Hey digidis, do you have a link to your music. I love speed metal, if thats what you play. anyway im currious to hear your stuff.

CJ

Over the last 35 years I have had the pleasures of playing what most would consider excellent gear, from Marshall stacks, Mesa Boogies, Fender Twins, even an ENGL Savage. Most would consider me old school, I'm in my 40's and like playing neoclassical music, and still play Jackson USA guitars with floyd rose tremolos.

With that background, I will state that guitarists are stuck in the past and need to experiment more with the wide range of tones they can achieve today. Why do I make such a bold statement? When the electric guitar came out there was basically only tube amplification, and I am sure the first tube amps completely sucked when compared to today's standards. Over time manufacturers improved the tonal possibilities and tube based amplification improved. At that time there wasn't much at all in solid state or it was prohibitively expensive for mainstream. Anyway, over time Solid State amplification arrives, sucks at first, and manufacturers improve its tonal capabilities and today there are great sounding Solid State amps. Unfortunately history already dictated that Solid State must emulate the vacuum tube because that had become the defacto standard sound.

My point is, why do we have to accept that defacto standard? Is the tube mindset actually a limitation? Why don't vocalists amplify their voices with tube based rigs (TBR)? Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs? Why aren't PA systems tube based? Keyboardists don't rely on tubes.

I really want to know why I should believe only true electric guitar tone can come out of a tube amp, and the only way to get good recorded tone is to mic a TBR which then gets amplified via transistor technology and ultimately converted to a binary signal.

I'll admit I got great sounds out of a pair of Mesa MKIIs in stereo with a roland GP-16 processor back in the 80's. Today I get much better sounds out of a Behringer V-AMP Pro going into a small Behringer 12 channel mixer that feeds two active speakers from SR Technology. And the SPDIF from the V-AMP goes direct to the soundcard and records great digital tones that I couldn't be happier with.

Maybe somewhere I stopped listening to guitarists who are stuck in the past and started listening to what my ears were hearing.

ORIGINAL: DigiDis


My point is, why do we have to accept that defacto standard? Is the tube mindset actually a limitation? Why don't vocalists amplify their voices with tube based rigs (TBR)? Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs? Why aren't PA systems tube based? Keyboardists don't rely on tubes.

It mostly has to do with frequency range on a guitar and power requirements. The "Accepted" standards for a guitar sound allow guitar amps to be rather sloppy in how they use power. Bass, keys and vox need lots of even frequency range reproduction. Low frequencies are the most power demanding. Commercially available tubes simply don't make enough power to reproduce full range sound efficiently on a large scale. A tube SVT has 12 power tubes and weighs a ton! It is an amazing sound that is not typically reproduced with a solid state rig (SSR). It is simply not cost effective or reliable to have a tube PA.

Solidstate equipment can be a wonderful sound. A neve console is solidstate as are SSL, API, etc. A Mackie PA... well, they're cheap! I've got a pair!

Good luck!

CJ, I don't have a myspace or related site, and I'm not into speed metal, its more of a Malmsteen like approach. I don't even have much time to play, as most of my time is devoured by my consulting practice and family. I play the guitar maybe 5-10 hours a week, in which I spend about half just practicing and the other half composing small sections that I can use to solo over. I guess I lost interest in public attention and just do this as a personal hobby. I basically just enjoy the physical and mental challenges of playing guitar and creating neoclassical riffs. I usually never complete a song, and usually never even bother spending time to properly mix what I do record.

That being said, a friend and I just worked out the Bach Prelude in C minor at 130bpm with a neoclassical twist and he wants to record it with video and put it on MyTube. If we do this in the next few weeks I'll send you a link.

By the way, I really liked the tone you got on the first song on your music site. If I remember well, you did that with a Tonelab?

thanx, I used my Boss GS-10 and i miked my fender pro 185 (2 12" speakers) one mic for each and each on its own track. This is one topic i dont get sick of, but i better stop or ill wind up explaining my whole recording process...

CJ

ORIGINAL: CJaysMusic

you can notice 1.9ms latency...you must have bionic ears. I dont think its humanly possible or your computer isnt registering the correct latency..
CJ

My memory tells me that standing 1 meter from the ampspeaker = 4ms latency, so I´m pretty sure there´s something more going on in Jose´s signalchain. To me a useful latency is anything under 10ms.

However I prefer "real" amps for the way they make me play, my theory is, that I get the "right" feedback from an amp - even if it doesn´t howl, it does make the strings vibrate = I play more relaxed/like when I´m playing with the band.

Because of this I can usually hear what has been recorded with some kind of simulator, i.e. the sounds may be perfect simulations of the real thing, but very often it sounds like it´s played under stress. This doesn´t mean I deem them useless, I mean look at my hero Jeff Beck - a lot of his work during the 90´s was recorded through just a preamp.

"Beauty is in the ear of the listener" - good sound = what fits the feeling of the song.

I don´t have any speakers connected to my internet-pc, but I got really interested in CJ´s music, I´ll listen later.

ORIGINAL: CJaysMusic

thanx, I used my Boss GS-10 and i miked my fender pro 185 (2 12" speakers) one mic for each and each on its own track. This is one topic i dont get sick of, but i better stop or ill wind up explaining my whole recording process...

CJ

No, go on!

Seriously, I find it very interesting to see what goes on in other people´s minds - like the story about when the Beatles had John(?) swinging upside down singing, to get the right sound - where did that idea come from ?

pgw, i just finnished reading that book with that in it. The producer stopped him before he did it and thats how they came to putting it in a leslie speaker...

CJ

So it was just a story then, quite funny anyway

It was just a story. Another thing was when jogn suggested it, the engineer and producer both laughed at him and said "instead of you hanging from the ceiling upside down and swirling around the mic, why dont we just swing the mic around you."

CJ