehow wind up with just the right stuff in just the right combination, and when you do it will scratch that itch right in the middle of your back that the digital backscratcher just won’t reach.
The bottom line – digital is wonderful in that it can sound really damn good, and you can easily replicate the sound again and again – and that a poor musician like me can have so many effects and sounds and many of them are almost dead-on at what they are supposed to be. Without digital, I’d probably be stuck in my room with a Crate 2X12 and a DS1, the horror, the absolute horror of it all…or even my crappy old Power Chorus. And I probably would have just given up and sold everything for $50 and a twelve pack of Schaefer. I can honestly credit all of these new toys for getting me out of the guitar rut that I mistook for being the limit of my ability after 20+ years and now I am hitting new plateaus again almost monthly and getting so fuckin good that I am seriously scaring myself and I’m starting to think that I need to go pro, and I mean big time pro all the f’in way because I’m listening to some new Steve Vai stuff and thinking “big fuckin deal, I can play that with one hand, and I really can, not to say that I’m a big Steve Vai fan because I’m not, it’s just that, well the dude can play, no bout a dout it – except I can play too -- but I have to work at some stupid job whereas Steve is riding around in limos. So I might go pro after all and take a bit of that brass ring, and it’s all because of digital music technology. So there.
I am the typical "analog kid." I like feedback that turns crunchy and dissolves into little fuzzy pieces that slide down the back of your brain...yeah you can't quite get those with digital. And all of the little burps and belches and screeches and skronks that can come from anything analog, if it's turned up loud enough and it's got enough dust inside of it; it helps if it it ever got rained on somewhere in its past too or had a beer accidentally drained into it. I once had a Fender Power Chorus amp, which is a great……..example of a crappy-ass 1980’s solid state amp. Anyway once I left (forgot) it in the back of my truck after returning from some drunken gig, the next morning I poured about a gallon of water out of it because it had poured South Florida rain all night. I then left it untouched in a hot garage for about a month; it sounded much better after that. So if you too have a crappy 80’s amp, give it bath and it might sound a lot better.
But then again, that was a solid state amp - so we can now argue and debate and pontificate about tubes vs. solid state. As far as myself, I started playing right around the time when solid state amps were becoming the norm, anyway I couldn't afford a tube amp when I was 16. So I learned to play electric guitar on solid state amps. And lemme tell ya - some solid state amps can make some pretty disgusting skronks, and although I love the sound of the old tube amps I can't say that I have any warm fuzzy thoughts about owning one way back when, so I don't have the whole sentimental thing going on. I've managed to reconcile the whole ball of wax anyway - I can only afford one good amp, so I have a Fender Cyber Twin. It's got tubes, transistors, AND a computer. And it sounds damn good too. If you take the time to read about how it works, it's actually very interesting. It's not a modeling amp, although it can sound like all sorts of other amps. A modeling amp SOUNDS like other amps whereas the Cyber Twin BECOMES the other amps, to a point anyway. You gotta think a little bit outside of the bag for this one, I tried to explain it to somebody but they couldn't really get their mind around it. In its most stripped-down sense, a modeling amp has one set of circuitry to produce sound that is created by a computer. The computer creates the sound digitally and uses the amp to bring the 1's and 0's to life as sound that we can hear. There is also a preamp section that I -think- acts on the bits and bytes and adjusts them to the user's tastes. But the heart of the modeling amp is purely digital. On the other hand, Fender took a different approach towards getting many different sounds from one amp. Rather than use the computer to create sound digitally, the computer is used to store circuitry paths in the amp's wiring, and it changes the way that the signal is routed through the amp's circuitry to produce certain sounds. It also has two 12AX7's in there to help it along when replicating old tube amps. In a stripped down sense, the modeling amp -sounds like- a certain amp where the Cyber Twin -becomes- the certain amp. That's the theory, anyway.
In practice, neither one of them can sound exactly like something else, but they can come close. However, having owned both a Line 6 modeling amp and a Cyber Twin, I can say that the Cyber Twin sounds more "real" but more importantly, it plays more real - it reacts much better to the player’s more subtle nuances since it is actually a "real" sound that is being influenced by the player as opposed to a computer generated sound that at its worst is not affected at all by the player and at best is still not as real or warm as the Cyber Twin.
Thus ends my non-scientific seat-of-the-pants analysis of Line 6 amps vs. Cyber Twins, which was a tangent that I went off on anyway and really does not have a lot to do with the subject at hand.
Actually I am not sure what the subject at hand is, but it has something to do with analog vs. digital. My take on it is that, like anything else, either one of them can be great, and either one of them can suck. I guess that the bottom line for me is that thanks to digital “modeling” technology, I can have, right in my own home, a collection of vintage amps and effects that otherwise I would not have a chance in hell of even dreaming about, much less actually owning. But of course there is a rub, there’s always a rub, and the rub is that these digital approximations are NOT real, and it’s NOT exactly like having that dream collection of amps and effects. But it’s a close as I will ever get to having it, and that’s worth something, because many of these digital boxes and computer programs come pretty damn close to sounding like the real thing. And they are getting better all the time. And the scope of the amps and effects that I “own” is huge. Between my amp, my modeling effects, and the stuff that I have on my PC, I have a collection that would best that of all but the largest of them. I’ve got hundreds of amps, hundreds of effects – there is no way that I could ever come close to it even if I had the money – some of these things are very rare. And then there is the fact that some of these old pedals etc. sound better when listened to through the mists of time and faded memory, a friend turned up at my house one day with a genuine old Big Muff and it didn’t sound as great as I remember. And I have a Line 6 delay modeler that does an awesome Echoplex that sound for sound is as good as the real thing most of the time – and the Echoplex is my all-time favorite effect. The modeler even has adjustable simulated tape degradation and head wear… But on the other hand, digital just does not have that nth degree of sound, where the stomp box, the guitar, the cable, the electrical outlet, the humidity, and everything else comes together in all the wrong ways and makes something magical. That, unfortunately, is just not happenin in the digital world (although I’ve had a few surprises pop out of the digital stuff that I wasn’t expecting). But it still doesn’t quite hit the spot that a big ol’ analog belch will.
But you can’t really plan those magical analog moments, they just sorta happen and then you can’t reproduce them either, so hopefully the tape was rolling. I’ve caught a few of them on tape, and I would just listen to them over and over and over again. But you can create a fairly magical analog tone, and replicate it again in a new location, if you get lucky enough to somehow wind up with just the right stuff in just the right combination, and when you do it will scratch that itch right in the middle of your back that the digital backscratcher just won’t reach.
The bottom line – digital is wonderful in that it can sound really damn good, and you can easily replicate the sound again and again – and that a poor musician like me can have so many effects and sounds and many of them are almost dead-on at what they are supposed to be. Without digital, I’d probably be stuck in my room with a Crate 2X12 and a DS1, the horror, the absolute horror of it all…or even my crappy old Power Chorus. And I probably would have just given up and sold everything for $50 and a twelve pack of Schaefer. I can honestly credit all of these new toys for getting me out of the guitar rut that I mistook for being the limit of my ability after 20+ years and now I am hitting new plateaus again almost monthly and getting so fuckin good that I am seriously scaring myself and I’m starting to think that I need to go pro, and I mean big time pro all the f’in way because I’m listening to some new Steve Vai stuff and thinking “big fuckin deal, I can play that with one hand, and I really can, not to say that I’m a big Steve Vai fan because I’m not, it’s just that, well the dude can play, no bout a dout it – except I can play too -- but I have to work at some stupid job whereas Steve is riding around in limos. So I might go pro after all and take a bit of that brass ring, and it’s all because of digital music technology. So there.
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Just a highpass filter around 55hz can radically increase the impact of a Prophet 5 come mix time.