Amp/Guitar modeling and related discussion thread

Certif1ed wrote: POD Farm uses too much CPU - yes, it's friendly, but when you've got a heap of VSTs for synth and vocal processing, it doesn't make sense to have this resource drain running too. I'm getting used to the X3 interface - it's certainly friendlier than the XT Pro, that's for sure!

I meant that you can use POD-Farm as a frontend for the X3 ... it's easier to use, you can play around with the different settings and models just by dragging elements on the computer screen rather than using the tiny display and overloaded buttons/dials of the X3 (Pro).

The X3 Pro is a cool piece of gear. I nearly pulled the trigger on one myself, but I couldn't justify spending 900 AUD plus another few hundred dollars for the floorboard when I could just get all the inputs and outputs I needed plus a floorboard for 590 AUD.
The thing that bothers me about it is that it's a 3 space rackmount unit, just never understood why they didn't reduce the size of it, but ah well.
I definitely agree on the EQ-ing part, for my rhythm tone it I found I absolutely had to use the 4 band semi parametric EQ to dial out the fizz.

Certainly lots of amp models, but fortunately I was able to narrow it down to about 10 at most, so I didn't need to spend heaps of time tweaking since I had any idea before I bought it what amp models were useful to me and what weren't. So far I've narrowed it down to 5 amp models for the 18th bank (a user bank, since I avoid the presets completely).
On Channel A, Line 6 Super Sparkle set with 0 drive so it stays clean regardless of whether I use the humbuckers or split coil mode. I then have compression set up so if I need a slight boost, I hit the compression switch.
Channel B I've got Line 6 Clean, set to slight dirt, so I get a lightly over driven clean tone.
Channel C I'm using the dual tone feature and using the 2001 Diamond Plate and 2001 Treadplate dual models for the rhythm guitar sound
Channel D is of course my lead tone, the 1993 Solo 100 Head model.

On Channels A, B and D, I've got reverb and delay, but in addition to that on Channel D I've got the Screamer stomp box model, the 4 band semi parametric EQ set to boost certain mid range frequencies that I like boosted in addition to cutting high frequencies I don't want. I have the wah module set to Fassel.
Channel C, the effects on are the Screamer stomp box model and of course 4 band semi parametric EQ which helps to bring out pick attack and that "percussive chunk" that I love about Mesa Boogie Rectifiers.

I'm definitely a very mid range heavy guy, you will not hear ultra scooped out Dimebag-esque tones from me ever. I notice some young kids like to get on a Mesa Boogie Rectifier or using a Rectifer amp model on a Line 6 device or whatever and they scoop out all the mids and set the gain to maximum and want to get this grinding sound, but to me that is completely wrong and you totally miss the point of a Rectifier if you do that.
Rectos in particular get easier to play when you back off the mids i.e that become less stiff, more compressed feeling, less resistant to picking if you will and this effect is of course enhanced further when you increase the gain.
For me and a lot of other guys, the fun with the Recto begins when you slam the mids over 70 per cent and back down the gain a little. The sound is more focused, less compressed and it feels more stiff as you play.
Bumping up the mids a lot, as well as backing down the gain which reduces the compressed, less resistant feel, creates a more unforgiving playing experience.
If you're having a bad playing day, or if someone that doesn't have good chops plays through it, it sounds like garbage, because all the mistakes in your playing get magnified with these mid heavy settings.
But when you're having a good day and you hit the strings the right way, it is infinitely more rewarding to play than the low mids, high gain setting.
There is so much more pick attack, it sounds more focused and the subtle details of your playing stand out more.
It's intimidating at first for many less experienced players, but I think if they learn that about the Recto and Recto models, it's great incentive to work on cleaner, more precise chops and understand the importance of really knowing how to attack the strings for that great rhythm sound for thrash metal and/or death metal.

^ have you connected it to the computer yet? POD-Farm is quite easy to use ... certainly more comfortable than using the X3 Pro directly.

As you know, Boss puts a whole lot into a small package. The BR864 is about the size of a laptop computer but has 8 tracks with 64 virtual tracks, a drum machine, looping, bouncing, auto punch-in/out, mixing, mastering, individual track EQ, etc.  Someone with a little bit of experience could really do a lot with it. In recording my CD I probably used only 20% of this machine's capability.

GaryB wrote: Like I said, I'm not a techy but I had a lot of fun with this project and can now see that all of this new equipment gives someone endless possibilities when it comes to their personal music.   BTW...I recently picked up the Jimi Hendrix Signature pedal by Digitech. It's pretty hi-tech for me but I plan on spending more time with it (not to sound like,or to cover Hendrix but just to see what all it can do).

That's true. The possibilities for direct recording alone with that Jimi Hendrix pedal are pretty impressive. You've got Marshall Plexi tones, Univibe, Octavia, Fuzz Face, and Clyde Wah all in a single pedal.

Of course I think your comments are useful ... people who think about buying an X3 Live should know that a real tube amp still has the potential to sound much, much better. Eventually Line 6 will publish a new version of their modeling technology, and I'm sure that it will sound better than their current technology but there will still be tube amps that sound better.

I know that all this must be really confusing to those who never played a real tube amp and are now wondering whether they should get one or a modeling amp instead. It's a different situation for me - as a beginner I had a solid state amp (Peavey), then I got a tube amp (Engl) ... and today I'm using a modeling amp. So I know all three worlds (analog solid state, analog tube, digital modeling) first hand ...

^ we could go on like this for months and never reach an agreement. I really like some of the X3 models, and I don't even have to use the semi parametric EQ to get a sound that's ok for practicing purposes. I'm sure that not all of the 78 models sound good, and maybe none of them is truly great, but I really don't care. I won't spend a four figure amount on a tube amp that might give me a better sound but is *much* less convenient to use.

^ here we go again, comparing €300 gear with €3000 gear ... 

^ I think you always need some EQ to get a good tone ... simply because every guitar is different. A cool thing that you can do with the POD is to record the dry signal and then not pass it to the POD-Farm plugin directly, but route it through a EQ in Ableton first. Gives you much more flexibility than the 4 band semi parametric EQ of the POD X3.

Edited by Mr ProgFreak - May 28 2009 at 12:36

 

debrewguy wrote: Petrovsk Mizinski wrote: I don't buy the sound comes from your fingers bullsh*t and never really did. If it's true, just walk onto the stage with nothing and apparently the sounds of the guitar and amp are going to magically going to come out of your hands and fingers. Bullsh*t. Tone is the result of many many factors. The body wood of the guitar, the materials in the bridge and type of bridge, the wood of the neck, the wood of the fretboard, how the neck is constructed, what brand of strings, what gauge of strings, what the nut is made of and then what the frets are made of. Then we have what amp settings you use, what amp you use in particular , what pedals you have connected, whether they are true bypass or not. On an album it comes down to how it mixed and mastered, how many times you tracked the guitar and what mic you used etc etc. On stage, it's about the venue size, whether the floor transmits too much bass, whether you are going direct to FOH and coming out of studio monitors, whether you are going through your amp mic'd up and sending that to FOH. In the end, your fingers can shape things like picking dynamics, articulation, subtlety, nuance. When you hear a great guitarist, like Guthrie Govan or David Gilmour, they have that ability to do that, but they also choose certain gear too because they have tonal needs in mind. DB - Yes, but their sound, their style is in their playing, right. So debrewguy, tell me why you had a Tube Screamer modified if you apparently think you can sound great without decent gear? DB - didn't get it modified, bought as such. For $42CAD. found out afterwards. It has a bit more gain to it. f**k that man, don't spend money, just walk into a room empty handed and guitar tone magically comes from your hands and fingers DB - a good guitar player can make a decent amp & guitar sound good. A poor guitar player will not sound better no matter what set up he has. I have a 30 yr old Yamaha FG-325. I sound not too bad on it. Mostly because of tricks (suspended chords, open chordings etc.). I've had semi-pro players pick it up & make it sound like a $2000 guitar. Fact is, my old practice amp sounds like a buzzy piece of sh*t no matter how much I practiced and get better as a guitarist. I sound 1000 times better than my Line 6 POD because it has the tonal options I need. DB - I'm not saying that you can't get a variety of tones out of a multi-effects unit. I'm saying that  too often, the technology overcomes the actual playing. It's great to hear someone sound exactly like Gilmour, Angus, or Hendrix. I prefer to hear someone play , say, David Gilmour, on a SG through a Vox; or Santana via a Strat & Jazz Chorus. It makes it interesting to see what they can do. But technology is & should be nothing more than the icing on the cake. Even the few pedals I have won't make me sound like Billy Gibbons, SRV, or Rothery. And at most, the only other effect I want is an echo/delay pedal. Too often, you see guitarists that get the exact same set up as their idols, yet can't sound like them. Used to be, until the early 80s, that most bands had their own sound. BTO used Garnet amps, Blackmore with his Strat through some sort of Tape Machine as a mega boost before hitting his amp, Jimmy Page with his Les Paul tricked out so that he could choose a thousand variations from his pickups (Neck & Bridge, HB or Single Coil, mix of them all), Gilmour and his succession of delay/echo pedals, Strats through Marshall, Gibson Firebirds through Twin Reverbs, Hand made guitars throug Vox and /or deacky. Now it's pile on the effects, triple rectify, and still come out sounding like everyone else trying to sound like X, Y, or Z. I know, they're fun. And I had my eyes on a used Boss GT-8, whose owner ( a semi pro jazzbo) had a bunch of great clean jazz sounds preset in the unit. $300 CAD plus taxes (14%). Then it hit me. Upgrading my Pickups on my Epiphone LP Custom would make it sound better. So I've picked up a pair of '57 classic re-issues. I've got my Traynor YCV50's clean & gain channels (gain also has a boost function). I've got the aforementioned TS9 mod, the Boss FBM '59 (which I'll see how the new pickups sound with it. I may sell it), a Line ToneCore Ubermetal, a Boss CE-2 CHorus. And may, I'll get a delay/echo pedal. BEtween all of that, I should be short of time if I ever decide to find all the different sounds that I am able to get without resorting to a multi-effects unit and try to sound like someone else. I do like to get certain tones. But in the end, I'm playing what I got in my hands. Plugged into what I have as an amp. The middle part may change, may expand, but is not likely to, may decrease (likely). Indeed, many times, I don't use all the pedals in a playing session anyway. Concentrate on the song.

I can bet it's just really FG-325 sounding like it's being played by a good player rather than it sounding like " a 2000 dollar guitar".
Someone else picking up a guitar does not change the inherent tone of an instrument.
Player from player is a variable, but the inherent tone of an instrument is set in stone.
It's not a hard concept to understand mate.
I don't even understand why you've come into this thread and even started just saying this.
I didn't buy an X3 Live with the intention of sounding like my "idols" whatever that even means anymore, I bought it because I needed a flexible device that is going to offer me different amp/cabinet/mic/stomp box simulations and also have a unit that allows me to record directly into my computer without having to f**k around with mic placement.

I live at home with my parents and II have a limited budget.
If you could care to donate money for me to live by myself so I can afford a house and various tube amps and real pedals, microphones, another recording interface, then hey I can start recording via a tube amp.
But unfortunately that is not going to be the case so the X3 Live is the best solution I can have right now given my budget and my living situation.
I need 4 channels.
One is an extremely clean sound with no break up
The second is a clean sound with breakup
The 3rd is high gain rhythm tone
the 4th is a high gain lead tone.
I also would a need a MIDI control output.
The only amps of that I know off the top of my head that can do this is a Marshall JVM and MI Amplification Revelation.
I do not have 3399 AUD nor the 3699 AUD for either amp respectively.
Nor do I have a place to consistently crank them up to make them sound really good.
The fact is, no matter what gear you have, you need to tweak it to make it sound the best.
Some of my most favorite albums of all time have been recorded with amps that require months and months of tweaking to sound amazing.
Images and Words was recording using Mesa Boogie amps, notorious for being extremely tricky to dial in.
But isn't it funny how now it's known as one of the greatest prog metal albums of all time, but I do not see your name on the credits of any extremely innovative and creative albums despite your apparently "concentrate on the song" attitude. Petrucci also got some pretty gnarly tone as well on that album to boot.
Opeth has used a Boss GT-8 for an album too. Whether Opeth is to your taste or not, a lot of people liked Ghost Reveries, so clearly the GT-8 did not get in the way of the writing process.
Steve Wilson has used a POD for either Deadwing or In Absentia (don't remember which exactly) yet he got great tones and made an album a lot of people loved.


Tweaking and technology only gets in the way of the music creation if someone lets it.
When I bought my X3 Live, within about 4 days, of perhaps 2 hours of tweaking per day, and even between tweaking to check the tone I'm constantly writing new riffs, I was already recording and putting down some music on my computer.
Using a modeling unit/amp is a totally reasonable and rational approach for recording/using for writing music just as using an amp cranked up and mic'd up.