Yesterday I bought a PODxt Pro to sit on top of my V-AMP Pro. Initially I was a little disappointed that my "lowly" Behringer unit sounded better for creamy distortion tones but hours of tinkering later and I am now content wth the way the POD sounds, both through a FRFR (full range, flat response) system as well as recorded direct via SPDIF into Sonar.

After my search for devastating distortions, I will turn to trying out the re-amping possibililities with this unit. Essentially, you can monitor using your favorite patch while sending the dry guitar signal to disk. This later can be processed via the PODxt Pro or any other amp sim program such as Guitar Rig. Hmm... wonder if Guitar Rig has a demo!

Anyway, as stated before, the opportunities for recording the electric guitar today are staggering.

So the answer to the question, "How do you record a professional guitar sound?" is:

Try everything you can think of, and go with whatever works for that song.

--thndrsn

True and final wisdom lies in those words.

I'm a NOOB here but I get really great guitar from plugging straight in to my Audiophile 2496 card and using Amplitube 2. I can't imagine I'd get any better sound micing an amp.

Of course, you have to just tweak and tweak for a long time to get the sounds you want.

There's a reason all the good American made equipment is sold to offshore musicians via ebay. Much of it going to the Asian players/collectors markets.

I'll bet another 12 Silverface Champs shipped out while this discussion was going on. Get yourself a real amp while you still can.

best regards,
mike

ORIGINAL: calaverasgrandes
I personally have lost a good job to outsourcing. I am not going to contribute to the trend if I can help it.

A very good reason to stay away from almost all asian-made music-gear ( I prefer US or EU-made cars too - if there was any genuinely US/EU-made computers I´d only use those ) - if the buyers run out of jobs, who will the "american/european companies" producing in Asia sell to ? The chinese ? I think most of them have other priorities before buying "our" instruments. There are other political issues too, but I don´t think this is the right forum for that kind of discussions.

My only excuse for buying an instrument made in Asia is being "financially disabled" + that my older guitars are too valuable to me, if I lose my `59 strat I´ll never find another that I like as much ( the rest of my guitars are only worth a fraction of the ´59 ) even though it´s well insured.

Playing live outdoors when the temperature is below 10 minusdegrees Celsius isn´t good for any instrument, but I can afford to get another cheapo.

About the early `80´s low-budget guitars - I remember having a british & a japanese Les Paul-copy ( Sakai? ) which sounded very different, the brit´was pretty good, the jap´ was almost sustainless - when I took it apart, I discovered that the body was made of ( what at least looked like ) layered masonite, yuk I guess there are explanations for everything.....

Heritage guitars. Not cheap but made in the old Gibson custom works in Kalamazoo.

I had a 535 and when my nephew got old enough I got him an H-150 Les Paul. Both wonderful instruments. I admit I was never worthy of the 535 but my nephew is an alarmingly good guitarist. It was funny picking out his second guitar (Ibanez). The first was a hondo piece of crap that he literally played to death. I wanted to see if he was really serious about it. He was. We'd walk into a shop and the salesman would go to hand me a guitar and I'd shake my head and point to Ben. The salesman would look at Ben and ask, "Would you like me to plug in an amp?" Being a rather shy kid Ben would just nod. After a minute or two of noodling Ben would launch into a bunch of Fripp licks. He was into King Crimson when he was about 10. THe salesman would look at me and smile and walk away. It was also fun to watch customers in the store peek around the corner to see where the complex riffs were coming from only to see a little kid on a stool, head down over a guitar and playing some serious stuff.

Man that seems so long ago. He just got married a few months ago.

Dan

I've got a Pod XT Pro as well as a great amp and cab... and a couple of combos too.



I like them all for different reasons. And BTW... that JSX is a killer tube amp that happens to sound just as incredible on the clean setting as it does on the overdrive 2 setting.

Lately I've been using a Palmer PGA 04 ADIG-LB.



I can't believe there isn't more chatter about this thing amongst you guys.

It's used in recording sessions by Satriani, Van Halen, Kieth Richards, and others. Don't think they use Pods...

It's not an amp simulator... but a cab simulator with an 8 ohm load. It can handle 200 watts of warmed up / cranked up / just-the-way-you-like-it up... tube sound from the speaker output jacks of any guitar amp and pass that rich sound to the DAW in a very controlled way. Just the right amount of signal for the DAW, but with all the attitude and warmth of a great sounding amp half way through the night of a sizzling performance at your favorite concert hall. Plenty of gain to make those tubes sing, without the police at the front door.

If you still wanna feel your pant legs flap or manage some natural feedback... you can still pass the signal to your cab.

And the most important feature... it still sounds like YOU playing through YOUR amp without the room/mic/reflection/woofing/piercing/phasing/mic bleeding/ear bleeding issues you need to be careful of when mic'ing a cab.

ORIGINAL: SteveD


Lately I've been using a Palmer PGA 04 ADIG-LB.



I can't believe there isn't more chatter about this thing amongst you guys.

It's used in recording sessions by Satriani, Van Halen, Kieth Richards, and others. Don't think they use Pods...

It's not an amp simulator... but a cab simulator with an 8 ohm load. It can handle 200 watts of warmed up / cranked up / just-the-way-you-like-it up... tube sound from the speaker output jacks of any guitar amp and pass that rich sound to the DAW in a very controlled way. Just the right amount of signal for the DAW, but with all the attitude and warmth of a great sounding amp half way through the night of a sizzling performance at your favorite concert hall. Plenty of gain to make those tubes sing, without the police at the front door.

I've been using sort of a 'poor man's palmer' with a Weber MiniMASS attenuator which has a line out and a Behringer Ultra-G DI which has the 4x12 speaker simulator. It's very effective live and recorded. Live I use a '65 Super Reverb. I can send the signal to the board, turn my amp down all the way at the speakers and get a good mix with amp-cranked tone and keep the stage volume controlled.

Recording, I've got this great amp, it's an 80's Super Champ designed by Paul Rivera of Rivera amps when he was with fender. I use the attenuator/speaker sim combo here to record direct. So far, I'm happy with the tones, much happier than I've been with the POD. There's still a place for tube amps, and as good as digital modeling has gotten, I think for those of us who have been privileged enough to have played the good ones, there's still no substitute.