Re-amping? Is it this simple?

Thanx guys. I think I got it all sorted. Doesn't look like I need to buy anything more, as far as this whole re-amping this is concerned. Just blasted a few tracks and they sound great, and I still have the DI tracks in case I change my mind one day.

I just couldn't get my head around that impedance video. It's not the dude's fault, even though he admittedly flubbed a few things. I just was never able to "get" that stuff, even as a kid. I'm very intelligent (I know how that sounds, but I am), and I can usually learn just about anything, but I just go "special ed" when it comes to electronics. I guess my brain just isn't wired to get that stuff, no pun intended. I've tried. I remember having a book about building a ham radio when I was a kid, and I just couldn't for the life of me understand it, no matter how many hundred times I read it. Just not my thing.
 
Does this help? Your reply in the other thread was a laughing face, but...
Impedance matters exactly because
voltage-divider.gif

there's a voltage divider created by the connection. In this image, your source's out-Z would be R1, and the load's in-Z is R2. I think it requires only a grade school level understanding of math to see that Vout goes down as R1 gets bigger with respect to R2, and that if we want as much voltage out as possible then R2 should be a whole lot bigger than R1. If R2 is ten times R1 then the output voltage will be 10/11 of the input, which is less than 1db down, which we consider to be negligible, and thus the 10:1 rule of thumb.

But this is for purely resistive components. If either the output or the input include reactive (inductive or capacitive) components, then which ever "R" they represent above will actually be frequency dependent. Most active devices can be considered to be purely resistive because any reactive part of their impedance contributes very little in comparison. We can't go too wild with this, though, as there usually is some largish capacitance in series (AC coupling capacitors) with R1, which gets bigger for lower frequencies, so that if R2 gets really small, we can lose bass response.

The cables we use to connect our equipment are capacitive, and in parallel with R2 such that R2 gets smaller for higher frequencies. Therefore, if R1 is very large we can lose some treble.

A passive guitar pickup has a pretty large resistive component but is also very inductive. Therefore, R1 starts kind of big and then gets a whole lot bigger at higher frequencies. Therefore, if R2 is smallish, we lose a lot of treble. Of course, in most passive guitars, R2 is actually more like the parallel total of the values of the pots in the guitar, so the math gets a little tougher, but basically we want the input-Z to be as big as possible so that the Vs and Ts on the guitar itself are the main factors in the overall tone. As for this assertion that most people can't tell the difference between plugging into a 1M vs 56K, well...most people are dinks. For most passive guitars, there will be a pronounced difference in the top end. I can't imagine anybody would argue they don't hear a difference when they turn their T knob down to 6...I suppose, not everybody really wants all of the treble possible out of their guitars, but there is a big difference.
Click to expand...
 
ashcat_lt said:
Does this help? Your reply in the other thread was a laughing face, but...
Click to expand...
I don't remember the other thread, but I'm sure your post is very helpful. If I put a smiley somewhere, it was probably directed at how complicated and technical all this is to me. It's probably the kind of thing you take for granted when you know it and can't understand why it's so hard to grasp. But for someone who just can't get it, it's like Chinese. I'll try to sit down, really focus, and read it later.
 
I can pour a glass of water just fine. RAMI seemed to be asking how and why the water comes out the faucet, so I tried to help by explaining. If you don't care to understand, just go ahead and turn the spigot and go on with your day.
 
Hehe....now now boys.........




Might as well share this. Might be old news to many of you. But, like I said, what I'm doing now is tracking with a guitar sim to get the feel and sound as close to what I want, and then re-amping later when I'm able to use my amp and crank the volume.

So, I found a shitload of free amp sims. Some really good, some not so much. But pretty much all full versions of free plug-ins.

Best Free Guitar Amp Simulator VST/AU Plugins!
 
ashcat_lt said:
Like.
Also...
Click to expand...


Cool vid. Not crazy about that voice. I liked the 12-string intro, but not the rest so much, and I do like hard rock a lot more than the mellow stuff. But I wish they stayed with that cool 12-string chord progression. :cool:
 
miroslav said:
i had to extend it....:d

...'cuz this stupid bbs keeps changing the caps to lowercase... Wtf?
Click to expand...

if you type everything in capitol letters, the bbs turns them into lower-case for some reason.

---------- Update ----------

^^^^Just like that. I typed that post with the cap locks on^^^^^
 
Another update:

I just ordered a Reamp box from Sweetwater. I realized that the interface was sending too hot a signal after all. I didn't notice it when I was re-amping distorted tracks. But I did some clean tracks today, and I was getting a really ugly break-up even at very little gain on the amp. Not the nice break up you sometimes want with a clean sound, but that brittle shit that doesn't sound good. I had to attenuate the signal coming out of my DAW by -14db for it to be clean and acceptable. I then went back and realized that even my distorted tracks were too hot, but that didn't cause a problem because I ended up just turning down the gain on the amp when I re-amped them. But the clean sounds were a problem.

Anyway, I tried ordering from B&H, but for some reason it said they weren't allowed to ship that product to Canada. I just placed the order with Sweetwater, and hopefully I won't get an e-mail from them telling me the same thing.

Thanx for all the help. I think the reamper will be a good investment, rather than always wondering and guessing about the signal I'm sending my amp.
 
Are you looking at the Radial JCR Studio Reamper? That is what I use and it works very well.

They are made in Canada. They might be cheaper there...

Just a thought. :)
 

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