Gearspace - Amps vs. Modelling (2024)

70 dB SPL is not enough information to tell about how loud you were. Was that just your guitar, or the whole band? Was it a bar that has a 50 person limit, with hardwood floors and tin ceilings, or a nicely designed theater?

The biggest problem with loud instruments is bleeding into other mics. This is especially bad in places that are very reflective, even if it’s a larger venue. The vocals suffer the most in these situations, which is why you often just can’t really hear the vocals over the band. If you turn the vocals up any more to compete with the rest of the band, you end up with feedback. So that feedback that makes your guitar sustain so nicely, ends up being a big problem for an engineer, regardless of whether or not they’re wearing earplugs, which is ridiculous, btw.

Anyway, I’ve had this conversation before, many times. Guitarists who make nonsense claims about why their excessive volume is necessary are a dime a dozen. The truth is, high wattage amplifiers are totally unnecessary in modern times. If I were king, amps over 20 watts would be subjected to a mandatory Variac installation. 70 dB SPL would be the max allowed of the entire band from the vantage point of the closest audience member. Vote for me in 2024! :lol:

I’m not sure what modelers you’re talking about. It’s not 1999 when the red bean was the scourge of music. You can cry all you want about modelers not being able to provide the “feel” of an amp or even get it exactly right, but they’ve sounded very good for years, and while I didn’t like the Line6 Spider I had for a week, I played a gig with it and it was fine. No one approached me and asked if I was using modeling instead of actual tubes. I’ve seen Adrian Belew play with modelers (including Line6 combos that I don’t particularly like) many times and while he’s no n00b, he always sounds great.

This “angry bees” phrase sounds like something someone said on a YouTube video that caught on because it’s a great way to justify your 100 watt Diezel in a cafe. The actual reality is that most metal or hard rock bands end up sounding like angry bees over muddy thumping without the help of any digital technology. Hell, I walked out of a Bootsy Collins show in a theater for this exact reason. I don’t remember seeing a modeler on that stage.

TLDR; don’t blame the technology, blame the user.

Yes. That was my point... You would need to read my previous post to get the full conext

If you would have read I did make it very clear, that was the volume of just my guitar amp at a gig, yet any sane audio engineer will know an acoustic drum kit is well in excess of that, high wattage amps are not unecessary, they have their place, I don't use anything above 30 watts normally.

I said a similar thing a while back. I was picking up a new ukulele for my daughter and in every shop I walked into, there were probably dozens of amps (some using modeling, I’m sure) for every modeler I saw, though to be honest I didn’t even see a modeler on display. There were probably a few in glass cases. The acoustic guitar room at our local Guitar Center was full of people checking out guitars, so much so that I had to wait a long time before properly demoing them.

The real deal is still in fashion, and I’m sure always will be. Again, we’re primates who developed on the plains of Africa, and in terms of our evolution, electricity is still new. It’s not surprising that a big wooden box with fake leather on it is more appealing than a small metal box or even worse, a software plugin. I just happen to represent the next stage in human evolution. :lol: Take your stinking paws off of my amp modeler, you damn dirty ape! :lol:

At the risk of pissing off all the sound engineers, sound engineers have been doing sound engineering wrong since I can remember (which is longer than I care to remember).

Nearly all gigs are about the audience hearing the singer. And yet every sound engineer from the Hope and Anchor to Glastonbury gets the drum sound right first.
OK well that's counterintuitive but at least they do vocals next, right? Er, no. They do guitar. Or bass. Or keys.
After everything has been done they finally get to the vocals - and then struggle to control the feedback as they fight to get the vocals above the rest of the band (that 99% of normal audiences aren't really paying attention to).

Sound engineers: why do you do this? It's been driving me nuts for 4 decades of trying to sing over massively loud drum kits.

I sometimes do vocals first.

But! Vocalists are often the divas/stars of the band and can't stand waiting for the rest of the band to finish soundcheck to try a song with all members for final corrections.
Especially when the singer is the star, that is something that really is the case.

Also, after several years you do get a feeling as a sound engineer where you can go levelwise with all the instrumets and still get the singer on top.

A bigger problem imho is, that especially soundengineers who tour with the band lose the feeling for how loud the vocals need to be as they have heard the songs so often that they know the vocals and hear the words and thus deem the singers loud enough. While the audience can't understand every word

Well then I was agreeing with you. :howdy:

This has always perplexed me as well. It doesn’t really matter too much where you start, but the fact that at one point everything isn’t brought down and then mixed to proportion with the vocals where they should be, is beyond me. It’s like someone decided this is the way to do it and no one ever bothered to ask if it made any sense.

That said, they didn’t exist when I was doing live engineering work, but I imagine having a bunch of modelers would make the job a million times easier, though I imagine a different problem would crop up. I bet a lot of the issues with modelers comes from the fact that guitarists make their patches at very low volumes compared to even a moderately loud gig. If they used headphones, even worse. So, I’m sure it’s not all great for the person at the desk. If I were asked for advice from someone gigging with modelers, I’d tell them to make a batch of presets in some venue, even if they have to rent it for an afternoon.

You are literally blocked from expressing your anguish about the totally blues worthy late train by a late train. What are you waiting for?

Yes, we do have zoning laws
Why is it when amps come up in a conversation here its always "loud"? If you use a sim in a live setup it will get jut as loud if required just I don't like that sound. I record many more clean guitar parts then gain mush. Clean can be loud too, if the amp has the headroom. But the amps also add colour, and speakers even more so. Digital sounds like digital doesn't matter what. Arguing about it here got so boring that I am now avoiding the forums for most days. Abuse for the sake of self aggrandising. With nothing to show for it. Maybe there some topics which there is more then digital analogue/tube bull? All I see here is the same waste of time. Well, I may take another 2 weeks off.

Fortunately you finally understood that it is not about easy engineering gig but about making the band sounding good. People did that with tube amps for the last 70 yers and got pretty good results, dont you think?

What’s to show?

A good tube amp is still the best thing to plug an electric guitar into.

Digital has it’s place. For some people it’s what allows them to play and enjoy the instrument. A good thing from my perspective…

That is of course wrong and a stupid claim.
And it got falsified in numerous blind tests.

Right you are. The toob cult never delivers recordings done by themselves to show their goods.

I strongly suspect your question about why "loud" always comes up with amps is related to a false argument about digital guys claiming the need to be loud is a negative aspect that is a unique attribute of analog amps, that digital can sound good at lower volumes than analog amps, especially tubes, and I agree.

I play loud and also prefer to hear music loud because in my view (and I should add also experience) Music SHOULD be loud. It is simply a more potent experience than Elevator Music levels.

At levels around 100db-110db is where electric guitars "come into their own", where the whole room becomes part of the instrument, creating a feedback loop that changes how a guitar feels, which affects hjow the player plays, which affects how the instrument sounds, which affects how the instrument feels....

That happens, albeit to varying degrees, no matter how or through what you get there. That is simply a fact. Whether somebody prefers that or not is subjective, a personal choice. I walk out on bands playing while peaking at 90db and I won't play at those levels. I want to be in or hear bands that are "jazzed" to play, !! electric !!, not quietly sedate and bored out of their minds. Those bands might as well phone it in.

Why? To prove what toob amps sound like?

Where's my ABX test?

It is odd how the only people to say sims are sh*t have an unblemished record of not demonstrating the superiority of their gear. Still, who needs proof when you can simply 'trust me bro'?

This is all true. When I was touring, and I still had hair, I liked to feel the air from my AC30s ruffling it. It really is an awesome feeling and sims have never given me that.

However, I strongly suspect I was the only one on that stage with that preference - and even more sure that no one in the audience could tell how loud my amp was, or would have cared if they could.

Add to that the fact that no one can reliably tell on a recording, that most people record amps in booths or, if in the main room, record their overdubs in the control room (note I said 'most' not all) - and my feeling that loud guitar amps are a pleasure reserved for, or at least best appreciated by, solo or hobbyist guitarists is reinforced.

The smell of appleblossom, the pixie dust faeries dancing, the spinning stars...

c'mon bud, you just cranked out a few pentatonics didn't you? lol.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that was just hyperbole since I've never felt "the air from my" amps ruffling my hair. I have felt it make my guitars come alive though.

Sorry you felt that way and hope it wasn't so. My amp as noted several times on Gearspace was most times in front of me on Fender TiltBack legs pointing just like my vocal monitor. Pointing at the backstage ceiling insured nobody got blasted but me. Band members could ask for more or less me in their monitor mix. I know they liked what they heard because they responded as usually did the audience. The audience largely didn't know nor care the technical aspects of how we got that sound. They just noted whether we sounded good and played well or not

There is a real reason why guys like Steve Lukather are on thousands of recordings, many of them hits, and it's all because he never phones it in. He is "jazzed" with how his guitar sounds always and that changes what gets recorded at the most fundamental level.

The argument that "the audience doesn't care" or "you can't tell the difference on recordings" is bunk. If that were so there would be no greats and "also rans".

Is that supposed to pull me back down to Earth? or worse make some negative comment about my Music? or Music in general? I mean it is cliche because it is so common that guys who play and prefer what they call 'technical music" refer to pentatonics as pedestrian at best, like it is the lowest form of Music and anybody can do it. You barely have to be a musician, they think.

News flash! Pentatonics are common because they are so relatable to human voice and singing. Just because they are seen as simple does not make them incapable of greatness. I mean Shakespeare commonly relied on iambic pentameter and wrote many poems in simple Sonnet form. His plays generally consisted of a few acts just like other plays. Is his work "just cranking out a few simple plays and poems?

I'm in no way comparing my musicianship to Shakespeares quality of craft but the pint is it is useless and false to denigrate something just because it follows a simple formula.

Simply put, a 4 stroke combustion engine is simply Suck! Squeeze! Pop! Phooey! Big deal right? But that pays no attention to the different possibilities characterized in Ferrari versus a lawnmower motor.

Ask your self, Is Haiku the lowest form of poetry? Is all Haiku ever written doomed to mediocrity? or do they run the gamut from suck to WOW!! ?

If my playing doesn't move you beyond "Yawn" I'd be lying if I said I didn't care at all but the truth also is I accept it that I can't please everyone, so it's OK. I have pleased many including myself.. maybe I pleased many exactly because i pleased myself. Unless one is a sociopath or worse, we can tell and relate to how others feel even in just how they look and sound. Isn't that what Music is about?

Notice how there is more activity on the site, more new people asking for advice, as your constant toxic fighting is less.

Why don't you take a hint, and cut it out altogether. Nobody is gonna say sht if you praise sims, talk about sims, whatever. As long as you don't badmouth amps or amp users.

At lower volumes you need to use a suitable speaker, otherwise tube or digital sound thin, small and anaemic. Which of course could be what you want. Digital being a simulation cannot by definition sound better then the original. Unless it is used to create something new. That's different. Also, a tube amp when driven hard still manages to have an organic distorted tone. Not the case with digital.
I am sick of experimenting with the sims. Its much easier, rewarding and usually cheaper to use traditional tech to get a tone a client wants. Had a Kemper in the studio for several months. The owner is back and i can finally be rid of it. Not a single client wanting to use it in preference to the usual. I give up

BTW as new science goes, Shakespeare never wrote anything, he just used locals to write the stuff and then sold it on with his name on it. Maybe its true

Maybe it is true but it doesn't matter to the argument that Art, perhaps especially Music, needs to be difficult and complex to be worth a damn. In my view the best guitar players can rip your heart out with one note.

Not sure I agree with that. Music is supposed to match your mood and make you feel good or sad, whatever your preference is. I listen to anything from Shostakovich to pop/funk/rock/rap/folk/Cossack music (!)/metal... on any particular day , depending on my mood at that moment. If it doesn't make me feel something i move on to something else. Difficult may be as much a turn-off as suitable

I was in the tube amp camp strictly before Tonex. Technology improves. Take the challenge and show us your skills with a single capture for Tonex.

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