Amp/Guitar modeling and related discussion thread

Woops, you're right actually.
Lately, I've just been doing some less tight stuff and was experimenting with the TSS after the amp and then cutting lots of 800Hz to get a less honky sound yet with huge amounts of low end, so I was just kinda thinking about that was I was writing the post. Really great, sludgy, doomy tones that way.
Thinking back a few weeks, yes, I was running the TSS before the amp as usual, works great that way as a usual Tube Screamer too.
I think I did give the links to  8505 a while back. Did you end up ever trying it out?
Obviously, being modeled after a 6505/5150 (they are the same amp, just different names, the 6505 being the result of EVH leaving Peavey), it's good to use on metal.

I've noticed lately just how ridiculously good free amp sims are now.
They have gotten to the point where I've decided against paying for a copy of Revalver (and in this regard, I was lucky POD Farm was free for me anyway, being an X3 Live user), because the guys making free amp sims have pretty much equaled the commercial amp sims in quality and in some cases, even exceeded the quality.
Don't get me wrong, Revalver sounds stunning and the 6505 amp sims and JSX amp sims have really won my heart over, but I can't really justify paying 300 USD for it when I don't even use over half the amp sims, and when I can just download great free ones, donate perhaps 30 dollars to the creator if I feel they have made a quality product and just pick and choose the ones I want without having amp sims sitting around that I don't need.
I'll be honest , I don't even use more than about 10 or so of the ones included in POD Farm, most of them just aren't useful to me.

I will admit it takes more EQ-ing to get 8505 sounding right compared to Revalver's 6505, but to be fair 8505 has less front panel GUI tweaking abilities and you only have to cut, not boost, any frequencies with 8505 for it to sound great, and of course, as we know, cutting is a much more attractive and sonicly pleasing option than boosting since you don't run the risk of phase issues etc.
I pretty much just get rid of a chunk of 800Hz and 8505 sounds gorgeous.

My usual signal chain with 8505 is:
8505 > TSS > Voxengo Boogex > JB Ferox.> Ableton EQ Eight (to just remove frequencies, but it's mainly there for low and high pass filtering.

TSS (Tube Screamers Secret), is something I highly recommend as a replacement for the tube screamer simulations you get in most commercial packages. I even use it with Revalver now, that's how much I enjoy the sound of it
I use Catharis-Awesometime-fredman impulses, which can be found here
http://catharsis.supremepixels.com/impulses/
I've used literally so many different impulses that I cannot even begin to count, and have found these ones are among the best you can get for when you need high distorted tones for rock and metal.
JB Ferox is a fantastic, and also free, tape simulation plug in that really adds some sonic beef and some pleasing harmonics to your sound.
I pretty much never go without JB ferox now, no matter what I do. It works great on pretty much any mix buss application, be it guitars, bass, drums, or whatever. Not so much a good mastering tool, but there are other saturators out there for that application anyway.
I've never had the chance to really try out the expensive saturation plug ins, and many of the people that spent lots of money on saturation plug ins were quite impressed with JB Ferox, which says a lot.


Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - November 24 2009 at 01:47

The JCM 800 model, honestly, barely sounds like the real thing at all IMO, it just sounds kind of flat, dull, fizzy and slightly lifeless compared to a real deal Marshall JCM 800.
The Behringer V-Amp 2 was released in 2002 as well, and we have had another 6-7 years of modeling technology advancement since then, and I've heard computer software amp modelers, like the latest edition Guitar Rig, Peavey Revalver MK III and a few others that make the V-Amp 2 sound like a toy in comparison.

Edited by danova - November 26 2009 at 10:16

Ohhhh, awesome, so it arrived
My internet connection is being annoying, hence me not being on MSN much lately, but hopefully at one point you can tell me what think about the card there since that's getting a little off topic here anyway.

Indeed, as on the previous page, I gave a list of what I consider to be some of the benchmark tones in modern heavy metal. I tend to use a wide range rather than a small range, so I don't get stuck ending up having my tones sounding exactly the same as something I've heard before.
To me it's more about finding what frequencies in the guitar tone need working on, rather than striving for a particular tone, if that makes sense. Maybe it doesn't, heh.

The DI issue is mentioned on the Sneap forum, no surprise given the discerning ears on that board.
Well anyway, I look forward to hearing some stuff you record via your new PCI-E card, sounds like a very nice device indeed.

Side by side comparison of Diamond Plate and Gratifier is a most do for you sir.
But then again, if you've haven't played a real Recto in recent years, I guess  look at it not so much as what sounds more realistic, but what just sounds better to you.

Well, I haven't tried playing Losfer yet, but I guess if it turns out I get latency problems as well with that riff, than it might be time to look at one of these for christmas:

http://www.mackie.com/products/800r/index.html

I couldn't even get Revalver to work in real time when recording (i.e, monitor through Revalver as I recorded) via my POD and this firewire device should do the trick.
That said, I can always keep using my POD as a dongle so POD Farm will still work (And I can't really sell it at this stage anyway, not having any guitar amps per se), but plug it into the Onyx via the S/PDIF input and ultimately that will do my recording for me. That method seems to work well for many others , so I figure I cannot do wrong if I go for this.




Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - October 09 2009 at 04:15

Wow, can't get lower than 1024, something must be wrong especially since you have a faster computer than me (but your computer is just barely faster though IIRC). Maybe with USB 2.0 I have on the POD instead of the USB 1.1 that you have for your Line 6 interface is giving me an advantage, who knows? I sure don't really
1024 would definitely bring audible latency issues,  you're definitely right about that.
I've been working with 24 bits and 128 samples without a single problem for dry/DI tracking and audible latency is non existent for me.

Just been playing around with 8505 before too, sounds really great. The POD doesn't have a dedicated 5150 model.
It has the 5150II , but it's a different beast to the 5150, and having 8505 is a good thing to have around to fill that void for the POD's lack of 5150.
It can't be tweaked a whole lot (there isn't even a presence control, strangely, only bass, middle and treble) but what it does, it does extremely well.

IIRC the POD adds about 1-2ms of latency from what I've read on the Line 6 forum boards, which isn't too bad.



Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - October 07 2009 at 03:55

EMGs or Blackouts would work well in your ESP. It's got a mahogany body, right?
You mentioned latency in that other thread, strange.
The Line6 ASIO driver seems to report inaccurate latency readings. Pretty much everyone on the Sneap forum that knows their stuff have said 128 samples for 2.9ms, 256 is 5.8ms and so on.
Of course, once you start trying to record more than one thing at once (multiple mics etc) then firewire becomes handy, since a lot of high quality firewire devices can easily reach 32 samples.
I might be getting a firewire interface later this year, for my 21st birthday, but I'm not sure yet, we'll see.

Oh yeah, they are active. I forgot about that somehow, weird me.
But yeah anyway, my point was more really that your guitar can't do the sound of Blackouts
Which I guess maybe doesn't bother you, you seem happy with it, which is what matters
Especially since I got my Blackouts, the more and more I realize there will probably never be a guitar modeling solution available for me.
Unlike amps, you're really physically touching the guitar all the time, so you end up getting an emotional bond to it, how it feels, how the particular piece of wood/it's pickups sound etc and I couldn't let go of that.
And for many too, the point of owing a Les Paul, a Strat, a super Strat and a Tele and perhaps an acoustic is that they all feel different and inspire you to play a certain way, something not really possible with a Variax.

I'm interested to see how far the concept goes, because I wonder what the market is like for the Variax.

Given active pickups have been around since, sh*t, the 70s or something, I don't really understand the concern.
Digital stomp boxes have been around for longer than I've been alive (I'm 20), so it's not like it's some "new fangled oddity".
but whatever, I'm pretty much sick of arguing the "analogue vs digital" debate.
Good tone is good tone no matter how you get there.
And good music is good music no matter how the end result is achieved. The "real deal" is just the music.
As far as I'm concerned, if I enjoy it, it's the real deal, whether sampled replaced drums or not, digital amp modeling or not.
If you like a guitar tone and later on find out it was done with a digital amp sim, do you suddenly throw the music away because it's "all wrong and not analogue"?
Is it not possible to just......well, enjoy it, regardless of what gear was used?

Mind you, I'm not saying digital and all this modern stuff is the be end all, if I decide ti pursue audio engineering more seriously I'm going to go out and buy tube amps, real microphones, a real drum kit and learn how to mic it up in the traditional fashion (as early as sometime next year I might be doing that stuff), but the current modern digital technology has its merit.