The little tube amp that could not...
I had my nephew over today because his family was in town getting his sister set up for college.
I took him on a tour of the big boy studios and then brought him out to my place.
He had his new 7 string Ibanez shredder with him, and we set up a SONAR project with a couple tracks of Guitar Rig 5 and some Ocean Way drums in Kontakt 5.
We warmed up by trading listens of favorite songs on Grooveshark. He told me he was into "Gent" metal, syncopated rhythms and modes that were not Ionian, Aeolian or Dorian. He turned me on to a pretty cool shred band called "Periphery" and I turned him on to Dizzy, Charlie, and Miles.
Then I let him shred on Guitar Rig 5 for the rest of the afternoon. He had never seen an amp sim so he was sort of blown away and seemed to have a great time over dubbing and laying down double and quad tracks of his favorite riffs.
As the day came to and end I grabbed a 1970 Fender Champ and plugged his guitar in. Within seconds he was saying things like
"Wow", "OMG", and
"Now I get it". Then I grabbed an old Tube Screamer and plugged it up and he was like
"OMFG... this is huge".
We had spent the day listening to Guitar Rig 5 on a rather expensive monitor system and then this measly little 3 watt Champ was blowing out a ballsy, lively, exuberant tone as he played the very same smoking hot riffs he had been working with earlier.
I thought maybe there had been an epiphany.
So,... I was somewhat knocked back in exasperation when, on our drive into town to meet up with his family before hitting the road to their home, he says to me
"I don't really think I can get my tone with a small amp like that. I really need to save up and get that Fractcal Amp FX because it does like 1500 different amps and I need a Mesa Stack to get my tone. The Amp FX will do that plus all the other stacks I'll need"... and I'm, like, thinking
"Wow", "OMG", and "Now I get it". :-)
Good times.
edit spelling and grammar
post edited by mike_mccue - 2014/07/25 20:17:32