Modeling vs. Real Tube for live vs. recording

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rickson Gracie
  • Start date Start date
one thing I haven't tried is my modeler with my variac -- be right back! :D
 
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i played a variax at a guitar center and i could not get it to sound like a real guitar for the life of me yet i see people on the internet praise them. maybe i wasnt using it right but i played around with it for a while.
 
Sound is sound. There is no way to tell what the source of a sound on a recording is: what people hear is whether it speaks to them or not.

Me, I mic up amps, run direct through distortion pedals, whatever it takes to get a sound that works.

I believe that reducing it to "modeling vs real tube" etc is making an absurdity of the real world: the choices are infinite, and there's no discernible reason for dogmatically saying "I only record with Marshall stacks turned up to 10" any more than it would be to say "The only good sound is from a Line 6 Pod."

Stop obsessing over details and worry about the music.:D
 
As I was driving home from work last Friday listening to some Porcupine Tree, I was reminded of this thread.

PT is one of my favorite bands - Steven Wilson is both a great songwriter, is blessed with a very distinctive voice, and is a HELL of a producer, I get all gushy when I talk about his mixes. Importantly in this context, however, he's also not afraid to play with modeling gear. Live he uses a Bad Cat half stack, but in the studio pretty much anything goes.

This sort of came to a head a few years ago with the release of their (excellent) album "Deadwing." On it, Wilson ditched his Bad Cat live rig and recorded the entire album with a Pod (though, to be fair, he was running into a Marshall 4x12).

This makes for a pretty interesting listening experience - you can listen to the same band, with the same producer, on "In Absentia" (the release before "Deadwing") or "Fear of a Blank Planet" (the release after) using primarily real amps mic'd up, and then pop in "Deadwing" and hear the same guys playing with modeling gear.

To my ears it's clear that In Absentia and Blank Planet do have better sounding distorted guitars than Deadwing, but what really jumps out at you is the fact that in the hands of a competent producer, you can get pretty damned good results out of a Pod. Normally I have a pretty good ear for this stuff (I'd ID'd the Pod on the first Revis album within ten seconds of the distorted guitars kicking in, checked the liner notes, and sure enough...), but I had NO idea he wasn't using his Bad Cat rig until I watched some of the included studio footage videos, saw him tweaking the proverbial red kidney bean, and checked the liner notes where he proudly states it was all line6.

I think he did it to prove a point, really, about us analog tube snobs. :p He certainly succeeded, in my eyes.
 
Rickson Gracie said:
im my experience the modelers just dont sit in the mix as well in a recording but live it just doesnt matter as much.

to me a recording is like a work of art. i dont want to use an artificial simulation of a tube amp when i will hear this recording forever while in a live situation its more of a one time deal it doesnt matter as much.
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I'm an advocate of modelers but I have experienced the same "sitting in the mix" issue. I have found that some material is easier to get the modeler to sit in the mix well and I use a POD or V-amp quite often. I have done so many comparisons with my setup between amps and modelers that I usually do some scratch tracks with a modeler and the final tracking with amps.
 
OK - one last thing from me, based on my experience:

1) it's much easier to get a *crappy* sound using any old amp than it is using a modern (last couple of years) modeler

2) it's usually easier to get a *good* sound using a modern modeler than it is using any old amp

3) it's easier to get a *great* sound using a really good amp than it is using any modeler (and some will argue that it's not possible with a modeler - I'm not going there)

4) it's almost always *easier* to use a modeler :)
 
starbuck26 said:
Sure your not underestimating the ears of non-guitar players?
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Are you sure you don't overestimate the guitar-sound in music? :p

Nah, really. There might be exceptions but very few. Non-guitar-playing listeners are as proficient in judging guitartones as we were before we started to play guitar... at best. :D

I think non-musicians or people who do not play one of the instruments used in a piece of music are much more interested in the whole picture than into a detail like guitar-tone.

A lot of music-lovers don't even hear the difference between a Les Paul, a Tele and a Strat played thru the same amp.

This has nothing to do with ignorance or stupidity - it's just not in their focus.

So don't worry about the audience as long as it sounds good to you and you know you're not tone-deaf. :)
 
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