Anybody else getting sick of modellers?

Dawsons Creek Crying Dawson GIF by HULU
Ahh there he is… Bootytime Dawson
 
Y’all wrong!!! It’s all about maths!!! It’s about:
*Boot up time
*power efficiency
*Latency

That’s what matters I’ve been told by a dude on “the other place”. He said everything else is taste and therefore not debatable.

That’s what matters when you’re trying to stave off buyer’s remorse, and they’re the only things that can be argued positively about what you own.
 
I spent a good chunk of yesterday fighting this, but it's not just modelers. I boiled it down to two things:

Monitoring. It's what makes the sound that hits your ears and it can either mask or exaggerate some issues in the tone.

I was trying to practice with headphones and dug out some of my headphones in my "stuff I need to sell" pile. Almost all of them sounded really bad because they either were really muffled or made the high end sound nasty. I find headphones can easily over-exaggerate some midrange or high end frequencies and that leads to endless tweaking. So I grabbed a pair of cheap Audio Technica M40X headphones that don't sound all the great for music, but they just kind of let the guitar tone exist in a boring way, and that helped me to focus on just getting something in the ballpark and start playing.

But it's not just headphones and monitors, it's real speakers too. I've been using an Orange 1x12 cab with a solid state power amp quite a bit this year to avoid the IR rabbit hole. It sounds really good with my modelers most of the time, but I don't like my Rocker 15 tube amp with it and high gain can be a challenge. I finally swapped out the Vintage 30 for a V Type I had sitting around, and that basically erased most of the nasty papery high end I was hearing.

Too damn many options. This is 100% my fault and I need to executive a massive gear purge.

This weekend I've been trying to work through more Truefire lessons and learning some new songs, and the absolute worst thing is gear getting in the way. My QC patch wasn't sounding great so I plugged into my tube amp. That also didn't sound great, so I plugged in my Friedman IR-X. That worked better, but then I had to figure out why the other stuff didn't sound good. And that led to the above monitoring changes, which helped quite a bit.

But seriously, I have way too much stuff and way too many options. I really just need to get rid of all the excess, extra modelers, extra guitars, pedals I don't use, all these extra headphones, even extra studio monitors.
 
Played a reunion gig with my (very old) metal band last night.

Spent a bit of time sorting out my QC rig beforehand ready for the show. Tried a bunch of amps in there, sounded pretty good. Also a few decent captures. Downloaded a nice TS capture then on to the IR’s. QC ones are good but I prefer OH so they got loaded up and programmed in. Set up the effects chain and programmed my fairly limited switching. On to the power amp, hooked that up and sounded okay, not really punching me in the chest but was decent. EQ’d a bit on the power amp and the QC. Gave it a try into my amps FX return for good measure. Not bad all round but still not amazing. Was hoping that the engineer will be okay with a feed from the QC direct rather than micing the cab.

So after all that, the gig sounded absolutely amazing. Why? Because I got so sick of all the faff I sacked it off and just used my Mesa Dual Rectifier, which sounded absolutely crushing just by setting everything at noon in about 2 seconds and leaving the rest to the sound engineer.

I will say that the QC did a sterling job as a Tubescreamer, Wah and tuner.

Use whatever works and sounds best to you and the band you are playing with ..... no debate needed .... there is no universal "right answer".

Only thing I can add is that I have been using modelers and "FRFR" for several years now and despite changing modelers semi-regularly .... I've always been totally stoked with my live tones etc...... but I've never ever kidded myself I was playing a real Amp and real pedals and a real guitar cab

If I were rich and could afford it -or- was in a major touring successful band ...... I *maybe* would go back to 1 or 2 real amps, 5 or 6 pedals and a looper as long as I could just show up and play and then go home ..... those [possible] days are long gone for me.

Ben
 
Meh, real amps sound better, but modelers just have that convenient factor.

Not gonna lie, a Boss Katana 50 and the bigger footswitch when really dialed in is so close to my blackstar artist 15 combo and pedalboard, it's scary.

The audience would never know, but I can, which is why I still use a vintage style low gain tube amp and analog effects to achieve the sound I like.

Half the fun is getting the sounds I really want, but if I were in a professional cover band playing every weekend, I would perform with a modeling amp at this point


Yes, I know the Katana isn't a true modeler, but it works just fine for that task. If you want to sound like the Rolling stones one song and then like Duran Duran the next, it's got you covered.
 
Yes, I know the Katana isn't a true modeler, but it works just fine for that task. If you want to sound like the Rolling stones one song and then like Duran Duran the next, it's got you covered.

The Katanas are true modelers, they just don’t specifically model a huge variety of well known amps. The inspirations for the amps in them are fairly obvious, though.
 
Back
Top