It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Feedback
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!
https://www.facebook.com/benswanwickguitar
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
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.
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.
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 .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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
Recorded tones though..id go modelling all day long unless I had a good engineer (better than me), good room, good mics etc.