Has anybody started using modelling amps

Jalapeno

Chap I occasionally play alongside at straight up jazz gigs, was gigging a Kemper 600w, with FRFR speakers - he sounded awesome (aside from being a killer player that is).

Think he's reverted to a Fender Acoustasonic 40 (for jazz)

ESBlonde

I bought a ten year old Marshall in 1978, I've giggled it hard ever since, it got put in a flight case only about 8 years ago at  guess. One power valve socket and the standby switch replaced as well as a few valve changes along the way. Very recent recap and replaced the old bulgin power socket with an IEC standard one. 
Best investment I ever made in gear.
I'm now beginning to consider weight, but not sure these smt devices will last as long as I will need!

Barney

Vibetronic said:

Yes, I've been using the AX8 for a couple of years now and love it - I sold my big amp (Engl SE) straight away, and have only kept a couple of small practice amps for teaching purposes. There's no difference in sound that I can tell - the Engl sim for example sounds pretty much identical to my old amp - and it's so easy - just stick it in a backpack and that's pretty much it. This is actually a pretty big deal for me as I've had a dodgy back for 20+ years and it's amazing not to have to lug loads of stupid gear around. The onstage sound can be slightly different like others have said, but if the person doing the sound is competent and you have a good monitor mix, it's hardly any different. I do slightly tweak settings for live so there's less gain, but that's it, and you'd do that with an amp anyway. It's great for recording too. Other good bit for me is effects - I've never been into effects pedals, I just don't find it very interesting and it's yet more stuff to cart around...but having a load of stuff easily accessible is fun to mess around with. You can assign everything to the footswitches on it and turn on/off whilst playing too. 

The only downside to me is editing the patches - the display on the AX8 is really small and it's not very intuitive. I do all of this on the software you get stick on your desktop as it's much easier - the Kemper is a bit easier from this point of view, our other guitarist uses one. This is only really a drawback when playing live; I got asked by the guy doing the sound recently to change my noisegate a bit, and didn't know how to do it on the unit itself, which was a bit embarrassing. I'm not hugely into gear apart from guitars themselves, but in 30 years of playing this is probably the best not-an-actual-guitar thing I've ever bought. I didn't go for the full Axe-FX rack version for this reason - just loads of stuff I probably would never get round to using; for plugging in and playing, this is awesome. 

For the kind of stuff that you play I reckon that you'd find loads of sounds to suit, well worth a go   I can't remember whereabouts you live, but you're welcome to try it if you're ever in the Gloucestershire area! My mates Kemper is equally good from what I can tell, but I haven't really played that much with it.

Thanks mate ...I'm miles away though in Cumbria...I did try my mates headrush ...he left it for a week ...but didn't want to take it to rehearsals in case it got damaged or anything ....things seem to be getting simpler with setting up cos it was just like drag and drop Fx....just worried about the sound live ...I think I am going to have to take the plunge at something though .. off all else fails I can use it as an Fx unit

Vibetronic

Barney said:

Vibetronic said:

Yes, I've been using the AX8 for a couple of years now and love it - I sold my big amp (Engl SE) straight away, and have only kept a couple of small practice amps for teaching purposes. There's no difference in sound that I can tell - the Engl sim for example sounds pretty much identical to my old amp - and it's so easy - just stick it in a backpack and that's pretty much it. This is actually a pretty big deal for me as I've had a dodgy back for 20+ years and it's amazing not to have to lug loads of stupid gear around. The onstage sound can be slightly different like others have said, but if the person doing the sound is competent and you have a good monitor mix, it's hardly any different. I do slightly tweak settings for live so there's less gain, but that's it, and you'd do that with an amp anyway. It's great for recording too. Other good bit for me is effects - I've never been into effects pedals, I just don't find it very interesting and it's yet more stuff to cart around...but having a load of stuff easily accessible is fun to mess around with. You can assign everything to the footswitches on it and turn on/off whilst playing too. 

The only downside to me is editing the patches - the display on the AX8 is really small and it's not very intuitive. I do all of this on the software you get stick on your desktop as it's much easier - the Kemper is a bit easier from this point of view, our other guitarist uses one. This is only really a drawback when playing live; I got asked by the guy doing the sound recently to change my noisegate a bit, and didn't know how to do it on the unit itself, which was a bit embarrassing. I'm not hugely into gear apart from guitars themselves, but in 30 years of playing this is probably the best not-an-actual-guitar thing I've ever bought. I didn't go for the full Axe-FX rack version for this reason - just loads of stuff I probably would never get round to using; for plugging in and playing, this is awesome. 

For the kind of stuff that you play I reckon that you'd find loads of sounds to suit, well worth a go   I can't remember whereabouts you live, but you're welcome to try it if you're ever in the Gloucestershire area! My mates Kemper is equally good from what I can tell, but I haven't really played that much with it.

Thanks mate ...I'm miles away though in Cumbria...I did try my mates headrush ...he left it for a week ...but didn't want to take it to rehearsals in case it got damaged or anything ....things seem to be getting simpler with setting up cos it was just like drag and drop Fx....just worried about the sound live ...I think I am going to have to take the plunge at something though .. off all else fails I can use it as an Fx unit

ah, no worries  I try and tweak the sounds when we're rehearsing at volume (or make a mental note) to adjust a bit for live. I guess it depends how loud you normally run your amp onstage and if you might miss the thump, but generally it's great. The only time I noticed the difference was our last gig where the sound onstage was awful and I couldn't make much out, but that was down to awkward comms with the sound guy whose English was a bit patchy and it was crap across the board.

jpfamps

ecc83 said:

The first Fenders were too clean for the rock people.

Dave.

Ever played through a 50's Fender?

A friend of mine made a modern rock album using a '57 Deluxe and a '57 Les Paul Junior and no pedals.

jpfamps

ICBM said:

digitalscream said:

That last bit is often mentioned, but how often does it actually happen?

Quite often, once things are more than about ten years old. Good example - Line6 Spider Valve Mk1. Line6 are an excellent company for customer support, who keep spare boards and are happy to supply them, but once they're gone they're gone and that's it. You couldn't even replace the parts at component level, the chips were custom-designed and the company who supplied them don't keep spares. I'm currently waiting for them to get back to me about a board for a more recent bass amp too, hopefully they haven't yet run out of those - the fault on that was actually caused by a simple voltage regulator failure, but the chips it supplied are now toast so it wouldn't be economical to repair at component level even if possible.

The failures are relatively rare at least in the short to medium term, but if they do happen then your amp becomes at best a powered cabinet even if it's got some way of accessing the power amp.

I've not seen that many dead modelling amps either.

Having said that, of the ones I have seen, a significant percentage are beyond repair because of faults in the digital part of the amp.

This is particularly frustrating with an amp such as the Super Champ X2, where an amp with a relatively expensive valve output stage is rendered useless because the digital modelling part of the amp doesn't work.

Like all digital technology, all modelling amps will effectively become unrepairable.

Danny1969

I've seen a couple of Line 6 amps with faults in the DSP part of the amp, basically either the chips dying or the BGA joints are iffy. It would help if they underfilled them .... a guitar amp is going to vibrate a lot it doesn't take a genius to see that designing the PCB without taking that into account is a bad idea and a preventable point of failure. Changing the chip wouldn't be hard, a darn site easier than changing the SMC chip on a Macbook or the U2 chip on an iPhone but even if you could source the chip the firmware is unobtainable so it wouldn't do much good

Actual well designed DSP PCB's will basically go on forever or at least until the caps go. I have Digidesign DSP cards from 1997 still working perfectly.

Another reason for picking a Tonelab for the KB band is easy redundancy, it's cheap enough to buy 2 and I can midi dump the all the patches in from my laptop. In another 5 years when the Helix is cheap I'll probably buy one but I wouldn't spend that kind of money on one at this point

gearaddict

I did a couple of gigs using a Pod HD500X into the fx return of an Orange TH30 into a Marshall 1936 2x12 cab. Unmic'd. That was fine, if a little mushy. I was using the dual rectifier model which to me sounded one of the more convincing ones but up loud it felt a bit lacking in mids. Fine though - did the job.

Since then I had a brief dalliance with the Helix before moving on to the Digitech GSP1101 which I still have...not really gigged either of those yet though. My plan was to go fully digital, mainly to enable our singer to have a more controllable volume / mix on stage. He has been having throat problems and can't blast his voice out in quite the way he used to...having a decent mix in his ear helped a lot.

What I find with the digital stuff is that it sounds...fine. Nothing wrong with it. The mistake I keep on making is to A/B it with my valve amp and end up getting discontented because the valve stuff just seems to have more life to it. At the moment I have my GSP1101 set up in 4CM with my Orange TH30 and I will probably gig it like that for the moment. That does give me the option to run a XLR cable to the PA (applying an IR to those outputs) as well as having my real cab on stage, which I can just use as a monitor. I might then lose the TH30 and just use a monitor. But I'm not quite there yet - I don't want to have to rely on the PA setup as I don't have any control over that.

I've never played a modeller that I felt was as good as my valve amp, through a real cab, in the room. I think until I get that, I probably won't move away from amps. I haven't tried Fractal or Kemper yet - but they are too expensive for me to justify. Once the price is right, I may well switch completely.

ecc83

"Ever played through a 50's Fender?"

Of course not.

Re "repairability" I have read that there is an attempt in Europe to get a "right to repair" bill through.  AFAICT this would require manfctrs to suplly service data to bona fide technicians and spares at a reasonable cost and for a decently long time.

With regard to SMT and "digital" stuff I would like to see some form of service replacement. This would make design trickier and gear more expensive but in the long term save the punter money and the CO2 emissions.  Hard though when so many people are chasing down the last groat on the interweb!

Dave.

professorben

Gigging regularly with Line6 modelling unit. 

I find it very easy to get a tone I like, the ability to recall presets is a real godsend for a covers band and the built in fx help streamline my set up times, Tap tempo is fantastic for syncing delays with our drummer and the ability to feed direct to the front of house PA and use my combo for stage monitoring is great. 

Downsides, can be a little underpowered for heavier rock, but it’s a 1x12 so that’s normal, tones that sound great at home usually get lost in the mix, but again nothing new there, cutting through can be difficult, but I do play with a keys player and a busy bassist so it’s quite a dense mix anyway.

Easy to get tempted into adding lots/too much fx to tones and then find out you have to pair it back a bit in live contexts. 

The light weight is really really nice tho, and I find myself feeling a bit bad about only using a couple of the amp models when there are so many to choose from, feels a bit of a waste not to use all of them??

BTW this short review was based on my thoughts and feelings at the time about my Line6 Flextone 1 60w 1x12 combo and Floorboard, which was 17 years ago now....

things have improved. 

Roland

professorben said:

... using a couple of the amp models when there are so many to choose from, feels a bit of a waste not to use all of them??

Use what you need. Generally less is more. I’ve got several dozen bits for my electric screwdriver. I normally use just two. If I need an Allen key or a star I generally turn it manually. Just because you’ve got it doesn’t mean you need to is it.

ICBM

jpfamps said:

ecc83 said:

The first Fenders were too clean for the rock people.

Dave.

Ever played through a 50's Fender?

A friend of mine made a modern rock album using a '57 Deluxe and a '57 Les Paul Junior and no pedals.

ecc83 said:

"Ever played through a 50's Fender?"

Of course not.

What he means is that the 50s Fenders were actually not at all clean. Leo Fender was really making it up as he went along - which is not a put-down, he was a true pioneer and entirely self-taught. The amps weren't designed to be hi-fi, they were designed to be loud! They were based on very basic RCA and Westinghouse 'what to do with our valves' circuits, and improved by experimenting.

It's the *60s* Fenders which started being very clean. By then Leo had either learned a lot more about 'proper' audio electronics design, or employed people who had. The goal by then was clean headroom, and a much more hi-fi sound - that's why the tone stack is so scooped, because they were aiming for something approaching a flat response when put through the speakers in an open-back combo.

Even then musicians didn't all like this change - Marshall got their start by copying the older '59 (ie not hi-fi) Bassman, rather than the current '62 production model which was by then a much more sophisticated bass amp with a separate cabinet, because that dirtier sound was what was wanted by Marshall's customers, including Pete Townshend. Resistance to new technology is nothing new .

digitalscream

ICBM said:

Even then musicians didn't all like this change - Marshall got their start by copying the older '59 (ie not hi-fi) Bassman, rather than the current '62 production model which was by then a much more sophisticated bass amp with a separate cabinet, because that dirtier sound was what was wanted by Marshall's customers, including Pete Townshend. Resistance to new technology is nothing new .

...and companies are still making the same mistakes, in that they don't properly listen to their customers. If they did, then there wouldn't be so many of us wishing that our amp rigs had the same flexibility as our modellers

tunapuppy

I have a helix and it's brilliant! Being able to switch between using a fender tweed for the cleans and a mesa for the heavier tones, then completely changing your amps and effects for another song is awesome. I know a lot of people say the tone isn't as good as a proper tube amp, but with a bit of dialling in and patience you can get pretty damn close, certainly close enough so that when playing with a band you can't tell the difference. Plus the interface is nothing short of genius, extremely intuitive and very versatile. I've sold my amps and only use the helix, just waiting for a hughes and kettner patch to come out then I'll be super happy! 

guitarmangler

I’ve used my yamaha dg80, or the 100 watt head version , exclusively for gigging for the last 15 years . They sound amazing and have never ( touch wood ) gone wrong . 

Pablocrackers

Used HX stomp Friedman patch last night through pa instead of lugging my Friedman head & cab through the snow 1 guitar on shoulder with hx stomp in pouch cant beat that. Sound wise - sounded really good nice and full sounding needs dialling in more at very loud volume bit spikey on top end even with 8k roll off but can easily be tweaked used the Fender twin model for clean sounded really nice. Fx are top draw on the Helix & the ease of use is the best out there imo.  Does it sound like the Friedman - no but it sounds great - does it have the same punch as a real amp - no but it fills the room and pa with a really full sounding professional guitar recorded sound which i really liked - brilliant piece of gear highly recommended - i do think modellers can become a bit ott or a waste of money if you find yourself using one amp for what it costs to buy a kemper - remote- bag - frfr speaker - profiles & endless tweaking you can get a really nice hand wired amp, cab & pedals for maybe less & ive never been able to replicate the punch you get from a real amp behind me on stage which impacts the way you play including the drummer who usually gets blasted by the cab lol! So for now its still a proper valve amp for live for me but i wanna try a helix live one day Id love to get a Kemper for the studio as well

ecc83

"...and companies are still making the same mistakes, in that they don't properly listen to their customers. If they did, then there wouldn't be so many of us wishing that our amp rigs had the same flexibility as our modellers "

Well, they could DS but as I said, the switching is tricky in valve circuits. You can be "quiet" with FETs but then the cork sniffers won't buy it. I guess you could use triodes to mute signal lines instead of transistors but that gets very exoensive, very quickly.

Even for processor controlled FET switching the "dwell" time is critical. Take too long to flip and peeps "hear" the delay. Switch too fast and they percieve a click. (there ain't one but fast switching gives that illusion but much depends on how loud the signal is at the switch time)

You can't PAOTPAOTT.

Dave.

digitalscream

ecc83 said:

"...and companies are still making the same mistakes, in that they don't properly listen to their customers. If they did, then there wouldn't be so many of us wishing that our amp rigs had the same flexibility as our modellers "

Well, they could DS but as I said, the switching is tricky in valve circuits. You can be "quiet" with FETs but then the cork sniffers won't buy it. I guess you could use triodes to mute signal lines instead of transistors but that gets very exoensive, very quickly.

Even for processor controlled FET switching the "dwell" time is critical. Take too long to flip and peeps "hear" the delay. Switch too fast and they percieve a click. (there ain't one but fast switching gives that illusion but much depends on how loud the signal is at the switch time)

You can't PAOTPAOTT.

Dave.

True enough, but I actually surprised myself by getting the switching time on the X88R preamp down to 4ms - which should have made a "pop", but didn't at all!

Musicwolf

I've been using modelling since the very early 1990s.  I was a very early adopter of the Tech21 Sansamp (which I still have and which still works).  Since then I've used a Marshall JMP-1 (again, still sounding very good), Vox ToneLab, Line 6 POD 500HD and, for a few years now, Kemper.  I also have a Blackstar ID60 up in the loft as a 'spare'.

The Sansamp and the JMP-1 were analogue devices (the JMP-1 was analogue with digital control if I'm correct).  The digital stuff just got better with each generation but the Kemper represented a step change.

Having the huge (overwhelming) range of amp profiles is great in the studio but, for live, I have found the few sounds that work (clean, crunch etc) and I use these as my starting point.  I do store things as a 'bank-per-song' but that's mainly so that I can use the Kemper Floor Controller to also select patches on my VoiceLive vocal effects as well as acting as an electronic set list.

The Kemper sounds great live and I get plenty of positive comments regarding my tone

PolarityMan

Pablocrackers said:

Used HX stomp Friedman patch last night through pa instead of lugging my Friedman head & cab through the snow 1 guitar on shoulder with hx stomp in pouch cant beat that. Sound wise - sounded really good nice and full sounding needs dialling in more at very loud volume bit spikey on top end even with 8k roll off but can easily be tweaked used the Fender twin model for clean sounded really nice. Fx are top draw on the Helix & the ease of use is the best out there imo.  Does it sound like the Friedman - no but it sounds great - does it have the same punch as a real amp - no but it fills the room and pa with a really full sounding professional guitar recorded sound which i really liked - brilliant piece of gear highly recommended - i do think modellers can become a bit ott or a waste of money if you find yourself using one amp for what it costs to buy a kemper - remote- bag - frfr speaker - profiles & endless tweaking you can get a really nice hand wired amp, cab & pedals for maybe less & ive never been able to replicate the punch you get from a real amp behind me on stage which impacts the way you play including the drummer who usually gets blasted by the cab lol! So for now its still a proper valve amp for live for me but i wanna try a helix live one day Id love to get a Kemper for the studio as well

I would say that even running just the pre/power amp models into the FX return of a valve amp doesnt have the same punch either.  The first practice with my helix we A/B'd the placator model into the FX return of my jca50h with jsut using the jca50h gain and the jca felt way better..its a tough thing to put your finger on and maybe if you're not actually playing the guitar you wouldnt notice it at all but for me it was good but still not as good as a real amp.

Recorded tones though..id go modelling all day long unless I had a good engineer (better than me), good room, good mics etc.