Celestion G12H30 1x12 Cabinet

I've got a little 1x12 monitor wedge that I gutted and tossed a Celestion G12H30 into. It's ugly.....really ugly! It's also great most of the time...... but my Rivera Knucklehead sometimes gets a hair boxy (which often tricks me into overcompensating with top end, low end, any non-boxy end I can muster) and I often end up working really hard to get that out (preferably on the amp side of the fence). On the other hand, my 5150 loves the cabinet and has no problems at all. My 1971 Marshall Superlead doesn't work with the cabinet. It does make sound....if you want to call it that. The boxiness is rough and it just doesn't work.

Marshall JCM800 4x12 Cabinet

I have an old JCM 800 cabinet that was originally loaded with GT75 Celestions, which I think sounds bad on everything , but the Marshall Superlead sounded the least crappy through it. These 75 watt speakers always emphasize what I'm calling “bad bite”. If they made a plugin and just called it “Sounds worse”, this would be it.

Everything just hurts through the GT75s. The more mellow the amp, the less of a problem this is, but I can't think of an amp mellow enough to work with these speakers. You can attempt to bypass this bite with mic placement, EQ, etc but then you find the thing actually gets boxy again. It's clear they just added the bite at the end to make up for a speaker design that went way wrong. It seams that everything good is missing. I think I summed up my views on this speaker here:
75 Watt Celestions vs Kick In Balls

Note: There are guys (who look more like ugly girls with a big, dumb black hat on) who mixed 3 rat tails, a lock of hair from a prince, and a golden torch into a boiling pot. They were given the secret to getting GT75s to work. I skipped sorcery school. I'm clueless.

Carvin Legacy 4x12 w/Greenbacks

I got a chance to play my Rivera through a Carvin Legacy cabinet loaded with Greenbacks and it reminded me of that movie, Four Rooms. (I call it the “get up and dance ending”.) It's like you could still hear angels singing over all that deafening junk oozing out of the cabinet.

There's no mistaking that these two gadgets work well immediately together. Not too bright, not too boomy, not too boxy, etc. Goldilocks would have found this one jussssst right. After this, I ordered 4 Greenbacks from Avatar Speakers http://www.avatarspeakers.com/ specifically to use with my Rivera. The two mated perfectly for what I'm up to (I'll get to that in a minute.)

Mesa Boogie Recto 4x12 w/Vintage 30s

We jammed the next week and I ended up using a Mesa Boogie Recto cab with Celestion Vintage 30s. Oh boy. Not good. My normal tone is your usual not-remotely-unique not-really-Van-Halen-in-the-old-days, but closer to that than anything else kind of tone. It's good old high-gain rock guitar that's got more mids in it than any metal kid would want. I guess somewhere between old Van Halen and modern AFI is where I'd toss it.

Through the Recto cab, that wasn't the sound I got AT ALL. It immediately took on that “Nu Metal” character. It was soooooo “Nu Metal” that I wrinkled my nose. I sounded just like Disturbed and all those other bands. At least it was close enough to make me pull out the ol' metal riffs I hadn't played in years.

This was an epiphany. Never before had my Rivera sounded that way. Ever! I've heard from various dudes that the Rivera has a Boogie-like design (not sure about that one) but I'd never actually heard it until then.

It immediately occurred to me that if I'm recording a metal band wants that stereotypical Recto sound (I guess all guitar sounds are pretty much stereotypical by now) a person absolutely requires a Recto-type cabinet. This isn't to say that a person can't get a little creative and go with a different cab. It just means that I would default to a Recto cab from here on out as my baseline metal cabinet. It's “the sound”.

My days of playing metal seriously are long gone, but I do record it from time to time. My metal tones (on projects where I'm supposed to kinda-sorta create these tones) generally don't hit the nail on the head. They sound good, but they are shifted a few notches in the midrangy rock direction. The thing that has always complicated things for me is I hear all kinds of metal productions that have tons of grindy mids (not the boxy kinds of mids), but even when I attempt to add these grandy mids most most my guitar sounds are missing that “grind”. The Boogie cab has it.

Just yesterday I listened to a Killswitch Engaged record. It definitely was NOT a super scooped recording where the mids were on zero and the lows and highs were 10. It has plenty of grindy mids. It just has the right kind. My experiences with the Boogie cabinet now tell me that the Boogie cabinets are a secret to this “grind”. There's no way around it. I now know that a person can take a Van Halen-ish rock sound, run it through a Vintage 30 equipped Recto cab and get shifted 4 notches towards that modern metal thing instantly.

This particular sound isn't what I was personally going for, but I just got a good deal on a Recto cab for my metal recording work.

The Recording Gear Disappoints Again

I want to point out that I've hand picked my recording gear to get monstrous mega guitar sounds. I've got all the go-to mics used for the metal guitar gig. (See Royer R121 vs World ) I've used numerous Neve-style preamps, own a few, and I've got a Distressor. These toys don't hurt, but they don't turn a “rock” guitar sound into a “metal” guitar sound. As I always say, it's the source, the source, the source. So if you aren't quite getting the sounds you are looking for, investing in guitar cabinets would be much more effective than investing in the high end recording gadgets.

Note: I want to address a MAJOR point here. In some musical genres/circles, mostly jazz and other music you play with a tie on, there is this emphasis on fidelity. The “good” recordings best capture the instrument in it's natural setting. A ringing snare is part of the sound, for example. They want that in there. For guys doing pop music (pop, dance, country, metal, modern rock, etc) it works a bit differently. Maybe there is an increased fidelity with a Royer and a Neve on a rock guitar cab when compared to something cheaper. However, soooooooo much effort is placed in the subjective arena that the fancy recording setup is icing on the cake. In short, it's more important to get that amp exciting you in the room (whether this is a father-approved guitar sound or not) than it is to beautifully capture an unideal sound.

Yet another perspective: The fancy gear will improve your ability to “capture”, but try taking a good picture of your brother's testicles. Enough said.

Recto Cab Round #2

The following week I knew I would be playing through the Recto cabinet again and I wasn't in the mood to sound like Nu Metal this time. So I took my old Marshall Superlead. I had a suspicion that the added aggression of the Boogie cabinet would work well with the slightly too smooth character of the Marshall. Man, was I right! The Marshall mated perfectly with the Boogie cabinet. It didn't sound like Nu Metal. It didn't sound like Thin Lizzy (as this head often can). It just sounded good. It nailed the tone I was going for quite well, actually.

So, in this case, all it took to take a “creamy”, “vintage” sounding amp and make it modern was using a modern sounding cabinet. Again, I was quite surprised by the impact of this whole cabinet thing.

Back To The 1x12

A few weeks ago I recorded a band where a dude wanted that kinda-sorta Dr. Feelgood tone. He brought in some newer solid state Marshall. A lot of people don't care for many of these lower-end Marshall amps. My experience has shown me time and time again that the included cabinets are almost always dismal sounding, at best. However, the good ol' G12H30-equipped 1x12 cab of mine has saved my ass dozens of times with cheapo amps. For whatever reason, it mates extremely well with these solid state amps that sound horrible with other setups.

I guess the G12H30 tames the fizz and gives the tone some beef and aggression in the right spots. This tone ended up being one of the coolest tones I've ever recorded. (Interestingly, the dude had used an old Fender Roc-Pro through my G12H30 in the past and it too worked very, very well. I've played the Fender Roc-Pro amps and used to think they were a combination of old garbage and rotten elephant sperm.) Again, It's clear the cabinet is a huge deal.

I had a reamping session a few weeks ago where I used my Rivera through the 1x12 G12H30. What do you know? The Rivera sounded boxy again. After listening to my quick and dirty trials yesterday, I'm officially never using the Rivera with that cabinet again. From here on out, I'll be calling on the Greenbacks for their tighter low mids and less tendency to sound boxy. The fact that a Fender Roc Pro or the latest budget Marshall can sound great through the 1x12 cab, but my Rivera Knucklehead does not illustrates a few things.

One, it tells us that budget amps tend to be voiced similarly. (Scooped all to hell, fizzy, etc. This is what 16 year old kids generally want so the manufacturers are giving it to them.) Two, it tells us that it's more important to mate the right amp and cabinet together than it is to simply use “good” stuff.

Conclusion

In case my babbling didn't make sense to you, let's hit the main points.

• The mating of the cabinet and the amp is absolutely critical.
• Only witchcraft practitioners know how to get Celestion GT75s to sound good.
• Sometimes amps that have fought you for years with one cabinet suddenly come to life with a different cabinet.
• The tonal effects of electric guitar cabinets is dramatically understated. Now that I have a collection of mics that work well on electric guitar, I realize that I should have have just stuck with the 57s and blown my money on a collection that looks like a mix and matched Motley Crue backline.
• There is some kind of magic character found in a cabinet that can not be found anywhere else. You can not EQ an amp to sound like it was recorded through a different cabinet. It doesn't work that way.
• The cabinet plays an enormous role in the tone. When you plug a not-so-Recto sounding amp into a Recto cabinet and you hear that specific sound, you'll have no doubts about the effects of the cabinet.
• Fancy recording gear isn't going to make up for an ideal mating of guitar and cabinet. If anyone wants to argue this, I'll start by asking if you are a) deaf …...or.....b) insane.
• Finding a way to audition a bunch of gear seems to be the real trick. You must make time and be proactive on this one!

Good luck!

Brandon

In this blog, I'm going to discuss advanced techniques to save you a few billion hours in time in the next few years. I'm making the assumption that you already know how damn good a performance playing IN TUNE sounds and how awful a performance that is 1% off sounds. While many bands may not have the budget, inclination, or ear to care, the serious projects will require mega tuning. It's easy to waste a weekend on a single riff. I know. I've done it.

Some guitar players don't have much trouble and can just jump in and rock. These guitar players are few and far between. If you've never had tuning troubles, odds are good that you haven't really heard in tune guitars before. Guitars that are REALLY in tune are dramatically clearer, bigger, meaner, and better on the engineering end and dramatically more musical. I'm convinced that the #1 reason people struggle with recording acoustic guitars is they are trying to compensate for the boxy sound of a barely out-of-tune guitar with mic placement and such. When you get the guitar REALLY in-tune, you will hear it and LOVE it.

#1 - A Tuner Is Just a Gadget

Tuners are nice little devices. They tell you the frequency of the note a person has struck. The problem is strings go sharp when you first hit them and go flat immediately afterwards. This means that just because you got a string to land on “E” or whatever on the tuner doesn't mean when you strike it with 10x more (or less) force in the take that the string will go sharp.

#2 - Never Tune Flat

One of my favorite tactics that I use daily is to never turn the tuning peg flat. If I'm tuning the G string and I end up being a little sharp, I don't grab the tuning peg. I simply bend the G string HARD. There is always slack hiding in the string and a hard bend will yank that slack right out of there. If you leave this slack in there, it will slowly come out over time and the guitar will drift flat as you play it.

If you aren't so great at bends (it amazes me as a crappy lead guitar player that some really talented guitar players look like something is wrong with them when they attempt to bend a string!) it's okay to physically grab the string with your right and and pull on it a bit. You don't want to yank TOO hard, but you can probably pull a little harder than you think.

This one takes a bit of practice as you have to nail your pitch by SLOWLY turning the tuning peg sharper and sharper. (Kinda like when getting gas for your car. No one wants to go over the magic dollar amount in your head.) Of course, if you go too far, you should just bend the string, and repeat.

In rare occasions when you go too sharp and there isn't enough slack, always go way down so you can come back up, bend the string, and tighten it some more. Repeat.

#3 - Stretch 'em Hard!

I see guitar players all the time who toss brand new strings on, tune up, and think they are ready to track. I'm not sure where they got that idea, but I'm positive all of 'em have fought through wild tuning fluctuations at first. I stretch strings AGGRESSIVELY. I always start with by placing my left hand over the 22th fret and press down pretty hard. My right hand will be under the 24nd fret pulling up. I give it a good, slow tug and attempt to pull everything I can out of that 23rd fret. Then I move down a fret and repeat. I do this for the entire guitar. I can do it pretty quickly and it's not a huge deal if you skip a fret here or there.

My right hand is usually fairly torn up, so I try to use some kind of cloth as padding.

If you take a guitar that was freshly strung and just tuned up without stretching, you can often pull a full step out of the thing. Some of that is going to be slippage in the tuning peg, obviously, but a nice chunk of that is slack that you would have had to deal with during tracking. Always stretch 'em!

#4 - Tune Up If You Have To Wait

While not an Earth shattering tactic, if I know I'm not tracking for a few hours, I'll go ahead and tune up an extra half step after doing all that stretching. Why? I figure the extra tension while I'm not doing anything will help work out a bit of the slack. It's probably not perfect, but it only takes a second. Anything that saves a ruined take is worth doing.

#5 - How Do You Tune?

I know there are quite a few guitar players that debate over how you should tune. Some guys claim they want the initial attack to land exactly on the note. The problem with this is the string will drop in pitch in a hurry immediately afterwards making sustained notes and chords go flat. Some guys claim you should wait a good three seconds to let the pitch fall. This will get the guitar in tune for the long sustained stuff, but the initial attack will always be a bit sharp.

I tend to take a hybrid approach. I like to give about one second to make sure the note just after the initial attack is in tune. This method is the best of both worlds approach for me. There are certain notes that I have to deal with during tracking, but this approach tends to be the most effective for me.

#6 - Take Note Of How You Play

I'm not sure why so many guys who smash their strings with the sledgehammer known as their right hand turn into delicate fairy princess mode when they stomp on the tuner, but it's an epidemic. Make sure you tune how you play. It'll save you decades of trouble.

#7 - Throw The Tuner Out

When it comes time to really get a guitar in tune, it usually takes a bit of abandonment of the tuner. The tuner is a good tool, but it can't compensate for problems with a guitar or with the hands. Almost everyone needs a little sweetening on the G string. (Usually this requires tuning it just a hair sharp, but not always.) The B and High E string are optional, but often benefit as well.

#8 - Tune Specific To The Chord

If one chord is giving you ultra-trouble, I recommend tuning to that chord and punching in. 95% of the time it's the player at fault, but you can compensate for that by tuning specifically to that chord. This is no different than a singer re-singing a phrase because of pitch. Take your time and get it right.

#9 - Can You Play A D Chord?

99% of all guitar players thing that playing a good ol' D chord is for babies. Then they start recording and can't the damn thing in tune. I've seen it happen hundreds of times. This happens to the seemingly best of guitar players. Usually, there is some much crappier guitar player in the band that can do it no problem. You may want to double check and make sure you can play a D chord in tune. The odds are not in your favor.

#10 - Practice Playing In Tune

I see plenty of guitar players who just obsess over flashy playing. I'm usually shocked by how few of them play in tune consistently. It's as if they never even thought about it. This is one reason why I love practicing guitar using an emulator through my studio monitors to drum loops. It forces me to play in tune and on time as if it were a real take. This skill is dramatically different from anything a person does in their practice area. It's something any serious guitar player SHOULD work on. If you aren't a guitar player, but just a recording guy, you should push this message. Make a big deal about this tuning business.

What You Get

I don't like listing features, as you probably know. So I'll do this my way. You get all the necessary amps, pedals, and rack effects a person will need under typical guitar recording situations. You get the ability to push the amps into power tube distortion (which is FINALLY convincing!....and even has speaker breakup), you get to utilize room sounds in ways I've never heard from an emulator, and you have pretty much every tool you'll ever need at your disposal. Basically, they've thrown in everything but the kitchen sink when it comes to guitar sounds.

So What! How Does It Sound?

If the top emulators from last year (minus the Amp Room stuff) were at 70% of real amps on a really good day, Amplitube 3 is running at about 92-94% of real amps on a really good day. It easily exceeds real amps on a bad day. What does this mean? It means if you have never gotten your real amp to sound awesome, the only reason to bother using it is for your own tinkering enjoyment. In terms of what the end listener is going to hear, Amplitube 3 is money!

To Who?

If you are robo real amp purist, you probably should check out last week's blog:

Better Than Cell Phones – The State Of Guitar Emulators In 2010

I think we are a year or two away before I recommend everyone toss their amps in the trash. In the mean time, I think 95% of us could kick 'em to the curb without losing sleep and/or business.

Tweaking Required

When I'm recording any of my real amps (1971 Marshall Super Lead, 5150, Rivera Knucklehead, or Fender Bronco) it's common for me to tweak about 45 minutes before I get what I'm looking for. Mostly, this is due to me needing something different every project I do. If a guy has “his sound” nailed we can usually get what we want with about 5-10 minutes of playing with mic placement, analog compression, etc. (I have no idea how much longer it's going to take now that I bought a 'Lil Freq analog EQ!) So, basically, it's a given that I've got to make a long drive to get to where ever I'm going.

Now that we've established that some tweaking is required for real amps, some tweaking is required for Amplitube 3 as well. Many of their presets are money right out of the gate. There are some surprising winners when you bypass some of the pedals and such as well. However, generally speaking, I had to play around for a good 45 seconds on average to get what I wanted at any particular time.

A few things you must know before using emulators:

• Emulators still require you to find the right guitar for the right sound. Some guys expect a Strat to sound like a Les Paul. No emulator I'm aware of can do this.
• Not all DI's are created equal. We established this in The Interrogator Sessions: Electric Guitar. I believe a Hi-Z input is absolutely required. Even those sound quite a bit different from box to box. The Waves Hi-Z input box is very good. I've found my Lil Freq's DI input to be vastly superior to the DI on my M-Audio Octane and Presonus Firestudio, for example.
• For high gain sounds, a Tubescreamer type pedal is required in my opinion. I use the yellow Modtone pedal I don't turn it off.
• For pretty much everything else, the Amplitube 3 guys have got it covered.
• Certain “Tweed-type” tones get a little boxy. I hate this, personally, but that's not any different than the real thing. The graphic EQ in the rackmount portion of Amplitube 3 is an excellent way to tweak without using the Algebra side of your brain.

Room Sounds

The room sound options are EXCELLENT in Amplitube 3. I can't remember any other emulator getting this THIS right. It's a very realistic room sound in a really good way. Not all guitars require such a room sound. I'd guess most of you would prefer the rackmount reverb thing to this, but for us guys who know and love using just the right amount of room in our guitars, this thing kills. You Iron Maiden kind of guys are going to love this.

CPU Usage

In “high quality” mode this thing slaughters right through my Intel Q8200 Quad Core with latency at 192 samples. (I've been upping that lately...I used to be a die hard 128 sample guy...not anymore!) In “low quality”mode, the CPU usage is dramatically reduced. I did notice a hit in tone, but it wasn't THAT big of deal. I'd say it lost 5% of it's “quality”...whatever that means. In that mode I could use quite a bit more instances. I never counted them up, but the CPU usage seemed to be in line with pretty much all the other emulators I have used.

Power Tubes

Unlike most emulators out there, this thing feels really close to what you get with cranking the power section. It's different with different amps, but the amp darkens, thickens, and gets more harmonic content going in a usually good way. (Of course, not all real amps like being worked this hard....Dual Rectifiers come to mind. Not all real amps do anything when turned all the way up....5150.) I've found this power tube feature to be entirely useful many times, particularly with the cleaner amps.

Speaker Breakup

If you push the power tubes hard, you can also hear the speakers breaking up. This can be very, very useful for some sounds and not-so-desirable for others. However, the fact that they've got it and sounds good is the key. Very few home recorders really get to use this aspect of electric guitar recording.

Pedals

I made a 3 page list of what I felt about each effect and ultimately decided not to include it in the interest of keeping this a review and not a book.

There a ton of pedals included. I think they all sound very good. I'm kinda hit or miss about random effects. For some effects, I want crappy sounds with plenty of lo-fi digital artifacts and such. On other effects, I definitely want the “boutique pedal” sound. If you find you need a $400 chorus pedal to be happy, you probably won't be happy with the chorus pedal included. The same goes with just about all of the effects. I thought the swell pedal was better than I had ever heard. The flange and phaser pedals were usable, but not quite up to the real deal MXR pedals. The EQ was extremely useful.

So basically, if you are ultra picky about your pedals, the emulators only "emulate". Purists will want more pure options, but for effects that aren't ultra critical to you, the included effects definitely fit the bill.

Rackmount Stuff

They've included a rackmount section which allows for all kinds of cool toying around. There's a 31-band graphic EQ, parametric EQ, tube compressor (that DOES have character!!!), fake ass reverb (in a great, Lexicon way....I get tired of room emulators sometimes!), digital delay, and this resonator thing.

The resonator alone is one of the coolest things ever. It reminds me of an old school version of the Native Instruments Spectral Delay....only better and worse. There is less control, but you can do some WICKED effects with this thing. If this was a $399 plugin and the only way to get it was to spend $400, I'd buy it in a second and use it all over every album I could. It would be awesome! I LOVE IT!

The rackmount thing was smart. Very smart! Some sounds simply need to be placed after the amp. A person could do this with their own plugins if they really wanted to, but there is something to having it all right here so you can save presets and such. Some sounds (particularly with delay and reverb) need to be placed after the distortion. You just can't get these sounds in front of the amp or even in the effects loop.

Flexibility

As you can see, they've pretty much hit each and every angle. The dumb thing is jammed pack with all the stuff you need to rock. It's obviously extremely well thought out by guys who play guitar, super easy to use, and the kind of thing that isn't too bad to tinker with when you have a guitar in your hand.

Reliability

I've been totally impressed by the consistent reliability of Amplitube 3. There were a few small issues with the original version that were completely solved by downloading the second version. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a newer update out now that is even better.

Downsides

I am a believer in Amplitube 3. I think it's the best thing out there, in my opinion. However, there are some downsides.

Opening the plugin takes about 3 seconds longer than any other plugins I toy with. In reality, this is nothing. However, I'm so “on edge” and in a hurry all the time, that I can feel the stress in my spine every time I have to open it. So it's good to have it always on the screen, if you can. I expect them to eventually fix this one.

Some tones sound right to me right out of the box. The Ace Frehley preset with the effects turned off and the gain turned down sounds right to me right out of the box. (I've developed a new found tolerance for the Recto sound. I'm not sure why!) Sometimes when I start tweaking with amps, pedals, mics, mic placements, rooms, etc I get “lost”. It seems that nothing I do can get me back to the mega sound I may have had previously. If you get lost, I recommend you go through the presets and find a few that excite you and save them as your own presets. If you get “lost”, they can be invaluable for getting back to a good starting point.

The Marshall sounds didn't excite me much. I've always been a Marshall fan, regardless of the trends that were going on. A good Marshall on a good day is my dream sound. However, none of these emulations got the “good” Marshall sound. None of the Amplitube 3 competitors has gotten it right either, for whatever that's worth.

Conclusion

Amplitube 3 is the new standard in guitar emulation. It's getting harder and harder for me to justify the time it takes to record a real amp. On many days, I simply do not bother. They've put together a very, very, very good sounding setup with about every possible option you could ever want in a very use-to-use, reliable package. I am impressed.

I rolled the ol' dice and bought the guitar on Ebay without playing, touching, or seeing it in person. I had no idea what to expect, but I've grown to have faith in the Ebay feedback system. When the guitar came in, it was exactly as was described and all went well. One thing that was rather different, was the string size. I have been playing .10-.52s as long as I can remember and so my perspective was a bit off. I ended up liking the new string size quite a bit, but had no idea what size they were. When I asked the seller about the string size, he said they were 8s. Eights???? Really?????

I was shocked that I could go from .10-.52s to 8s without actually going into shock. More importantly, I was turbo shocked to find out that I liked it. I actually enjoy playing the 8s! I'm sticking with 'em.

String / Tone Business

More importantly, I told a guitar-tone-loving buddy about them and he asked, “Did you tone go to hell?”. I said, “No way!”. (Granted, I've not tried my .10-.52s on my PRS so I've not done an A/B comparison.) I love the way the way the guitar sounds. Correction, I LOOOOOOOOOOVE the way the guitar sounds. I'm 100% content and see no need to take the guitar to the shop to get setup. It's absolutely perfect, as is. In fact, I'm afraid that by switching back to the big ol' .10-.52s I'll actually lose something. When palm muting, even the B string (the little bitty guy by the high E) is percussive and chunky. I've never gotten that from any other guitar or string combo. I'm convinced I have stumbled onto something here. (Or rather, the previous owner stumbled onto something and I'm stealing it!)

This whole issue of huge string gauges being required for monster tone is complete rubbish in my opinion (at least for my own tonal tastes). The strings do affect the player and the player is obviously THE generator of tone, but to say that big strings equals big tone doesn't seem to hold up in my case. The fact that I can get little 8s to sound like they do is strong enough evidence to reject this idea that I need 12s or whatever to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughn or whoever. (Whatever SRV had, I definitely do not have. I sound more like a really drunk, less talented Van Halen when I'm sober.)

If you've heard a billion times than that 10s sound better than 9s and 11s sound better than 10s, do yourself a favor and try the extreme. Go with 8s for a few weeks. Force yourself to play in tune. (You SHOULD be doing that anyway!) I'm not saying you'll keep the 8s on your guitar, but I think many of you high gain guys may feel like you've been duped by the huge string myth.

Update: I just tried out 8.5s. The "b string chunk" is gone. The overall percussiveness of the guitar is gone. I'll be switching back to 8s immediately.

Brandon

Better Than Cell Phones!

It's a running joke with all my buddies that I must have a plate in my head from the Korean War (I turned 30 this week.). Every time I borrow their cell phone for some random emergency the stupid reception cuts out. I always end up yelling, “The technology isn't ready! It's just not there yet!”. (I'm holding out until 2013 to get my first cell phone!)

Just a few years ago I was still waving this “the technology isn't ready” flag when it came to guitar emulators. The majority of tunes I had heard in Bash This Recording that utilized some sort of non-real amp method sounded exactly like 4 Radio Shack adapters had been duct taped together through a cassette stereo, through a microwave, into the rabbit ears on a 1979 TV, and finally into the back of the computer. It was OBVIOUS when a person was using an emulator. I could point it out blind folded. (Yup! You heard me.)

Something happened in 2008. It started getting difficult for me to tell if a real amp was used or if an emulator gadget was snuck in there. Let me clarify. The idea of Bash This Recording is to help people and in many cases, the real amp sounds weren't always top notch. They certainly had their flaws in many cases, too. Regardless, being a proud user of fun guitar toys, I had to learn from the Dinosaurs. I started opening my ears a bit to this emulator thing.

Here we are in 2010. I've used pretty much all of the VST plugin guitar emulators out there. Here are my thoughts:

• We've all heard recordings that sounded great and only later did we find out that some not-as-cool-as-some-6-amp-12-mic-monstrosity we see in Guitar World was used. If you've never been "fooled" by an emulator you are probably lying to yourself.
• There has been a difference between the real thing and the emulators. That gap used to be an objective “fake” kind of thing. Now it's a subjective “different” kind of thing. If I posted 10 different songs, I'm guessing the home recording world would have a hard time distinguishing the real amps from the emulators in such a context.
• When a real amp recording is ON, it's pretty tough to beat. When a real amp recording has problems, the emulator wins easily.
• Recording real amps usually takes time and work. I'm constantly tweaking the amp, moving the mic, changing the mic, moving the cabinet, tweaking compressors, playing with my analog Eqs, etc. While there are times when this is worth it, there are times when it certainly isn't!

Olympic Guitar Tone vs A Musical Statement

We all have different reasons we record music and different goals we are trying to fulfill. Some of us are big on songwriting. Others are looking to create a certain sonic “aura”. Some are going for the most “bad ass” snare or guitar sound.

There's a swarm of metal guitar guys who dedicate a big ol' chunk of their lives to doing nothing more than nailing the tone of the century. It's like these guys are competing for the Olympics. The get up before work and look into new transformers made of Gold and tubes made of God for their amps that already cost them $2,799. When they get off work, they are looking for 8-mic techniques on 12 cabinets or checking to see how a given compressor performs SPECIFICALLY on electric guitar. Frankly, these guys are out of their minds. They are obsessed! The are focused. They are animals. That's why I love 'em.

That's not me, however.

I do think that tone is important. However, I own too many records I love that sound great at making a musical statement, but I would never post “How in hell did AFI get THAT snare sound?”. Why? Because AFI has never had a snare sound that made me want to run out and find out what revolutionary technique was used to get that sound. Their production has been excellent for a decade, but the individual elements rarely stand out as being miraculous. This is not a slam on the engineers and producers who've worked with the band. It's a Who's Who list! These guys aren't necessarily training for the guitar tone Olympics. They are looking to make an exciting musical statement.

That's more the route I'm taking.

How Do Guitar Emulators Fit In?

Now that I've taken some time to identify the types of home recorders out there, I can make my assessments.

Guitar Tone Olympic Hopefuls – Stick with the amps. You'll be able to hear the differences between the real thing and your monster amp collection. Your buddies MIGHT be able to hear it, but you'll definitely know it if you used an emulator and the guilt may eat you up inside. The extra time it takes to work with a real amp will be offset by the sleep you lose.

Musical Statement Guys – Toss your amps in the trash. The latest era of guitar emulators is great. There are no genres that I'm aware of that the emulators can't do and do very, very well. You won't win Olympic medals but I'm positive guys are winning Grammy Awards (whatever THAT'S worth!) using these gadgets. You'll save time, be able to tweak all you want while mixing, have the enormous benefit of tons and tons of pedal emulators at your disposal and will find yourself being more creative. In case you've ever recorded a bad sounding track from a Hughes and Kettner Triamp, you'll be glad you get to focus on music! By the time your mixes come together, I'd bet that 95% of you find that the tone is totally acceptable.

Stuck In Between?

For you guys who are stuck in between, there's no need to make a decision right now. One of my favorite aspects of working with emulators is knowing that I can abandon them at any time and reamp through my real amps on a whim. I don't find myself doing that too often. In fact, most people I record who used Amplitube 3 on the way in, usually end up saying “Screw it! That sounds good to me!” after they go home, feel guilty about using a gadget, and then come back the next day and find that it sounds REALLY good a couple of times.

Conclusion

For the majority of us, particularly those of us in the musical-statement camp, the emulators now present a tool that has very few downsides. By 2011 we may be saying “no downsides”. The turbo purists in their Olympic competitions will continue on with their mega fancy guitar gear, but I suspect most of this will come from the pleasure of using a fancy toy than the actual benefit to the end listener.

Make sure to check out next week's review of Amplitube 3!

The Royer R121 is the most talked about mic for electric guitar this decade? Is a person lost in their quest for electric guitar sounds without it? Find out!

We compare the Shure SM57, Royer R121, Sennheiser MD421, Cascade Fathead II, and Shure SM7b on metal guitars. Download It!

Red Flag #1: Just The Guitar Track
For those of you who EVER post a clip of just one solo'd instrument, you are in desperate need of the Killer Home Recording series. You are missing the boat in about 250 areas and concepts and you are gonna waste about four years of your life chasing your own tail when you could avoid the whole mess.

The short version. The solo'd track is irrelevant. It's like posting a picture of your transmission and asking why your car won't start. A car is a sum of all it's parts...a system. A mix, too, is a sum of all its parts. To put it bluntly, the guitars by themselves don't mean a damn thing.

Red Flag #2: The Awesome Kick Problem
I remember when I had ordered my recording gear for the first time. I was listening to Skid Row's Slave To The Grind. I said to myself, “This kick needs more beater attack. When I record I'm ALWAYS gonna have an awesome kick drum sound!”.

When I hopped into audio mixing, I quickly realized that the kick drum was the least of my problems. In fact, no single element was important because the whole thing sounded like a dead man's balls. The mix, as a whole, was infinitely flawed. So all the sudden the notion of me nitpicking about Slave To The Grind (which is an excellent sounding hard rock record for the era) is ridiculous because the mix (and SONGS) of that record, as a whole, are quite badass.

So this over emphasis on the “awesome” nature of a single instrument is a huge problem. You've lost the forest for a single tree and therefor you'll never really achieve what you are after.

Red Flag #3: Crappy Music Problem
When people post their solo'd metal guitars rarely are these guitars doing anything interesting. (It's not that people are posting bad metal. It's more of an issue of people looking for “tone” help usually post musically deficient crap!) Just palm muting on a low E and then hitting an F power chord every once in a while isn't going to excite anyone. It's a sound we've heard a zillion times since the first guy did it in the 50s or whatever. (Maybe not the 1950s, but you get my point.)

I'm a HUGE believer in the idea that music and engineering are ENTIRELY interdependent. They are inseparable. The best engineering in the world won't work in a vacuum. The goosebump factor is a combination of robo music and robo presentation/aesthetic (engineering).

So going back to our stereotypical metal riff. If we were to fire up some mega drum pounding behind it and add a sick ass bass under it with the band playing tight as hell, we may start to find some excitement in there. (The thing you are REALLY looking for!) We just may find that the original guitar track sounds pretty damn good after all! Now switch your all-star drum/bass lineup to the local kids sound. (We'll say 14 year old kids just to make it obvious.) Just by taking the tight ass playing out of the equation, but keeping the sonics exactly the same, we've transformed our robo production into unlistenable garbage. (This concept is also well covered in Killer Home Recording.)

The Great Recording Compromise
There is something to not stopping until you find “the sound”. It's not a bad idea to do the best you can on a recording. In fact, that is great! However, you've got to set a deadline. Let's say you've got a month to get your guitars done because the band wanted this recording out last month. In that time, you probably aren't going to be blowing away or even matching the robo metal guys with 30 years of experience recording the best bands and the best rooms on the planet. That's a given. I doubt you will dispute this.

So do your absolute very best in the time you've got. Finish it. Move on. Because your skill is not what it will be in a decade, don't get too wound up about it.

I've never met one good engineer who was ever satisfied with his work. I'm talking about guys with Grammy Awards and Platinum records on the wall. They hear their songs on the radio and they hide to contain their embarrassment over their production. Of course, the zillion people who love the song think it's the best thing ever. So get used to being unhappy with this elusive side. Once you get past the Objective Flaw Barrier, it's all a damn lie anyway.

Objective Flaw Barrier
When guys post a clip on Bash This Recording or whatever, they are looking for help to improve. Some of the mixes are a little rough and need help. The things that make one mix obviously suck are what I call “objective flaws” that we all more or less agree on. There aren't many of these types of flaws because there is a HUGE window of acceptable production on any given recording.

So if a posted guitar track has an exceptional amount of fizz and mud I may say something. If the track is out of tune I'll DEFINITELY say something. If the tone is boxy, boring, comb filtered, or just plain crappy I'll say something. However, once we survive through all of these checks, if I'm to critique the guitars past this point, it's more about serving my ego than serving the music.

If you've got a track that survives the Objective Flaw Barrier, you are on your own. You've got to use your own creativity and ingenuity to push your tracks to the “next level” (as all the rappers say...ha ha). We can give tricks to try, but YOU must come up with that magic little something if you think the song really needs it. Any advice past this point gets into this “every-recording-should-sound-identical” mess where a guy thinks your Master of Puppets guitars should instead be Killswitch guitars. That kind of thing is up to you and the band. I'd never tell a guy he shouldn't be unique!

The Damn Lie
Do you know what happens when you get the band to play outstandingly tight on great songs in great rooms where the engineer passes the Objective Flaw Barrier on every track? It's called a major label production. It's called a bad ass recording, too.

As you are well aware of, you probably have 2,000 mp3s on your Ipod. Maybe 20-50 tunes stand out as having extreme production that just blows your minds. So what about the other 1,950 songs? Why are they are on your Ipod? Forget that. Do they sound bad? If your recording could match the engineering level of those 1,950 songs, would you be happy? I bet you would.

So The Damn Lie is this magic spell the recording world has placed (particularly on metal music) that there is some sort of PhD in engineering where everything you record is bad ass sounding. There isn't. Once you get passed the “don't suck” phase, the engineering aspect means NOTHING. The music entirely takes over.

Let me explain.

I believe that engineering NEVER adds to the music. Ever! It's never happened! It never will happen. I believe that engineering can only apply a penalty. A recording never matches the real thing. You love the Lamb of God guitar tone? If you were stand in front of the real amp, your eyes would light up like you just saw a mushroom cloud. It would be jaw dropping. The recording is good, but there is nothing like the real thing. That's like comparing your right hand and your girlfriend. A recording is an “emulation” of real life at best.

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Note: I was called out on this on the forum because I was probably a little vague here. So just to clarify let me explain. I mean that if you have 100% decided that the amp can not be touched and is absolutely perfect, tossing a mic in front of that amp and playing it through your studio monitors, boom box, or Ipod is never going to have that huge 3D realism of the amp in the room. The same would apply if you had the London Symphony performing just for you. Taking a pair of super high end SDCs and placing them in X/Y stereo to capture that Symphony will never sound as bad ass and exciting as what you hear in the room.

I did not mean to imply that all records should be done live and natural. (I have way too many Nine Inch Nails and Def Leppard records for that.) I didn't mean that the craft of producing can't create ruckus that goes beyond what is possible in the live environment. (I always believe in "maxing out" the studio recording and dealing with the live stuff later.) My point is worshiping the sound in the room and hoping an SM57 or U47 is gonna get that pretty much always ends up in disappointment.

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So, the only goal of engineering is to get out of the way. Maybe the best engineer in the world has found a way to let 99% of the music through. Maybe a beginning engineer assesses a great penalty to the noise. Maybe he only lets 40% of the music through. Your goal as an engineer should be to do the least damage possible to the music that's buried in some kind of hidden dimension. When you can get out of the way enough, you are officially in major label big boy land.

The only problem is this suddenly puts a HUGE emphasis on the crap that really matters. (The musician, the song, the room, the instruments).

Good luck!

Brandon Drury

Check it out @ Musician's Friend

I'm doing my Jeopardy version of gear reviews again. We'll start with my conclusions.

The Recording Man's Conclusion
I'm playing guitar quite a bit again, but I refuse to be a guitar player. I'm a recording guy and so that means I get to sit up on my perch and look down on the lowly world of people who refer themselves as guitar players. (Okay, like 2% of you can sit at the table with the big kids). The rest of you can stay at the diaper table.

Here are my conclusions:

• If you've had boxiness problems in your electric guitar recordings, tossing the Dynodrive in front of the amp is THE solution. I don't think it gets better than this. In fact, this booster may be life changingly good! Seriously!
• If you've struggled with getting this harmonically dense tone without giga-gain (and all the boring fizz that comes with it) the Dynodrive is THE solution.
• The boxiness I'm referring to can happen on all amps. I'm talking high end amps like: Rivera Knucklehead, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, Hughes and Kettner Triamp, Peavey 5150, etc. This boxiness is not a flaw in a few amps I'm using. It's more of an issue of the importance I place with boosting with the right pedal.
• Before buying new/fancy mics, preamps, etc try tossing the Dynodrive in front of the amp. God knows I've spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get this from recording equipment.
• If you are a guitar player who frequently uses high gain sounds, the Modtone Dynodrive is absolutely required.
• If you are a recording engineer frequently recording high gain guitar sounds, the Modtone Dynodrive is absolutely required.

Let's Begin
I've been using the my yellow Boss SD-1 as a boost in front of a high gain amp since Clinton was in office. I've always liked the Tube Screamer style pedal in front of the amp. Up until now I've always felt that a Tube Screamer rip off is a Tube Screamer rip off and the differences between them are what the little fairy prince guitar wienies do on guitar forums when they aren't arguing about Star Trek or trying to guess what “warm apple pie” feels like.

I stand corrected and I did it with out a guitar forum. (Thank God!)

Today I discovered the Modtone DynoDrive. It also takes on the yellow overdrive pedal look. However, this thing is NOT a Boss SD-1. It's not a Tubescreamer. It's not a Maxon OD-9. For my money it's 10,000 times better.

My Situation
I was playing my Fender Strat USA with a Duncan JB Jr in the bridge. While I've always loved boosters for studio work, I always go out of my way to avoid having to press 40 pedals in a live / jamming situation. It sucks the fun and life out of playing. I set my Rivera Knucklehead to sound about right without any boosting in front of it. This tone is no slouch. It's a tone that people shell out the big bucks for.

However, it can also be a hair on the boxy side at times. It doesn't have quite the sustain I want and there can be a blurred middle ground between too much gain causing fizz and not enough gain causing boredom.

The second I plugged into the Modtone DynoDrive I knew I had found a mate for life (at least the next decade). The Modtone DynoDrive adds some gain and solves all the sustain issues. My Boss SD-1 does what all the Tube Screamer knock-offs do. The DynoDrive does two other big things that I've not heard out of a booster pedal.

Good Bye Boxiness
The Dynodrive completely pulls out ALL the boxiness. When I turned on the Dynodrive, the sound was instantly what I had always wanted. It's a sound I've been attempting to EQ out or use weird mic placements to overcome. I've spent thousands on preamps, EQ, and mics to solve this specific problem. I'd guess I've lied awake in bed maybe 400 times wondering what the hell is causing this problem over the past 8 years or so. This is BIG BIG BIG for me! It's the difference between kinda cheap tone and “Holy Shit Tone!”.

In addition to all the boxiness being kicked to the curb, the harmonics get way way way richer without any of the fizziness that a gain boost requires. This is the sort of thing that people expect from the impractical world of cranking amps to 10. It's the kind of thing I've been chasing since some of you reading this were still crapping your pants.

When I first stepped on the DynoDrive with my tone on my Rivera set to mostly work without it, it immediately screamed Breaking Benjamin style modern rock tone. For my tastes, that tone is a hair scooped, but I can't count the times I've recorded the kids over the years where both of us knew the tone just wasn't quite their yet. The tone wasn't “finished” sounding. The DynoDrive finishes it. I adjusted my settings a bit on the amp to compensate for the scoopage and I was in heaven. This pedal makes playing more fun and it's going to make it look like I'm a genius to the guitar players I record.

The Percussive G String
The thing I really hate about not using a booster on a high gain amp is the boring sounding G string. I always find that if the G string is boring I end up sounding more like the Almond Brothers or something. (Nothing against the Almond Brothers, they just ain't Van Halen or Dragonforce.) With the DynoDrive, the G string string becomes percussive. Palm mutes on the G string jump out just like like the do on the lower strings. 16th note palm muted leads sounds go from useless to world dominating when I engage the Dynodrive.

I would have shelled out big bucks for that years ago. This is the kind of thing Cher sang about.

Clean Tones
Here's where it gets interesting. I have a different take on clean sounds than most guitar players. I'm a recording guy and I've ACTUALLY LISTENED to a few recordings. I've come to the conclusion that clean sounds are always a little dirty. At least the clean sounds I like are always a little dirty. The illusion of a clean guitar sound that has less distortion than a Apogee converter is hog crap. It's flat out inaccurate in my view and it's almost unheard of to find this squeaky clean sound.

What makes a clean tone work is not necessarily the amount of distortion, but the harmonic structure of that distortion. That chimey sound requires a little bit grit to it, but that grit has to be in the right place. If you've got boxiness in it, you are done. Forget it. Guess what. I just happen to be reviewing a pedal that is badass for pulling out boxiness. So yup, you guessed it. I've finally found a booster pedal that I can leave on all the time in a live / jamming situation.

I've had to be careful with this one maybe getting a hair more distorted than I really wanted. However, when the harmonic stuff is right, I could have Dimebag level mega gain on my clean and not loose sleep over it. The Dynodrive has a way of getting that right.

In real recording situations, I'd definitely use the Dynodrive on my clean tones even if I pulled the gain way back.

An Overdrive Pedal
I guess I should at least mention what the Modtone does when you use it like it was actually designed to work. I have to say that I've always considered my Boss SD-1 completely useless as an overdrive pedal. Taking a clean amp and expecting to get anything that doesn't make you feel similar to reading the latest sex offender story in the local newspaper is difficult. I have emulators that sound better without a doubt.

So my luck with overdrive pedals is limited.

Once again, the Modtone has made me a believer. Running the Modtone into a clean amp was more than usable. It was very, very pleasant. None of the boxiness of the SD-1 was there. None! With the gain all the way up, you end up with something that Toad The Wet Sprocket or Counting Crows could use and it sounds legitimately good. Is it as good as a mega tube amp gain? Hell, I don't know. Maybe. Regardless, that “harmonic structure” thing is there. As a purist, I'd be more inclined to set the amp with just a bit of grit and go back to using this thing as a booster. However, the thing does work in “standalone” mode if you want to go there.

If you dig in you can do some really cool blues rock type stuff if that is your bag.

An Argument For Simplicity
The idea of having a room full of old school Marshalls, Fenders, and Vox should sound like a dream come true to most. There's something about this modern world of guitar emulators that attempt to do everything that makes Vintage Amp Room seem decidedly lacking when you first fire it up. I was sucked into this thinking for just a second. “All you get is amps????” was my first inclination. Last time I checked, none of the amps I paid the big time bucks for came with tuners, 40 pedals, 10,000 presets, or anything of the sort. To take it further, with the exception of my trusty MXR EQ pedals, I probably use pedals when tracking guitar 5% of the time max. 95% of the guitar work I do is a guitar and an amp. So why do we really need all this stuff?

After playing around I started to look for more gadgets. I noticed that while I could change mic placements (in the most brilliant way I've seen yet on an emulator...we'll get to that) I didn't have 10 mics to choose from. In fact, Vintage Amp Room gives you one single mic to play with. That's it! Again, at first I scrunched up my eyes as if I was being fed a line of baloney. Then it occurred to me that while all the different mics included in the emulators do have their tonal variations, the tone changes so drastically when using them that my nose scrunches up. (There's a lot of scrunching going on in this review!) I end up just leaving whatever mic I'm on unless I exhaust all the various amp models and am starting to get a bit desperate. So, when I think about it, having multiple mics seems to be something I never really use anyway. There may be those that do, but when it comes to guitar emulators I could get by with one mic that sounded good (whatever that may be).

Of course, the cabinets follow the same line of thinking. Vintage Amp Room doesn't allow you to choose between cabinets either. My feeling on cabinets in guitar emulators is exactly in line with my views on mics. Switching between cabinets seems to always sound weird to me and I always avoid doing it until I've exhausted all further options. In an ideal world I would have to mess with it.

The long story short: Do we really need a damn 747 cockpit just to record some guitar noise? While I do like the pedal collections found in other amp emulators, I can do entirely without the other stuff. While I'm a guy who has a very high tolerance for the complicated, when I put my guitar on I've already got my hands full. In short, I'm liking this simple approach.

What Can You Do?
So what can we do with Vintage Amp Room?

In the good old days, you took your guitar and you plug it into your amp. You had tone controls. You had a mic. You could mic it at a variety of angles up close or you could pull the mic back to get more of a room sound.

Guess what Vintage Amp Room does.

It allows you to plug your guitar into a variety of amps. You get the tone controls that come with the amp and you get the described mic placement options.

Actually, let's talk about this mic placement business. Generally speaking, in real life there are handfuls of mic placements we generally use. The most standard is the mic on the edge of the cone, but there are times when I've mic'd the speaker dead center, pointed at the cone at a 45 degree angle, pointed at the edge of the speaker, or pulled the mic back for more of a room sound. While all the emulators I've seen so far let you move the mic around and they let you adjust the “distance” slider, none of them feel like the real thing to me. What the Vintage Amp Room guys have done is quite brilliantly. With one mouse motion the mic moves from distant to close dead center to the edge of the cone to a 45-degree angle to full blown 90 degrees on the edge of the speaker. At first I wasn't sure about this. After using Vintage Amp Room 10 minutes it's clear that this is the way to go. I'd expect to see this on every guitar emulator out there in the next few years.

Where It Gets Ugly: The Sound
All right humans who resist change. Hang on. It's about to get ugly for you.

We've discussed how Vintage Amp Room emulates amps and that's about it. You plug-in in, you play with tones, and you get a few mic placements. There is no bell. There is no whistle. You play guitar. So how is it that Vintage Amp Room can justify charging for this thing?

Easy. It sounds bad ass!

You heard me. For the first time in my life I've publicly declared that a guitar emulator sounds bad ass. It doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound pretty good. It doesn't sound bad ass for an emulator. It sounds completely bad ass. PERIOD. End of story.

The Real AC30
A quick background.

A good buddy of mine is a guitar tone freak. He owns or has owned just about every vintage amp in the world. He can dial in practically any tone in seconds that will make you drool. These tones work for everything from Skynard to Zeppelin to Napalm Death. He can get them all. He gave me a hardcore lesson on the powers of the Vox AC30 (head through various cabinets). It seems to be the single greatest amp circuit of all time. It has a sparkle to it on low and medium gain settings that few amps have. When you want it to get mean, it'll take on a Marshall character. With proper gain gadgets in front of the amp (I was never a pedal guy before this showing) the amp can get nuclear in a way the Recto kids would flip their lid over.

The Vintage Amp Room model that is clearly emulating an AC30 does the EXACT thing. It nails the sparkle thing the AC30 does at low and medium gains. Try doing this with any other emulator on the market. I've not heard one that can do it. They all sound a bit fake or a bit boring when going for the AC30 sound. None of them get it quite right. (Not until Vintage Amp Room.) While I do like many of the emulators out there and use many of them happily on the mostly high gain records I make, the simple truth is none of them as of 2009 have the real deal tone in them.

The Fender thingy is damn good too. I'm more of a Silverface kind of guy and this is one of the brown ones. (Aptly titled “Brownface” in Guitar Land.) It doesn't do the robo sparkle. It does something else. It's more along the lines of a jazzy kind of deal but some smooth growl underneath it (if that makes any sense). That's the real ones. The Vintage Amp Room is pretty much dead on.

The Vintage Amp Room has the real deal tone in it. End of story. The medium gain settings are the real test and Vintage Amp Room passes it with flying colors.

When it comes to these vintage amp sounds, the other emulators haven't been able to get this right. They don't get the sparkle right. They don't get the clarity. Some of them seem to be better than others at various sounds, but generally speaking you run into that problem where you add brightness to make up for clarity and you end up with something harsh that doesn't have any tone. You don't have to do that with the really good Fenders, Vox's, Marshalls, etc. You don't have to do it with Vintage Amp Room either.

Another biggie especially for blues guys is the ability for an amp to react to your playing. This is where most emulators fall short. When you dial in a crunch Fender sound, when you play soft, the amp cleans up nicely. When you dig in, the amp crunches up exactly the way you'd expect. It's impressive!

Vintage Amp Non-Believers
Quite a few young people believe that the old school amps are like late 60s GTOs. They are fun for the baby boomers, but kids these days will take their modern Subaru STI's and such. The problem with this is modern cars are of superior technology than the 60s cars, but guitar amps haven't improved one damn bit in terms of tone. They've got more features and the Recto family came along, but that's it.

When you start hanging around enough big boy engineers it's obvious that they are still using vintage amps constantly on records that do not sound vintage in any way.

My favorite example of this is with the white Marshall emulation in Vintage Amp Room. It's a Marshall. There is no mistaking that. It's old so if you want the gain to sound cranked, you have to physically crank it up. It has a master volume so I'm assuming this is of the JCM 800 variety (Zakk Wylde, Slayer, The Used, Story of The Year, etc). When I cranked this bad boy up to get the modern rock gain I was looking for, I got excited. For the first time in my life I got adrenaline pumping from an emulator. I have to work hard to get this out of my real amps most of the time.

I'd have absolute no problem running the two modern rock band projects I'll be producing in the upcoming months through this sound. We are talking full blown gain, multi-layered, modern rock. I'll put this Vintage Amp Room up against pretty much everything out there. It will kick some major ass and I know the bands will be happy.

Note: If you are like for molten metal tones, Softube has you covered with Metal Amp Room, which we'll be reviewing and including in Killer Home Recording.

Limitations
Vintage Amp Room is still an amp emulator. While the emulators have enormous advantages (especially in terms of workflow and price) you are stuck in a fixed environment. An SM57 and a Royer R121 sound totally different. In real life I can switch to from bright and bitey to thick and dark easily. If I could switch between these two possibilities I'd be extremely happy....assuming they worked better than the mics in other emulators.

A tuner wouldn't hurt either just as a matter of convenience.

Pedals would be nice. Maybe in the future they can come out with a pedals collection or something. I'd expect the quality to be fair and above the rest of the pack.

Other than that, the outrageous, real deal tones in this thing speak for themselves. I've used the real thing many, many times. Vintage Amp Room is the first emulator to have the real life of these old school amps. End of story.

Conclusion
The world has officially changed. I'm seriously debating if I should sell all of my guitar amps because I sense they will be completely worthless in 3 years. The future is here. Vintage Amp Room has nailed the old school sounds. It's a miracle. When I began playing on Vintage Amp Room, I immediately new the world of guitar recording had changed. I said, “Holy Hell! This is the real thing!”.

MV Pro Audio, LLC (official distributor for the Americas)
www.mvproaudio.com
sales@mvproaudio.com
877.784.7383

The Quest
Long story short. I'm a recovery guitar player turned recording guy. The quest for the Holy Grail of guitar tone has always burned in me. I've got plenty of killer guitar toys like the Rivera Knucklehead, Peavey 5150, and 1971 Marshall Superlead and a killer signal chain for recording electric guitar (Royer R121 > Vintech 1272 > Distressor EL-8x > Mytek AD96). I've always felt like there was something missing in my recordings.

So when we approach this review of Amplitube 2, I want to make it clear that I have all the fun toys and I'm still not 100% satisfied with my guitar recordings. There is something in the way. I have a feeling that many of you out there using killer amps and killer signal chains feel the same way.

Amplitube 2 offers numerous mic and mic placement options

An Old Purist
There was a day not too long ago (spring of 2008) when I felt that the electric guitar emulators were nothing more than toys. Back then, I was well known for being able to listen on Bash This Recording http://forum.recordingreview.com/f11/ and immediately know if I was hearing an emulator or the real thing. Then something crazy happened. I got it wrong!

So when I approach this review, I want to make it perfectly clear that I know what the real amps can do. I record guitar amps more often than I eat breakfast. I'm always a little late to jump on the new technology because I stick to my guns until it makes sense to get new and improved guns.

Amplitube 2 includes a comprehensive set of pedals

Features
There are some products where you know right out the gate that you have something that extremely well thought out. Some products just leap out at you and you say “Wow!”. I feel this way about Cubase. It's the main reason I never upgraded past Cubase SX3. (That'll change soon with Cubase 5.) I feel this way about Amplitube 2. It's clear that these guys know exactly what they wanted in terms of features and put some serious effort into making something that kicks major ass. I'm impressed.

Do You Want These?

• Tons of pedals?
• Tons of guitar amps that really sound different?
• Tons of power amps that really sound dramatically different?
• Tons of guitar tone controls?
• Tons of guitar cabinets?
• Multiple mics?
• Multiple mic placements?

You got 'em!

You know I hate listing features. Just check 'em out here.

Amplitube 2 is extremely full featured. It took me well over 20 sessions with it before I found something it couldn't do. (I'm one of those guys that immediately looks for that one thing a product can't do. It's a flaw.) The only problem is I can't even remember what that "can't do" function was. It clearly wasn't that big of deal.

Amplitube 2 Includes Numerous Amplifiers

The Sound
First off, I want to say that I don't believe in emulating. I don't bother. Trying to mimic another sound is not only boring, it seldom works right when nothing in the chain seems to have changed. So I'm not going to compare the Recto preset in Amplitube with a real Dual Rectifier. Why? I'll tell you why. Because I don't care! I don't need an A/B test to confirm my convictions. Either the tone excites me or it doesn't. I've already stated that I've recorded all kinds of real amps. I've never gotten the dream tone! So what do I care if I can perfectly emulate something that isn't even 100% ideal. That makes no sense to me.

Real amps take serious work to get up to par. In some instances we can get what we need in 2 minutes, but it's usually more like 30 minutes of tinkering. Sometimes it takes all day. The reasons for that are something I don't have time to get into here but I cover in depth in Killer Home Recording: Electric Guitar.

With Amplitube 2, you plug in. You hit a few knobs and you are there. You can certainly tweak later if you so desire, but I've found that snagging an exciting sound seldom takes more than 2 minutes. It seems like all the conventional obstacles have been removed. What obstacles am I talking about? I'm talking about that X factor that keeps my real amps from sounding screamingly awesome on recordings. That road block simply doesn't exist in Amplitube 2. The Amplitube 2 tracks sit in the mix very well without any of the excessive low mid stuff I often fight. In other words, the Amplitube 2 tracks sound finished on the way in. I don't feel the need to shoe horn them into a mix like I find myself always doing with real electric guitar tracks. I don't mistake excessive low-mid crap for “thickness” with Amplitube 2 like I often do with real electric guitar tracks. (I've got a damn room mode that always seems to hide the mud in my electric guitar sounds I have to solve!)

Does Amplitube 2 sound as good as a real amp? First off, that's an overly simplified question. Which real amp and which tone are we going for? Will it do the EVH brown sound as good as an old 50 watt Marshall Plexi through a $2,000 cabinet with 20 watt speakers? No. It won't. At least I haven't figured out how to get that one. Will it come close? You bet your ass it will! Will it sound good doing it? Definitely! What's funny about this topic is a Rivera Knucklehead won't do the EVH brown sound nearly as good as the vintage Marshall rig either, but it will also sound damn good trying. (Again, emulating is stupid!) The same could be said for just about all amps. There are only a few that really nail that sound.

If you check out the Real Guitar Amp vs Emulators Shootout on Killer Home Recording: Electric Guitar you'll find that the sound from emulator to emulator to emulator varies quite a bit. They vary so much that it's difficult even for a guy like me to pick out the real Knucklehead. Why? Because these modern emulators like the Amplitube 2 do have real tone. They do sound good. On their own, I'd probably lean in the direction of the real tube amp in terms of flat out tone. (If a killer real amp gets a 100%, Amplitube 2 gets a 95.5%.) However, by the time I screw up the tone of the real amp with mics and such I end up losing 10% and that's with the tools I mentioned above. (Royer R121 / Sennheiser MD421 / Shure SM57 / etc > Vintech 1272 > Distressor EL-8x > Mytek AD96). Most home recorders aren't going to have such tools at their disposal.

Real World Electric Guitar Recording Problems
I do a lot of different types of sessions. One day I'm doing a live band. Another day I'm doing MIDI techno programming. I do quite a bit of guitar recording as well, but how often are my amps used? I'd say 30% of the time. If I really wanted to have the ability for crushing guitar sounds all the time, I'd need more cabinets. I'd want at least three of them. I need a modern metal type of cabinet (Recto / Orange / Bogner). I'd need a vintage cabinet like a late 60s Marshall with 20 watt speakers. I'd need an open back Fender-style cabinet. I'd need a smaller cabinet with maybe an 8" or 10" speaker of some kind.

Then when plugging a Recto into my G12H30 equipped 1x12 cabinet isn't happening, I can figure out something that will. I'd love to tell you that the old Marshall cabinet is the best cabinet in the world (for 95% of all music I'd say it is) but there are times when the band is going to prefer something else. Who is going to accommodate that? The band? Yeah right! 2% of all musicians in bands take their tone seriously enough to have "their sound". Most just buy something with Mesa Boogie on the cover, plug in, smile, and make their credit card payments.

So simply putting together a signal chain as mentioned above that pushes $5,000 isn't good enough. If the guitar doesn't mate with the amp and the amp doesn't mate with the cabinet, all that is pointless. I'd take a guitar > amp > cabinet setup that all work extremely well together over the fancy recording toys any day of the week.

So, to make a long story short. If you don't have all the necessary tools, you are playing a game of hit and miss. Of course, this also assumes that you are taking the time on your recordings to try out all your cabinets. How many home recorders spend a day on the amp head and a day on the cabinet? This is what the big boys are doing. If you are not, you've already compromised and you are at the mercy of the gods. Spin the wheel and hope you get the tone you are going for.

The only ideal solution is to have all available tools at your disposal. This is the main reason I love the Amplitube 2 emulator so much. Maybe the Gibson SG Mr. Guitar Player uses feels a little wrong with amp #1, we just move on to amp #2 or use cabinet number #2. This ability to match the guitar with the amp / cabinet works the same way a real setup would, but without consuming the cash, space, and time it takes to implement the real thing.

Downside(s) of Amplitube 2
On my ancient computer system (Athlon 64 2800, 2GB of RAM) I can only get 2-3 instances of Amplitube 2 running simultaneously with latency at 160 samples. I suspect this will be a non-issue with the Quad-core computer I've been eyeballing. This slows down workflow quite a bit. It would be nice if I could just fire up 5 instances without having to render / freeze tracks. I don't consider this the fault of Amplitube 2, and I suspect my next computer will have no problems. Just be advised that if you are using Amplitube 2 on an old computer that freezing / rendering guitar tracks is a vibe killer.

Reliability
Amplitube 2 has been 100% reliable. Using it nearly every day for a month I can't recall having one single problem with it. Again, this is a testament to the caliber of products that IK Multimedia is cranking out.

Conclusion
Amplitube 2 kicks ass. I'm considering selling all of my real amps now why they still have a little bit of value because they may not in 2 years. Is Amplitube 2 perfect? No. The technology is very close and I suspect that in another 2 years the emulator stuff will be so good that no one will think twice about using it.

I think the best testament to the sound of Amplitube 2 goes like this. I am producing a band. They have some rocking songs, but for the most part they don't really sound like a "guitar band" like Guns N Roses or something. The plan was to record the guitars DI, use Amplitube 2 as the "scratch tone" and then later reamp the guitars through a real amp. Well, as the record as progressed the guitar player said, "Brandon, I don't want to reamp. I'm 100% happy with this." I agreed. What was to be gained from reamping? In this case, I was actually worried about what we'd lose. Today and I went back to listen to the tracks. No one on Earth will ever know these were done with an emulator and in fact, I suspect I will get compliments on my guitar sounds. I'll put money on it. In other words, Amplitube 2 is a winner even if you've got 3 very desirable real amps collecting dust in the corner.

I suspect that if I sold all my guitar amps and was forced to use Amplitube 2 for the rest of my days, it wouldn't bother me one bit.