Amp Modeling

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antispatula

antispatula

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At the risk of offending all the high-class tube amp vets around here,
I'd like to ask a question or two about amp modeling. I play guitar, but mostly acoustic. I want to get into implementing more electric guitar into my songs though. I've got a solid state marshall I bought at a pawn shop down in san diego for $60 bucks, but I don't really like using it. REAPER comes with a guitar amp modeling plugin and I've discovered there are actually one or two models I really really like and am very satisfied with. But I may want something a little more versatile down the road, especially since I'll be moving into a small apartment and can't crank up an amp.

For those who have actually tried one, tell me your thoughts on one of those Line 6 POD or POD Pocket, or any other relatively cheap modeler. Don't tell me go out out and buy a nice real amp, because I don't want to, at least not right now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, most electric I play is clean.
 
I own a Pod 2.0, a Johnson J Station (no longer made) and a Behringer Bass V-Amp. Guitar is not my main axe and I often record late at night - so the ability to get a fast, easy crunch without cranking an amp made sense.

I think that with the right amount of tweaking, you can get very realistic sounding tone (clean or crunch) form most amp simulations - and most simulators are very easy to get a decent sound on. Of the current things on the market - I think the Vox is one of the best.

That all being said, over the last 5 years or so (as my guitar chops and ability to get decent tone have improved) I've started to purchase a few low watt combos (a 12W SS Marshall, a 5W tube EPI, etc).

I have found that the subtle difference between a modeled sound and the sound of an SM57 in front of a 10" or 12" speaker makes all the difference in the world. My simulators do not get used all that much any more.

However, simulators can be the right tool for the right job - and your application may indeed be best served with a simulator.
 
Amazing Grace
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=561665

While I'm not that happy with my playing on this I think the sounds on this software amp modeler are very good for clean playing. I don't like any software amp modelers I've heard for distortion, but this one can get good clean, "chimey" sounds on a strat and a nice clean sound on an EP or other guitar. (Think "Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam)

You can also get a decent blues/slightly distorted sound, but anymore than that and it just sounds like ass in my opinion.

SimulAnalogue Suite, it's free.
http://www.simulanalog.org/guitarsuite.htm

I also have some other clips of it that sound much better if you're interested in hearing them.

I've never owned a hardware modeler before so I don't know about those. But a guy at a church I go to plays lead using a Pod XT and he gets some real nice sounds live.
 
i use GuitarSuite on pretty much all my songs. its better than nothing. hopefully soon i can start cranking my amp and recording that instead.

another decent one i've tried is Juicy77 but for some reason it won't show up in REAPER.
 
Mikeh-thanks for the input, can you name a specific vox modeler?

Danny-that does sound pretty good, thanks for the link. By the way...what acoustic are you using? Sounds great.....

Zed-I've just tried the Juicy77 and it is pretty good, the reason you can't find it in REAPER is because it's under the name "High Gain Electric Guitar Amplifier"
 
antispatula said:
Zed-I've just tried the Juicy77 and it is pretty good, the reason you can't find it in REAPER is because it's under the name "High Gain Electric Guitar Amplifier"
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DUH!!! haha ok i'm dumb, thanks man. another one to look into is called "mda combo", but only use it for the speaker sim.

i'll run the Tube Screamer and JCM900 plugin from guitar sweet, and put the mda combo behind it in "speaker sim" mode (don't push any gain on mda cuz it sounds like garbage) and it helps to get rid of a lot of the fizzle.

i like the JCM900 for rhythm guitar and the Juicy77 for leads.
 
I've got a Vox Tonelab SE that can sound very good. I replaced the stock tube and it sounded better. You can get a decent small amp for the price of one of those, but I think they have a less spendy model now.

As far as software goes, I think the "guitar amp pro" that's included with Apple's Logic Express is surprisingly good, and I just ordered the $20 musician's friend stupid buy for Amplitube this morning (they're sold out now -- trusty email notifications :) ) - I'll let you know on that one. You need good hardware (preamp) / sampling rate / bit depth for the computer models to be acceptable, otherwise, the flaws introduced get magnified in a crappy way.

I also play through real amps and have for 23 years - I have been unable to duplicate the sound I get from, say, my Marshall JCM800 2204 half stack, but that's no big deal - the amp models still sound good, just different.
 
I use the Podxt for a lot of album stuff. You have to dig deeper than the presets, but the power is there to do just about anything you want.

IMO, clean is much easier to get than distorted. Half distorted is harder than full-on super distortion.
 
a 5wt tube combo will get you evicted before you can say "Class A" :D it can be unbearably loud. I couldn't turn it past noon in a music store, i was afraid of being asked to leave.

for about half of what you paid for your amp, try the Behringer V-Tone GDI21 - a SansAmp copy attempt (they also have corresponding direct boxes for bass and acoustic, as do Tech 21 SansAmps, all having good reviews). You may just find a useful sound or two. It actually sounds much better direct than into a small amp. It's a pedal, so many make the mistake of running it into a cheap combo (or they do it for lack of options, like me). it has a balanced XLR out as well as standard unbalanced 1/4".

for the money (mine was $30 shipped from some vendor on Amazon) it's quite a box, especially for your situation. If you liked a few soft emulations, I guarantee you'll like many of these all-analog models. Cleans and overdriven.

Tech 21 also has a small amp called Trademark 10 (discontinued, replaced by Trademark 30) which is a combo with the same SansAmp interface built-in, also with XLR DI.

read up on these on Harmony Central.
 
Gear_Junky said:
for about half of what you paid for your amp, try the Behringer V-Tone GDI21 - a SansAmp copy attempt (they also have corresponding direct boxes for bass and acoustic, as do Tech 21 SansAmps, all having good reviews). You may just find a useful sound or two. It actually sounds much better direct than into a small amp.
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I have a GDI21 and IMO it sounds like ass running direct. But stick that sucker in front of a clean tube amp and it sounds killer.
As for digital amp modeling the Behringer V-Amp Pro is the best that I've used. It has more of a realistic sound than the Pod or the Vox Tonelab.
 
Makes me wonder if it's just our ears/tastes or gear difference.

the only sound I like through my cheap solid-state amp is a fender-esque clean (a fender "bassman" setting i found on unofficial SansAmpt GT2 site) - it's a nice "fat" clean with very VERY slight overdrive if you dig in (is this what they call "harmonic distortion"?)

I also noticed that if I run the amp and the GDI21 on very low volume, this setting gets dirty, but when I turn up to loud, it cleans up and sounds nice.

but any of the Marshall/Vox/Mesa sounds into the amp are too harsh, no matter how I play with EQ, but they're very nice into my small behringer mixer and out to my HiFi stereo (for lack of a PA). I can get "Smoke on the Water" crunch, heavy metal shred (not that I play it), plexi sounds, all fairly useable and pleasant.

My amp doesn't have an FX loop, so I tried disconnecting the spring reverb leads (rca type jacks) and using that, but into the power amp section it was worse).

I also tried the original Tech 21 SansAmp GT2 into a hybrid tube (1 preamp tube) combo at SamAsh and it also sounded "harsh" to me on overdriven settings. Even bypassing the preamp.

My guitar is a les paul copy with GFS Dream 180 humbuckers. it might depend on pups too.

i would imagine that anything will sound good into a real tube amp :) do you mean that you dial in actual "amp" models on the gdi21 and get those sounds into the clean channel of a tube amp? if so, even when i can afford a tube amp I'll keep the gdi21. For now I will use the clean sound I like and I ordered a Danelectro ds2 distortion ($15!) to use in front of the gdi21. we'll see.

ocnor said:
I have a GDI21 and IMO it sounds like ass running direct. But stick that sucker in front of a clean tube amp and it sounds killer.
As for digital amp modeling the Behringer V-Amp Pro is the best that I've used. It has more of a realistic sound than the Pod or the Vox Tonelab.
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I hate all the software amp modelers. I haven't found one that I can get a good distorted sound out of. That being said, the cleans are pretty decent on most of them. If you're playing mostly clean, just about anything would work. Even plugging directly into your interface via a DI.

Since you don't use distorted sounds that much, you might look at the free option that was mentioned earlier.

If you're wanting to get something, I would go with Line 6. IMO, they're the best when it comes to modeling.
 
The simulanalogue guitar suite is pretty nice. Probably the best modeler I've played through.
 
antispatula said:
For those who have actually tried one, tell me your thoughts on one of those Line 6 POD or POD Pocket, or any other relatively cheap modeler. Don't tell me go out out and buy a nice real amp, because I don't want to, at least not right now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, most electric I play is clean.
Click to expand...

I have the Line 6 and it can do clean ... but there's a reason they call them simulators. They're trying to copy the tube amps and there's no denying that gorgeous tone.

You do electric clean, then you'll probably be happy with a modeler/simulator.

Free software amp modeler's are cheap and I heard some decent cleans.:o
 
I can't believe no one has talked about the boss gt-8!! IMO it's the best one out there. sounds great going direct out, plus it front of any amp.
 
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