How far do you get with amp modelers.

We've got two of the Vox Valvetronix AD50vt's and 6 of the line6 podxt pro's (two each in rehearsal space) and, to be completely honest, they're alright. I, like many others, fell prey to the Zoom 505 back in my youth and hated the damn thing. i borrowed a mates line6 kidney thing at the time and that wasn't much better, so when we started buying this gear for work i was....well.... hesitant to say the least. However, the XT pro's sound way better than i remember the older amp sims sounding and with some tweaking you can get some very usable clean and crunch tones out of it. The valvetronix does a great blues crunch and warm clean tone, and for live use it's pretty good. Recorded it sounds ok but does seem to take longer to get a half decent sound than it does with just using a real amp. The biggest problem i have is that a lot of our students couldn't give less of a crap about actual "tone" and it's either ultra mega ridiculous high gain (i grew up on a healthy diet of nu-metal and the crap they do still offends me!), horribly fizzy super bright clean sounds, or they just bung up a preset and say "yep, i now sound exactly like *insert artist here*".

I've been very impressed with amplitube 3 and, if needs be, it's my goto amp sim. Logic 9's new amp sim is better than it's older amp sim but it's still no replacement for an amp and a mic. i've been working on finishing my bands second album atm and where the recorded guitar tones don't work i tried using amp sims and after hours of tweaking i gave up and took the DI signal and reamped it through my little marshall practice amp; took about 15 mins to get exactly the tone i wanted. Then again, i think there may even be a psychological side to it. Mic'ing an amp i can easily break it down into stages and focus on each stage at a time; Get the amp tone, then choose a mic/s and position it/them, then choose a preamp and set levels, then tweak from there (although, normally at that point, the tweaks are just moving the mic and/or checking phase). With an amp sim it's all there to start with so it seems harder to focus on each aspect individually.
 
Another thing to mention is that amp sims don't take to a lot of eqing very well. you need to get the finished sound out of the sim, instead of trying to get it to sound like a miced amp and then eqing it to fit the mix.
 
I think they're getting pretty close now though, even if I am an amp guy. It's easy for me to be an amp guy though since I own so many of them for gigging.

But things like the VAmp (which I have) are almost prehistoric at this point and even the Vox stuff is getting long in the tooth by digital standards and I think even some of the software ampsims are a few years old.

Look at the very latest Fractal unit ....... that thing seems to get there and the reviews of it, by respected players, are just about universal in their praise of how completely it captures an amp's feel. And apparently every little detail of it's sound ...... pedals too.
Yeah ...... it's a lotta money but not THAT much more than my Mark V combo.

And if the Fractal has actually gotten there, it's only a matter of a few years before something that also does it will be half as much.
And the software modelers will follow suit.

Speaking as a long-time pro player geezer with a large amp collection ( the very type of guy that tends to disparage modeling ) .... I think that fairly soon .... say within' the next 5 years ..... the only good reason to own an amp will be for gigging live.
And even then .... I now have gigs where space is VERY tight and I'll just say, "Screw it ..... I'll use the modeler ..." even though it's only aight.

So if a hardware modeler came along that would really and truly do it ..... why the hell would I still drag around an amp?

That Fractal .......... ummmmmmmm ............. modeling ........... drool ..
 
To my mind (which is getting foggier by the day) one of the big drawbacks with sims and other digital stuff is also one of it's strengths, and that is flexibility and ever expanding range of options to mess with

with my guitar setup,outside of my guitars, in my real physical world I have two combo amps. On one I have a gain and tone control, on the other I have a gain, bass, mid, treble and reverb. I have 11 pedals on my board although two of them are tuner and buffer so really only 9 pedals and I'd say it's rare that I'd need to have more than three active (aside from the buffer) at any given time.

This small set up gives me an enormous range of options and tones and it has taken me a lot of time to dial in the sounds I want even for the three songs on my current "playing out solo" set list. But I know this setup extremely well now, and can get to the point where the sound that I hear when I hit the strings is about what I was thinking I wanted when I was putting the song together much more quickly than I could when I first started out.

When I look at modelers my concern is that with so many heads, cabs, stomps, Eqs, Reverbs., etc, with so many possible combinations unless all you do is mess with them all day every day, all you ever do is flip through presets and hope that something jumps out as being what you want. There are just so many possibilities you can never really know the whole set up really well.

To my way of thinking and working, I prefer a few options that I know well that I can go to and just get what I want rather than a mind numbing quantity of options and tangents to wander down that will just suck up hours or even days time and energy fiddling with to try and get a sound I probably could have gotten from far less but better understood options in about ten minutes

Modelers do work for plenty of people though so I think this is one of those preference kind of things. Also could be that if you are setting up just for yourself, you need something different than if you need to offer a broad range of tone pallets to customers who may be coming in to record.
 
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I always thought that if I play iive, i'd use my modeler through an amp. I can dial in what i want and save it to memory or on a computer. Fr my particular modeler, the computer interface has all the nice controls like an amp, so i would just use a laptop.

Of course, i'll never play live. At least not where i would use an electric and an amp.
 
Chili said:
I always thought that if I play iive, i'd use my modeler through an amp. I can dial in what i want and save it to memory or on a computer. Fr my particular modeler, the computer interface has all the nice controls like an amp, so i would just use a laptop.

Of course, i'll never play live. At least not where i would use an electric and an amp.
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well .... I did that at first but .... thing is, your git usually goes thru the PA anyways and IF you're using a modeler ..... if you go direct you hear acatly how balanced the git is with everything else.
If I'm using an amp I'll use my nice pedalboard.
 
I just like the whole process of real amplifiers for recording. I could see going with a modeler for live playing if programming it didn't take much time, but I use a house amp live (no amp hauling) so I don't want a modeler.
 
Seeker of Rock said:
I just like the whole process of real amplifiers for recording. I could see going with a modeler for live playing if programming it didn't take much time, but I use a house amp live (no amp hauling) so I don't want a modeler.
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and I'm the exact opposite.
I WAY prefer an amp for live but don't mind a modeler at all for recording.
To me where most modelers fall short is in their dynamic response. Gigging I need to be able to just bear down on the strings to bring them outta a mix but modelers won't do that .... at least the ones I've tried .... so you gotta have a bunch of presets for different volume levels and switch to your soft crunch ... "oh I need a louder crunch" and go to that one and so forth.

But in the studio I can tailor the sound for one specific part.
 
Lt. Bob said:
and I'm the exact opposite.
I WAY prefer an amp for live but don't mind a modeler at all for recording.
To me where most modelers fall short is in their dynamic response. Gigging I need to be able to just bear down on the strings to bring them outta a mix but modelers won't do that .... at least the ones I've tried .... so you gotta have a bunch of presets for different volume levels and switch to your soft crunch ... "oh I need a louder crunch" and go to that one and so forth.

But in the studio I can tailor the sound for one specific part.
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Ive been struggling for ages trying to figure out why they may sound like guitars but they don't play like them ... one thing i do know after reading shitloads of peoples ideas on them is that most people don't hear or feel the difference,you do so that to me means you know your instrument and your ears are good,so i got to ask what do you find are the best amp modellers ... if you could help me by naming a preset or 2 that would be great :)

right now i`m down to using valve pre amps with cab emulation .. still sounds like pants and kills dynamics,but its the closest yet to playing through a real amp. so now im trying to preserve the nuances and trying to EQ out the nastiness of the raw pre amp tones ....

also got to ask if you have perfect pitch ?
 
cakewalkKaKed said:
Ive been struggling for ages trying to figure out why they may sound like guitars but they don't play like them ... one thing i do know after reading shitloads of peoples ideas on them is that most people don't hear or feel the difference,you do so that to me means you know your instrument and your ears are good,so i got to ask what do you find are the best amp modellers ... if you could help me by naming a preset or 2 that would be great :)

right now i`m down to using valve pre amps with cab emulation .. still sounds like pants and kills dynamics,but its the closest yet to playing through a real amp. so now im trying to preserve the nuances and trying to EQ out the nastiness of the raw pre amp tones ....

also got to ask if you have perfect pitch ?
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well, I'm also a piano tuner so I have very good pitch but I'd call it good relative pitch rather than perfect.

And in the real world perfect pitch is often a pain in the ass since so many things aren't exactly on pitch.

Also i venture to say that actual perfect pitch is pretty rare. I see the term used very often but if you have very good relative pitch people tend to characterize that as perfect pitch but it's not the same thing at all.

I've know and played with probably thousands of players and have only know 3 or 4 that actually truly had what I'd call perfect pitch.
I have pretty much perfect pitch in relation to a standard. If I get a reference note I'm pretty damned close to perfect at that pitch.

As for the modelers ...... as I mentioned earlier, I simply haven't played on the very latest and they're gonna be the ones that'll come closest.

But out of all the ones I have played from the previous generation ... the one I felt sounded, played and felt the most like a real amp was the Rocktron Utopia.
On clean sounds especially it does really well. Distorted sounds are acceptable but more importantly the thing feels and responds like an amp.
But if I had any money ( I'm a full time player so I don't) the Fract axe-fx would be the one I'd be most interested in.

For a cheaper one I've seen/heard some demos that have me curious about the Zoom G2.

And as for presets ....... it depends on the modeler but I rarely find presets acceptable ..... you gotta do some tweaking to get it right.
And don't forget ...... I don't use software modelers since I'm primarily a 'live' player so all the stuff I use is always hardware units.
 
Lt. Bob said:
well, I'm also a piano tuner so I have very good pitch but I'd call it good relative pitch rather than perfect.
/txt cut for thread ti
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Piano tuner !!! i knew you were real deal !!! boy have i got some questions for you ... but i wont ask,at least in this thread it will derail even more (piano vst instrument tuning being out within itself sitting with guitar in a mix e.t.c)

thanks for clearing the perfect pitch versus relative pitch up for me, i have very good relative pitch ... things that most people cannot hear will instantly jump out and clobber my ears making lots of music unbearable ... im not "techy" by a long chalk,so trying to find answers to what i hear is hard work confounded by not knowing what im looking for to find answers to (if you know what i mean)


ill give you an example of what im getting at ... this will either help me or shoot me in the foot :)


if i listen *through* the guitar "sound" peeling off its layers and try and focus in on the actual base tone itself on a professional recording there is a very very fat warm "wobbling" kinda rotating sound missing from every amp sim ive tried (hardware or software),and ive tried hundreds and hundreds of different things combined in different ways to try and recreate it ... cant find it

that missing "fatness" is what i`m trying to find,have you any idea what i`m trying explain ?


oh and i agree about presets (you heard that god dam awful "spring reverb" in amplitube? ... horrible horrible nasty thing),but there a good starting point ... but a preset example is a good pointer in the right direction to the tones :)


there's a not bad high gain preset in the Zoom G2,pretty fat and well balanced although pretty toppy,but can soon lop that off ... if i remember right its cleans can be ok to .. i had one for a while and practiced through it quite a lot ... it wasn't a bad unit really,good fun
 
thanks for the examples,ill start googling those now :)

edit:-

ok i listened to the Rocktron Utopia demo's off here Rocktron - Utopia G100 ... imo half of it is missing,dunno what's missing but it sure as hell isn't there whatever it is,this would be normaly where i would stop looking,but you posted it so now i look for another source :)


another edit:-

sounds a lot better here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6vPKtoVHog
 
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I think in the right hands, any quality software sim will work for a recording. Amplitube, ReValver, Guitar Rig, whatever. They're all good enough to get usable sounds from them that can and will fool even the staunchiest tone snob - if you know how to tweak em. It helps tremendously if you have experience with real amps first. I've used sims, with what I think was good results, but I like real amps better just cuz I like real amps. I like the power and loudness. But really it's all about the sound you get. I'd rather hear a song with good sounding sims than bad sounding real amps.
 
There might be an idea floating in this thread... The New Sim Tone thread. If i have time tonight maybe I will get my best sim tone and post it in a new thread. Or someone else can start it now. :D
 
Greg_L said:
I think in the right hands, any quality software sim will work for a recording. Amplitube, ReValver, Guitar Rig, whatever. They're all good enough to get usable sounds from them that can and will fool even the staunchiest tone snob - if you know how to tweak em. It helps tremendously if you have experience with real amps first. I've used sims, with what I think was good results, but I like real amps better just cuz I like real amps. I like the power and loudness. But really it's all about the sound you get. I'd rather hear a song with good sounding sims than bad sounding real amps.
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very true,there are great sounds in a lot of amp sims and yes you can fool even the biggest tone snob with some pre recorded played back material ... but where amps sims fall down is replacing a real amp in a silent recording setup,some of the amp sim tones are great but when you actually play through them they don't have that playabilty there not an all round solution,most don't get anywhere near to a good amp ... although they reproduce lame amp tones very well,i get get the same crappy not inspired feeling playing through an amp sim as i do when i play through a sucky amp :) ...

your one of the lucky ones that can crank that amp,a lot of us cant :(
 
I personally dont think there is any substitute for an amp. I wont use any software as my base guitar track...EVER. I will however use it on dubs. If I had it my way Id have a Fender Super Reverb, a Marshall Bluesbreaker, a Vox AC30, and more tone pedals than you could shake a stick at, and that would still not make for a full color wheel amp-wise, even with the FX on my software. BUT, it would make up for the one dimensional world of amp modelers, and trust me on this, amp modelers are not only one dimensional in the grand scheme of things, but they really do sit oddly in the mix. They are just far more reactive to other FX applied to them than a miced amp track. Im a firm believer that if you can, its always best to get everything you want on the guitar tone (wahwah, distortion, compression, reverb, tremolo) before you ever record it. If I have an amp sim/wah/verb/comp/EQ all put on one DI'ed guitar track, Ive created something of an amp circuit on my mix, that is reactive to each control knob (the different fx would be the knobs). So if you think about that for a second, you can only imagine what that does to your work flow, and the density of your mix in the big picture.
 
Lt. Bob said:
and I'm the exact opposite.
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And I'm the half opposite of that: I don't use them for recording OR live playing. :)

Also, Greg made a great point about a good modeler sounding better than a shitty mic'd up amp for recording. And in context when I'm talking about loving to use mic'd amps, I'm using a Fender Super Reverb, and older Ampeg G212 (live), and a JCM800 series Marshall half stack. If my options were between mic'ing a Fender Frontman 15/similar or using a modeler, I have no doubt I'd choose the modeler without a second thought.
 
I use an old Zoom modeler when I'm tracking with my drummer. No worry about amp bleed. I split the signal with a Y cable, so one channel is through the modeler and the other goes direct, which I run through Studio Devil's British Valve Custom plugin. The two layer quite nicely.
 
I've been using amp modeling of one sort or another for almost twenty years. I'm not shy about it, not ashamed, and not worried. Most people cannot tell the difference, and I honestly think that those who claim they can actually can't. In fact, my bands use nothing but V-Amps - a Bass Pro (Brit Class A) for me, a Pro for the other guitar, and a tabletop Bass unit for the bass. It's all in a rack with a set of mic pres, a dbx compressor, and a line mixer. That and our pedals is all that we bring on stage. Two cables to the FOH and we're playing in like 5 minutes. We get the mix dialed in at rehearsal, and it's exactly what we need when we hit the stage. The stage volume is completely under control. Once I get over my newbie quota I can post links to some in-depth discussion, though I'm currently working on replacing the entire deal with a laptop running reaper and podfarm in order to save my back - the home-built rack weighs almost as much as me!

I think the main problem with the "feel" of playing through amp modelers is just plain volume. Playing through headphones or modest studio monitor it can be tough to get that body buzz - not to mention the added sustain/feedback from the interaction between the amp and the guitar - that you get from a real amp. Plug it into a good loud PA, though, and youll never know the difference.

The other guitarists in my last band used to complain that the V-Amp didn't have the same "dynamics" as his tube amps, but I know for a fact that his real problem came from being forced to listen to his guitar in the context of the mix rather than drowning out the rest of the band or standing right in front of his own amp. So he would just wail on his guitar so that he was as loud as I would let him get and then complain that he didn't have any headroom.

The other thing about amp Sims is that some of them put out a kind of digital hash in the frequency range which exceeds a typical guitar cabinet's capabilities, which can come across as a fizziness or an unnatural "digital" sort of sound. There's a dude who will charge you way to much for a box called the Harmonic Converger, which is not much more than a filter to knock that stuff down. Anything filtering out the range above say 5KHz or so will make a very noticeable difference. The V-Amps have built in post-process EQ which can be set to do a decent job of fizz control as well.
 
the V-Amps are close to prehistoric by digital standards so if you like them the new stuff will please you for sure.
I gig ocasionally with a V-Amp ..... they're usable but that's about it. You can get them acceptable but they do NOT respond like an amp. Very compressed and fizzy on distorted sounds.

Still ......... I think the day is coming when amps might not be neccessary anymore.
 
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