Fantastic playing!!! It sounds a lot like he has a vintage Quadraverb™ patched between his axe and his favorite amp:
 

Danny, bro, you could sell ice to an eskimo! Always such a pleasure reading your posts. :)

What I really get from Danny's post #32 is what you can do with virtual and emulated guitar processing. Once you think of it as being different you now have two ways to record guitars and one of them is almost unlimited in its approach.
 
The great news is that a recording may begin in one format eg dynamic mic in front of guitar cab but can easily enter into the virtual world. And the other way too, coming out of the virtual world and being re-amped etc.. How killer that can sound when done well.
 
Some virtual synths can model their real world equivalents. Some go further and add in more options. Then, as you would expect, more options emerge in terms of sound synthesis. This is when virtual modeling and synthesis can go into far more places than traditional methods cannot go. Trying out things that would have been very difficult if not impossible to do previously.
 
Couple that with some tasty playing and you have a recipe for success.
 
I think when you are working with virtual instruments it must be nice for the guitarist or bass player to get physically involved with the sound they are making. (Standing next to a loud amp!) Maybe our modern virtual guitar processing workflow requires the use of a nice powerful PA to give that sound back, the way a guitarist needs to hear it, even in band situation it should cope. Playing guitar in front of your studio monitors may not be ideal for some. But for those who like the feel and sound of a big PA instead, it might just be the ticket. Setting up the right conditions for recording and tracking guitar parts.
 

Cactus Music
I'm happy enough being traditional and using my stomp boxes and Small tube amps. I will add some delay or chorus after the fact, but all the simulated overdrive I have tried was pretty bad. As someone said above,, it doesn't interact properly to dynamics.. I'm sure something at the level Danny is using works,, but that's like not gunna happen in my lifetime @ $2,000. 

 
Trust me brother, that 2k purchase haunted me nearly every day until I paid it off. As I was paying it off and learning how to use it, I kept hoping I had made the right decision. By the time I was close to paying it off, I had a really good grasp on what it was capable of and was floored....so the purchase didn't bother me AS much. However, that price still sucks. :( What sucks even more is most people won't even justify paying for something like that yet I believe they would (if they could) if they could see the big picture. I wasn't too happy at first and thought maybe I made a bad decision. But like anything else, you have to stick with it.
 
As you stick with it and learn all the stuff it can do, you start to realize that 2k for something of this magnitude is actually cheap when you consider all the stuff you get with it as well as what you get out of it. Don't get me wrong, that price sucks no matter who you are...that's for sure. :-/

Jeff Evans
What I really get from Danny's post #32 is what you can do with virtual and emulated guitar processing. Once you think of it as being different you now have two ways to record guitars and one of them is almost unlimited in its approach.
 
The great news is that a recording may begin in one format eg dynamic mic in front of guitar cab but can easily enter into the virtual world. And the other way too, coming out of the virtual world and being re-amped etc.. How killer that can sound when done well.
 
Some virtual synths can model their real world equivalents. Some go further and add in more options. Then, as you would expect, more options emerge in terms of sound synthesis. This is when virtual modeling and synthesis can go into far more places than traditional methods cannot go. Trying out things that would have been very difficult if not impossible to do previously.
 
Couple that with some tasty playing and you have a recipe for success.
 
I think when you are working with virtual instruments it must be nice for the guitarist or bass player to get physically involved with the sound they are making. (Standing next to a loud amp!) Maybe our modern virtual guitar processing workflow requires the use of a nice powerful PA to give that sound back, the way a guitarist needs to hear it, even in band situation it should cope. Playing guitar in front of your studio monitors may not be ideal for some. But for those who like the feel and sound of a big PA instead, it might just be the ticket. Setting up the right conditions for recording and tracking guitar parts.

Exactly Jeff! I totally get what some guys say when they bash on amp sims or say they just don't work right for them. I'm with them there to an extent. I've tried a few that I hated and a few really like. Would I use them exclusively on my album? Probably not, but they make for really good reinforcement tones especially in layering situations. Stuff like the amp sim I helped to develop called Headcase from AcmeBarGig and Guitar Rig 5 really are nice sims in my opinion. Heck, even if we don't call them "amp sims" and just call them "guitar amp plugs" that's fine by me. :) As long as something sounds cool...that's all that matters.
 
But you're right, we DO have loads of options now as well as killer new technology. But that said, some of this stuff just falls way short when you have a nice amp arsenal and compare them. That's when you can really notice. Lots of guys abandoned their amps due to living arrangements, late nights and disturbing family etc. The amp sims were a bit more practical and more forgiving to get sounds out of.
 
BUT...sometimes when you stay away from your real amps and then go back, you notice a difference that has been missing in your tone and sometimes due to amps being so dynamic, your playing. I've always felt (like in Harry Potter where they say the wand chooses the wizard lol) the amp chooses the player. Some guys sound great on one thing where if you or I plug in, it sounds terrible. They plug into my amp, my amp/rig sounds bad to them. They may sound bad on all amp sims. It's tough to find "The One"...and once you do, no amp sim may ever touch it.
 
My reason for posting in this thread wasn't meant to brag about the AxeFx though it may have seemed like that. Seriously speaking, I just wanted to let people know amp sims ARE (in my opinion) as good as real amps if you try something that is really high endy like the AxeFx or a Kemper. I have nothing against plugins or even the PODS out there and know how much time the developers have put into them. I've tried just about every one extensively. I've had to due to working for AcmeBarGig. Part of my job is to compare what we make vs. the competition. So I'm well aware of what these things can do. But in quite a few areas, they still fall short and this is where guitar players are complaining.
 
We have a feel issue with most plugs. Most just do not feel or react like a real amp does. This changes how a guitarist plays. Sort of like you switching back to plastic keys on a keyboard after playing on weighted keys...or playing on weighted for the first time after being used to plastic keys to an extent...but amp vs. sim in the feel department is worse for us. LOL!
 
Another thing is the lack of a buffered input. Amp sims don't have this and it's a VERY important factor that they need. You realistically need a few front-end enhancements BEFORE our sound hits the plug like stomp boxes or some rack stuff to push a plug sim a little. If you don't, you can get loads of gain but your sound drops off and dies because it doesn't sustain correctly.
 
We are real close to this with Headcase with our input boost feature, but it still isn't quite like an amp in terms of "reaction. I still find myself using a Tube Screamer with the gain turned all the way down and the output as high up as possible until I get a little hiss. This drives the amp sim quite well. Add a bit of compression to it after the TS and you're sort of simulating what an amp does with a slightly buffered front end signal BEFORE it actually hits the amp's tone stack or pre-amp section.
 
Then we have the issue of "tubes" not being simulated properly...and just about every amp sim has failed my test in that area. Especially 12AX7 tube simulations. Only 2 amp sims have passed this test for me. Guitar Rig and the Axe Fx II. Just about everyone has nailed the power amp section break-up to some "fairly acceptable" degree but the pre-amp tube sound.....it just doesn't happen for the majority. If guitar players weren't such tone chasers, we'd not worry about this sort of thing. Then again, tone comes from the fingers....but an amp can/does enhance everything we do...so it's easy to see/hear how they can be so effective all across the board. Then again it depends a lot on style too. And then there are mutants out there that can plug into anything and they still sound great. Even though that may be true, they will tell you "something just doesn't feel right" when they play through a sim. We mortals would just love to be able to play like they do and would care less. :)
 

Rain
Danny, bro, you could sell ice to an eskimo! Always such a pleasure reading your posts. :)

LOL! Thanks Rain! You're too kind brother!! Fortunately, I've turned down every sales job I've ever been offered. I'd be too honest to try and sell someone something for the sake of a commission check. Uggh...how do those guys sleep at night? My commission checks would suck so bad man! Then again, if I DID take on a sales job, it would have to be selling a product I believed in with all of my heart. When something is good, I'll push it to the ends of the earth and fight tooth and nail for it. If something is bad, I either will tell it like I've experienced it or not say anything at all. :) It's like POD's...I have this love/hate relationship with them. I never bash them because so many people I admire use them. They just don't work for me other than my bass POD which I love. :)
 
-Danny

The deal for me , being almost retired and only a casual worker, is I have to earn the money for music equipment with my music. Gigs are all pass the hat these days and I only tackle one client at a time for studio work. End of the day I'm lucky to have $1,000 per year to spend. My PA system is 20 years old and my next purchase is powered speakers..there goes the $1,000. 
If electric rock was my thing I would be a little more stoked about more effects, But I play Blues or Country/ Oldies Rock , both don't require much more than good overdrive ( Fender Princeton) and a bit of Tremelo ( Mooer Trelicopter) and Delay ( Mooer Echolizer) . 

sharke
Oh god...my accountant just informed me that she's gotten me off the hook for a $1000 IRS fine I had looming....so already my brain's like "hmm...I guess that means AXE II is a grand instead of two grand, in terms of where I was before financially..."

GOT TO STOP thinking like this! Honestly, I'm going to buy a large piggy bank and use it for gear purchases....NOTHING can be bought until the pig lets me. But knowing me, I'll be feeding it cash straight out of the ATM. I need help!

*I will not post sound examples....I will not post sound examples.....I will not post sound examples....I will...ok, maybe an acoustic guitar tone match played through an electric? LOL! I kid I kid! :)

Hi Danny,
 
Yeah, I've spent some time with both the Fractal Audio Axe Fx and the Kemper Profiling Amplifier. They both do amazing stuff. I still end up playing them through a speaker cabinet at a decent (?) level<G>.

Somewhat inspired by this thread and feeling a bit guilty for accumulating gear and maybe being a bit quick to draw conclusions, I decided to fire up my POD HD300 last night and just to try and think of it from a problem solving perpective - that is, to try and make it work for me.
 
I must tell you I've been somewhat lazy when it came to working with it. Most of the time, I'd simply pick a preset that was in the ballpark, with the proper combination of effects and work out the rest from there. Heck, it was months after I got it before I even hooked it up to the computer to access the deep editing features.
 
So last night I went back to basic - I picked an older Marshall model and decided that I had to make that one and its default cab work for me. The thing is that, when you pick models of an amp and a mic you're used to, and they don't immediately sound and react as you expect based on you experience with their real world counterparts, it's very easy to just discard them. But I kept at it.
 
One thing I noticed is that the minute I start messing with parameters like Sag and more particularly the Bias options, the sound just opened up and felt that much more "alive". And that when other elements started to fall in their place, that when the cab mic'ed with a SM-57 started sounding like a cab mic'ed w/ a 57.
 
Considering how in depth you can go w/ the Axe FX by comparison, I'm starting to understand why it's so expensive. 
 
Another thing which seem to make a difference for me is to EQ and compress the signal a bit. For this purpose, short of having access to an outboard channel strip, I loaded IK's SSL channel emulation on an input channel in my DAW. 
 
Again, to me that is counterintuitive because I'd expect to get the sound that I want at the source. But I find the POD to be very bass-y, and if I record it as is, I end up wasting headroom I would prefer to have available for the frequencies that I can use. My preamp has a low cut at 75Hz which I use, but that's not enough. Cutting a bit more and with a tiny dip here and there, the guitar seems to finally emerge out of that fog. A tiny, tiny little bit of compression gives it a bit of punch.
 
Which means that my next studio purchase would likely be some kind of outboard channel strip. :)
 
 

I always wonder in these threads, why people think the amp sims need to emulate sounds that started 40+ years ago and to continue down that path.  With the technology, why aren't people interested in creating something new and unique with these products?  Why do they need the VanHalen sound...or the black faced sound...?  Albeit those are great sounds, people are getting stuck into staying with the ole tried and true.
Also, why do guitar players feel they need to have the amp *feel* to play properly?
As a guitar player of over 45 years, I'm totally into hearing what the current chop masters can do with an AxeFX, and use it like a new instrument.  Unfortunately, it's all this metal, drop tuned stuff or copy versions being played.  Pete Thorn is on the right track, but give an AxeFX to a *Jeff Beck* or a modern day Jimi.  People don't jump on Jordan Rudass or Lyle Mays for hopping on the Spectrasonics bandwagon.  They put some brain power into it.

Double post.

mixmkr
I always wonder in these threads, why people think the amp sims need to emulate sounds that started 40+ years ago and to continue down that path.  With the technology, why aren't people interested in creating something new and unique with these products?  Why do they need the VanHalen sound...or the black faced sound...?  Albeit those are great sounds, people are getting stuck into staying with the ole tried and true.
Also, why do guitar players feel they need to have the amp *feel* to play properly?
As a guitar player of over 45 years, I'm totally into hearing what the current chop masters can do with an AxeFX, and use it like a new instrument.  Unfortunately, it's all this metal, drop tuned stuff or copy versions being played.  Pete Thorn is on the right track, but give an AxeFX to a *Jeff Beck* or a modern day Jimi.  People don't jump on Jordan Rudass or Lyle Mays for hopping on the Spectrasonics bandwagon.  They put some brain power into it.

It's a tough question.
 
Actually, for most of the time I've used amp sims - most of the last decade - I had no interest in re-creating sounds which were classics.
 
On the other hand, even though this was one the most creative times in my life, that was the decade where I had the least interest in my own instrument as I felt that I had nothing new to contribute. I was sick and tired of hearing myself playing. I could go on for months without ever touching the guitar - I'd play two or three times in a year. I guess that the sounds I made were mine. But no trend setters or breakthrough.
 
But I am no visionary, I can't bring the instrument to its next level.
 
And as far as I'm concerned, with all due respect, when I listen to everything that's been done since Hendrix, I hear facets of his music and sound which have been refined and tightened up, and maybe expanded a bit. But that's it.
 
Listening to Machine Gun live on Band of Gypsys, it's ALL in there. Steve Vai is mind-blowing, I've learned to appreciate shredders like Malmsteen and even tried and learned from them. But Hendrix, man...
 
As for I - I guess turning 40, I've embraced my own limitations and strengths, and learned to relax. I won't be changing the world, but I can play a decent guitar part, write and arrange music for my wife and create something that we'll both enjoy. If it's original, it'll have to happen accidentally. I'm leaving it to others to judge whether the way I hear things is interesting to them.
 
I don't think I'll ever try to duplicate someone else's tone exactly. I've always found that it was much more fun to approximate things than to copy them exactly. IMHO, some of the most interesting stuff bands like the Beatles have done was the result of their inabilities to really duplicate the sounds they were trying to emulate, and their limitations as musicians.
 

I was able to finally " borrow " my younger brothers Princeton.
I've had a fender twin since the mid 70's and it's always been my clean ( neutral ) tone amp of choice. Well I kind of stupidly traded it off about a year ago for les paul studio and instantly regretted it. So, my younger brother got this Princeton about 20 yrs ago along with a 61 Les paul dbl cut away  - yea for $ 125.00  go figure... and I never really got to try it out. It's a 1964 - everything original. I plug it in the other day and I'm back to instant clean neutral tone bliss. Very nice - no dirt - plenty of volume all in a 10 pound package. Why do I feel so guilty knowing he'll never see that  sucker - ever again ?
 
By the way -  I use Scuffham exclusively for recording. Realistically it's all in the hands and the instruments. Everything else in my opinion is just convenience. Which can also make or break a recording / performance.

I tried to post a comment to this thread for two days. I am using my phone because I am at work. And everytime I got distracted and my comment got discarded because of timing out.

But Danny said it nicely.

I get the best "feel" from Head Case amp sim.

The other day I just threw my AT 4040 in front of my Egnator Rebel cab and did a recording. It sounded great. I wondered after why I hadn't done this before?

Then I remembered all the hours spent trying to find a sweet spot on a speaker with a 57.

I immediately got up and took several pictures of the 4040's placement!!

Danny.... your post is right on and I totally agree AND understand 200%.  I'm sure you understood what I was trying to covey as well.
 
However kids being able to afford something like the AxeFX doesn't really surprise me.  It's just priorities...  look at the price of a car they're driving.  ;-D

sharke

Firing up the notepad app and writing it there solves everything, but there are still times I'm too lazy to do that and use the forum text box instead...

Yep! That's what happened. Started to just reply, it turned into a long post, then something happens, I get sidetracked, and poof, gone!! When I know it's going to ne a long post. I'll try to use word (Win8 phone), but like you I get lazy!!