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! :)

Danny Danzi

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! :)

You should be getting a commission!
EDIT: I now see above that you'd turn that down....well maybe a nice bottle of red wine now and again lol...

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>.

Amp sims have come a long way over the last few years, to the point I wouldn't be too unhappy using one for "modern" heavily compressed and distorted sounds. Unfortunately, I don't use that kind of sound that much :-(

I put a real effort into them for most of last year, especially Amplitube which struck me as the one offering closest to what I'm "used to". In particular because it let me model the key components of one of my live rigs, a Fender '63 reverb tank feeding a Tiny Terror into a closed back Celestion. There's a few other things in the rig as well which Amplitube doesn't model but provides alternatives. In the end I came to the conclusion the sim just doesn't cut it. Sure, it has some of the characteristics of the hardware but it's still just a pastiche.

The sims simply do not respond like valves, springs, cones and transformers do. At least, not so I can feel "right" using them. Getting the sim to react correctly to a Tele as compared to an SG is a lot of effort that in the end I don't find worthwhile.

A pity really because being able to track "raw" guitar without having to commit to tone, fx etc. at the tracking stage is undoubtably useful.

So I've gone back to the amps and a chain of pedals. Including a Blackheart B1H1 "Killer Ant" which sounds seriously nice, produces about 1/4Watt and goes into the beginnings of breakup at levels that are very domestic.

The other side of the coin is that I've heard people use PODs and VSTs very effectively. So I accept it can be done, just not by me without my synesthisia protesting.

In the analogue realm I also use Sansamp character series pedals sometimes as part of a full-range rig. The Blonde in particular does a pretty good sound-and-feel-of-Fender - better (in my opinion) than most of the VSTs I've tried. In the end I suspect it comes down to a matter of touch and feel and is very much an individual thing.

I have the same reservations with synths, the emulations somehow lack the punch and cut of much of the hardware, especially analogue. VSTis can sound OK to very good in a mix, but add in something like a real MS-20 and preventing the real from stamping all over the virtual can be quite tricky. Mind you, I'd rather deal with the VCS3 app on my iPad than the unpredictable weirdness of the real thing even if the app doesn't sound quite as wild or good.

Oddly, having said all that I'll happily use emulations for the mixing/mastering stage and as plugin processors/effects on hardware synths. Yes, I know that's a contradiction but....

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 previously had a large analog synth setup but today I am very pleased how well VST's can model the analog sound. Some maybe not so well but some that go the extra mile absolutely sound it for sure. I have had a real Oberheim polyphonic synth such as OBX and have compared the OPX II Pro VST against it. All over the VST sounds amazing and it is just not worth the effort of maintaining a real one. After 28 years I was having some issues with voices failing and power supplies etc.. Still had some tuning funnies too.
 
OPX sounds fat and shakes the floor exactly the same way the real one does. They have studied the real one well and applied it. I am sure of it. I love it. It goes beyond too. They have made it smarter and better in many ways. You can just get back to the music where you should be. It can express your ideas rather well.
 
The quality of the emulation needs to be up there. Guitar processing or synth emulation. When it is it sounds terrific. Many other emulations are excellent. Some do fall short and don't sound as big as the real thing.

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.

Did you check the link I posted....definitely not drop tune heavy metal....and using the lowly Amplitube 3. I'll take playing and tone like that any day.

Mixmkr, they are trying to emulate tube tone, which still happens to be the best, which is 40 year old technology. I personally am only after the same tone I have always been after, the one I hear in my head. Funny thing, most anything that I use, I dial in that similar tone. Paul Rose has nailed it pretty close with his A3 presets. I can run through the 5 or 6 he has developed and quickly find what I am looking for. I don't even notice that I am playing through an amp software anymore, I make it work just fine. I go back and listen to old songs that I have recorded and half the time I can't remember if they were recorded on a real tube amp or a sim. Often I will half to open up the song and track and check to see what I was using back then. I have A & B'd some of those licks and leads and honestly, they sound so close that most people could not guess which is which.

Double post.

makeshift.... you misread my post.  I have nothing against tone like that.  My point is to take it to the next level.  I like stuff that you posted, as much as the next guy, but it doesn't knock me off my feet or blow me away with super tastyness...although VERY good.  Reason...because probably like you, I've heard that all my guitar playing life from zillions of other guitar players as well. 
 
I'm wishing for somebody to bring this new technology into the 21st century and be completely creative with it in a new, never been done, kind of way.  I salute the Victor Wootons and Bela Flecks and yes some of these online metal guitar players, because they are doing something new, rather than hashing out blues licks.  I wish I could do it, but I'm not of that elite crowd of players.
And lastly, to say that that is the *best* tone which is 40 yr old technology, is only an opinion, that I'll certainly won't dismiss letting you have.  Personally, I think it is Ritchie Blackmore's "Highway Star...Made in Japan live version. :-D
 
 
btw...you'd love my 4001... check this finish...