just how popular are plug-ins for guitar?

G

GreenDank

New member
Do people use plug-ins to substitute amps very often in rock and metal? Do "big" studios use them? I goofed with the JCM 900 emulator, and I kinda dig it. I don't have all of my favorite recording stuff with me outside of a few stompboxes and a laptop (just relocated), and it seems to at least satisfy the urge to record something.

Here's a test with some hotstepper-programmed drums where I did the guitars clean through a tube screamer (very low gain, more as a preamp), and then applied the JCM900 emu. Any good? I did MINIMAL tweaking here, just to test. It's the top 2 clips on the page:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=696820
 
I don't have a definitive answer as I don't use computer recording, and I have never recorded in a "real" studio, but I would imagine they aren't used terribly often, as recording a guitar live with an amp in that situation is a pretty common thing, and there are plenty of knon recording techniques in those places that it doesn't save much time.

Now, I could see someone have a guitarist record a guitar track DI as well as through the amp, and then perhaps run it through those VST guitar rigs for some different sounds, but again - how often it happens? Couldn't say, but it probably isn't a terribly large amount of the time... of course, I've been known to be wrong :p
 
Plug-ins are very popular and effective.

Particularly the kind where you PLUG IN to an actual amplifier, rather than a fake one that sounds like utter crap.

.
 
I've use the SimulAnalog plugins for clean tones and it works real well for that. I've also gotten good lightly overdriven tones for blues and stuff. You definitely need a decent sounding guitar though or you can forget about it.

Obviously nothing compares to using a really nice amp but that should go without saying.
 
GreenDank said:
Do people use plug-ins to substitute amps very often in rock and metal? Do "big" studios use them? I goofed with the JCM 900 emulator, and I kinda dig it. I don't have all of my favorite recording stuff with me outside of a few stompboxes and a laptop (just relocated), and it seems to at least satisfy the urge to record something.

Here's a test with some hotstepper-programmed drums where I did the guitars clean through a tube screamer (very low gain, more as a preamp), and then applied the JCM900 emu. Any good? I did MINIMAL tweaking here, just to test. It's the top 2 clips on the page:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=696820
Click to expand...
It sounds good.
Not great but good.
If you had a less muddy clean tone then you would probably get better results. PLay about with your pre amp EQ to get a cleaner sound. Its muddy in the low mids. And not much high end.

Eck
 
RightOnMusic said:
i'm in music for advertising and 99.9% of the things we air with guitar on them use NI Guitar Rig.
Click to expand...
Yeah adverts are known for their bad guitar tones unless its a real song thats been recorded properly.

Eck
 
I kinda like recording either DI through a tube pre, or record a clean tone through a tube amp, then add distortion with a plug (I use UAD Nigel). Seems a good combo for me, because then I can make decisions on tone as part of the mix.
 
I've been thinking of checking out Waves GTR. The problem with it is they make you get their hardware interface as well. I've messed around with iZotope Trash a little but haven't really tested it's amp models too much.
 
ecktronic said:
It sounds good.
Not great but good.
If you had a less muddy clean tone then you would probably get better results. PLay about with your pre amp EQ to get a cleaner sound. Its muddy in the low mids. And not much high end.

Eck
Click to expand...

good idea; I'll definitely give that a shot with just clean (and a better preamp).

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interesting insights all around; the positive and negative. thanks to all.

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I don't know if I'm agreeing with their unpopularity in metal, the more I read. There's some killer clips people are posting over at andy sneap's site; however, I do think that many start with a "real amp," but there are many people using plug-ins and impulse stuff with some great results. hurts my head to try and figure it all out though.
 
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