I recently listened to Chairman of the Boards podcast Who Makes The Best Amp Simulator? hosted by Grant Klassen. There was a lot of great information in this podcast about the differences between using real tube amps and traditional pedalboards vs. digital amp sims or modelers. The podcast focused more on amp and cab sim pedals like the Strymon Iridium, but a lot of the same points also apply to full featured modelers like Helix, Fractal or Quad Cortex. Some of the differences noted between real tube amps and modelers were feel, cost, convenience, fly-ready, footprint and venue compatibility (i.e., stage volume). But the podcast seemed to miss the biggest difference, and how to overcome this difference to use modelers to get the best of both. Read on if you’d like to find out how.
Start with the extremes
Let’s start by comparing two systems at the extremes, and explore their differences.
For the “Real Amp” system, let’s consider a traditional pedal platform tube amp like a Two Rock or Fender Deville set at the edge of breakup, with a 2×12 cabinet, some sort of Celestion speakers, say V30s, and a traditional analog pedal board. This is a reasonably sized rig that could be used in a wide range of venues from small clubs to large rooms mic’d into FOH if needed. There’s no question this Real Amp is going to sound great and there are countless examples of guitarists using similar setups live and in the studio with great success.
For the “Modeler”, let’s choose a full system like Helix that contains all the effects you need as well as amp and cab models, we’re using IEMs, no backline and all sound is through FOH. For you the guitarist, there is no question that this Modeler rig is not going to sound anything like that Real Amp rig. The experience will be totally different. Let’s explor why.
The first obvious reason would be that the Real Amp sounds like an amp in the room, because it is. You are hearing the guitar amp speaker directly without any microphone. Another difference is that you’re guitar is also hearing that speaker, creating a feedback loop between the speaker and the guitar strings that totally changes how the guitar responds and feels under your hands. This is a large part of what guitarists mean by “feel”.
But possibly the biggest difference is that it is simply loud, often real loud. A guitar amp keeping up with a drum kit in a gig situation is probably putting out close to 100dB of sound. You’re going to feel that in your chest. Low notes are going to have a thump to them you can feel. That’s what makes a guitar amp come alive.
The Modeler/IEM rig will have none of that. You can have the sound in your ears as loud as you want, but you and your guitar aren’t going to feel anything.
Let’s summarize some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of these rigs.
Real Amp advantages:
- Sounds glorious: direct, in the room amp tone
- Well practiced and well understood setup
- Lots of flexibility in the setup including pedal choices and routing effects into the front of the amp and/or in the effects loop
- With the right pedals into the front of a clean amp, or using the amp’s master volume, you can control stage volume
- Direct access to all the effects controls on the pedalboard for quick changes in a live setting
- Ability to program scenes using MIDI switchers
- Easy to change out individual pedals, we’re not locked into a single vendor
Real Amp disadvantages:
- Often too loud requiring amp shields, turning the amp backwards, pointing the amp to the side of the stage, using isolation cabinets or load boxes to keep volume under control
- Can be very expensive if you add up the amp, cabinet, all those pedals, and the MIDI pedal switcher
- Can be very complex requiring pedalboard power supply, lots of wiring and programming the MIDI switcher
- Can have reliability problems especially in the pedal cables and tubes
- No way to have effects after the cabinet. Some effects like chorus, delay and reverb sound better after the cabinet, or at least after distortion. This can be accomplished with a clean amp or using the amp effects loop, but that looses the benefit of the power amp distortion if that’s part of your tone
- No ear protection unless you use ear plugs, and that will take away that great tone
- Getting the guitar amp into FOH requires a carefully positioned mic that can easily get kicked out of position and will introduce bleed into your guitar signal
- No option for acoustic instruments
Modeler advantages:
- Less weight, smaller footprint, faster setup
- Simplicity and reliability
- No stage volume issues
- IEMs provide ear protection
- No external mic and no bleed into the guitar signal
- Can support acoustic instruments
- Patches per song and scenes per song section without a lot of MIDI programming
- Large selection of effects, more than would fit on a typical pedalboard
- Large selection of amp and cab models covering a wide range of tones
- Consistent tone night after night
- Ability to share patches
Modeler disadvantages:
- Digital fizz
- Latency
- No feel or interaction with the guitar
- Problems with stage front fill in small clubs (because there’s no backline)
- Can sound indirect, thin and get lost in the mix
- Looks small, no mojo
Scaling down the Real Amp
The reality of modern club gigs is you can’t use a 100W amp and 4×12 cabinet, its just too big and too loud. So while that Real Amp rig might in theory have the best tone, the practical reality is you very often can’t use it. Once you introduce something to reduce the volume, such as amp shields, isolation cabinets, load boxes, ear plugs or IEMs, you’re not going to be hearing that amp in the room any longer. With IEMs or stage monitor wedges, you’re going to be hearing a mic’d guitar speaker, just like the Modeler’s cab model or IR. If instead you control stage volume by using the amp’s master volume, or using pedals into the front of a clean amp, you’re not going to get power amp distortion anymore. You will however get more control of your distortion voicing, but it won’t sound the same as a cranked or even on the edge of breakup power amp.
Another issue is that modern pedalboard. Lovers of analog are going to tell you they hate digital because it sounds fizzy or harsh and introduces latency. Now you get about 1 msec of latency for every foot you stand away from your guitar amp, so latency is not likely an issue. But some people think they can feel it. If you introduce modern pedals like the H9 or Strymon BigSky, your pristine analog signal is going to go through two A2D and D2A converters as many of these modern digital effects pedals do not have analog dry-through. I’m not saying that’s a real problem, only that if you use these pedals, you’re already introducing digital signal processing into your amp rig.
So all of a sudden that big, expensive, high-maintenance tube amp and pedal board is starting to loose some of its magic in the reality of many gigging situations. If you use some digital pedals with no analog dry through, and a load box with an IR to control stage volume, you’re actually starting to turn that Real Amp into something that looks and behaves more like the Modeler rig. That is, it has all the disadvantages of both and none of the advantages.
Scaling Up the Modeler
Let’s try going in the other direction: instead of scaling down the Real Amp to control stage volume, let’s try scaling up the Modeler to make it behave and feel more like a Real Amp, but in a controllable way.
But first, let’s introduce one small change in the Real Amp rig above. Let’s say you are using IEMs with your Real Amp, to protect your ears, and to be able to hear the rest of the band better. You’re still going to feel that big loud backline amp, and so is your guitar. So you keep the tone and maybe eliminate the dreaded monitor wedge too. But now, what’s the actual difference between the Real Amp mic’d and the Modeler? Not much actually. The biggest contributors to guitar tone are the things that touch the air: the guitar strings and pickups on one end, and the speaker and mic on the other. The guitar is the same for both our Real Amp and Modeler rigs, so that is taken out of the equation. Ignoring effects, that leaves the amp, speaker and mic in the Real Map vs the amp, cab and mic models in the Modeler. Of these three, the speaker is likely to have the greatest impact on tone, especially if you’re using a clean amp. Modern modelers are all using impulse responses that do a pretty good job capturing the tone of a speaker. Once you mic a real speaker, the difference with an IR is going to shrink a lot. But that still leaves the issue of “feel”.
As noted above, the biggest difference between the Real Amp and the Modeler is really how loud it is in the backline, and whether its loud enough for you and your guitar to actually feel moving air. What I have found is that if we introduce a not so small change to our Modeler rig, we can get back the feel of the Real Amp. To do this, you simply add a FRFR such as a Line6 Powercab to the Modeler rig. Now you’ve added back controllable stage volume with something that is reproducing the same sound that is in your IEMs and in the FOH. This will give you back the feel because you’re now moving some air and getting back the missing physical interaction between the FRFR and you and your guitar. But your overall gigging experience isn’t totally dependent on just that loud backline FRFR. You’ll have better control of stage volume while retaining as much of the feel as the venue/situation will allow.
This is the best of both worlds. You get all the advantages of both the Real Amp and Modeler, filling in the disadvantages of both. Now Helix + Powercab 212 is not inexpensive. But neither is that treasured tube amp and pedalboaard. And look at what you get: all the effects you will likely need, plenty of amp and cab models to choose from, flexible effect routing, presets and snapshots/scenes with no need for a complex MIDI switcher, digital connection between Helix and Powercab through Line6 Link, and support for acoustic instruments by simply selecting a different patch. And with Powercab, you can use FLAT/LF Raw mode and no cab model or IR in Helix to get pretty close to a Real Amp configuration. Does this sound the same as the Real Amp? No, not quite. But its hard to tell the difference, and I’m often not sure which one I like better when directly comparing the two. But your audience will never know the difference unless they’re listening with their eyes not their ears.
While I love real amps, I have two of them setup out in the garage, I haven’t used them on a gig since I bought a Line6 POD many years ago. I now use a Quad Cortex and Powercab 112+ for all gigs and doubt those treasured real amps will ever be used live again, at least by me.
So the answer to getting real sound/feel out of a modeler, is to use a FRFR and turn it up!
jimamsden 