Guitar Gear Forum

Modeling and E-kits remind me of a philosophy that I heard from Eric Bischoff: You can be better, or greater, which you don’t think is entirely possible; you can be worse, or less, than, which you all clearly seem to think is inevitable; or, you can be different than, which is, in my opinion, the way to go.

As for Geoff Tate: The mix is even, but he absolutely should not be attempting Walk In The Shadows anymore.

IMO, I think people really underestimate the value of stage bleed in a live venue.

With modelled guitars and live drums, the sound of the drums emanate from multiple sources (drums, PA, natural room reverb).... and gets picked up in the vocal mics. Meanwhile the modelled guitars only emanate from the PA and have zero bleed.

That bleed is IMO a natural multi-track. The time delay between mics as well as the PA vs direct sound hitting your ear is a source of mud in a mix... but, mud is thick.

andvari7 wrote:As for Geoff Tate: The mix is even, but he absolutely should not be attempting Walk In The Shadows anymore.

I think he sounds fine for his age. Obviously he can't reach every note he did at 25 but everyone gets old and that's no reason to stop doing what he loves to do, he definitely paid his dues and earned his spot.

screamingdaisy wrote:IMO, I think people really underestimate the value of stage bleed in a live venue.

With modelled guitars and live drums, the sound of the drums emanate from multiple sources (drums, PA, natural room reverb).... and gets picked up in the vocal mics. Meanwhile the modelled guitars only emanate from the PA and have zero bleed.

That bleed is IMO a natural multi-track. The time delay between mics as well as the PA vs direct sound hitting your ear is a source of mud in a mix... but, mud is thick.

Yeah I think there's true to that, especially in a small/medium venue.

P.A. is sound reinforcement, meaning you take a good sounding stage and reinforce it so the whole venue can hear it well.

Yeah if you’re gonna go digital go all digital. That’s probably the best way.

One of the bands we played with tonight use a PodGo into an Orange Pedal Baby (I think that's the name?). It struggled a bit to cut through the mix, but it didn't sound bad.

So... I felt the one guy that benefited from AxeFX was Robert Trujillo. His current tone in Metallica is more cutting and present in the mix than older Metallica.

Today I'm listening to Metallica bass solos, thinking Robert's tone is pretty good. Very clear, nice wet/dry blend to retain the lows, etc. This will be hard to beat.

Then I listened to Jason. His tone is so much bigger and deeper. It sounds/feels like it carries more weight. It's a warmer sound with less clarity in the highs. I was surprised as I thought the recording quality was inferior, yet the tone sounded better.

Then I listened to old Robert (2006 era), and boom... the depth was there. Cleaner sound, more rolled off in the highs, more weight in the response.

Although I appreciate Robert being more audible, I think Jason era Metallica sounded better, and I like the way his tone supports the guitars without taking over the way Robert's does at times.

Anyway, I don't know how much of this is mix/stylistic evolution vs AxeFX.

IMO/YMMV.

Yeah he sounded better before. The whole band did.
Modeling for bass makes the least sense. How many bass tones do you need? If you want to go DI just get a Tech21 or Darkglass analog DI pedal.


That said, the last few days I've been fucking with the Atomic Amplifire, running into my mixer and into my 4x12. After a LOT of tweaking, I got a pretty good sound out of it.
It's not even on the same planet as my DSL, Mesa or EVH amps but pretty good still. Maybe close to the BluGuitar. I have a little pedal amp here that I was using to drive the cab, it's just a basic Class D amp, so maybe a better power amp would help.

It's nothing that I'd use as my primary choice but if I ever have a situation where an amp is not an option I could use it in a pinch and be ok with it.

But on more exciting news, I just bought a Superbass clone

Superb ass is bast Marshall.

I will award a point for modellers because the band we opened for on Friday the guitar player was playing direct with an axe fx to FOH and everything sounded amazing


now excuse me while I go back to cruising CL and marketplace for more tube amps

spawnofthesith wrote:I will award a point for modellers because the band we opened for on Friday the guitar player was playing direct with an axe fx to FOH and everything sounded amazing

My new theory is it isn't the modeller.

Plenty of people were great at sounding like shit through a tube amp, and just because we gave them a modeller doesn't mean they're going to get any better at it.

screamingdaisy wrote:

spawnofthesith wrote:I will award a point for modellers because the band we opened for on Friday the guitar player was playing direct with an axe fx to FOH and everything sounded amazing

My new theory is it isn't the modeller.

Plenty of people were great at sounding like shit through a tube amp, and just because we gave them a modeller doesn't mean they're going to get any better at it.

Can confirm. Have bought a handful of my super expensive dream amps from my youth and I still sound like shit. I am the reverse King Midas when it comes to tone.

Rampage wrote:

screamingdaisy wrote:

spawnofthesith wrote:I will award a point for modellers because the band we opened for on Friday the guitar player was playing direct with an axe fx to FOH and everything sounded amazing

My new theory is it isn't the modeller.

Plenty of people were great at sounding like shit through a tube amp, and just because we gave them a modeller doesn't mean they're going to get any better at it.

Can confirm. Have bought a handful of my super expensive dream amps from my youth and I still sound like shit. I am the reverse King Midas when it comes to tone.

On an aside, my friend is writing and putting out some new songs and asked me to record on them. I’m tracking from home so I can do these at my convenience. It’s all in the box recording and he’s using the Amplitube 5 Fender suite. I grabbed the same one and honestly, for this it’s fine. Every guitar and amp sound is amplitube. Is it something I’d use live? No. I still prefer my real amps. Is it good enough for a self produced recording? Absolutely. Could I have set up my captor and DI’d my amps? Yeah probably but I’ve been having issues with the captor and direct in. Not sure if it’s just the mic cable or what, but I’ve not been in a mood to troubleshoot.

My issue with the user error argument is when you see bands like Metallica. Those guys has the top audio guys in the world working for them. And it still doesn't sound as good as they did with amps.

But I have seen bands get good/ decent results.

I'll make a clip of the Amplifire tones I've dialed in. I don't hate them, but convenience/necessity would be the only reasons I'd use them over my amps.

Here's the AA3. Crunch, lead and clean. Through my pedalboard amp and 4x12.

It's not a bad rig, but again I wouldn't choose over any of my amps. Also, it took me a lot of tweaking to get this while my amp takes between 1-3 second to dial a tone. But if I had to play a gig with this, it would neither be my worst or my best night, it's definitely usable . This video is also a stark reminder of how badly I play a strat.

Question for those using Kemper and the Neural plugins (ones that should work on the Quad Cortex). When Neural gets the plugins to work on the QC, will that bring it closer to say Kemper's Liquid Profiles as far as presence in the mix and stuff?

a new challenger enters ....



saw a couple videos ... looks pretty cool. i like the fact that it has all the additional controls and switches of a Mesa MkII, or a Friedman, for example. seems pretty simple to use as well

GuitarBilly wrote:Here's the AA3. Crunch, lead and clean. Through my pedalboard amp and 4x12.

It's not a bad rig, but again I wouldn't choose over any of my amps. Also, it took me a lot of tweaking to get this while my amp takes between 1-3 second to dial a tone. But if I had to play a gig with this, it would neither be my worst or my best night, it's definitely usable . This video is also a stark reminder of how badly I play a strat.

That sounds good to me! I actually watched Steel Panther rig rundown last night and he's using same thing. Your tone sounds basically the same to me.

GuitarBilly wrote:My issue with the user error argument is when you see bands like Metallica. Those guys has the top audio guys in the world working for them. And it still doesn't sound as good as they did with amps.

But I have seen bands get good/ decent results.

I'll make a clip of the Amplifire tones I've dialed in. I don't hate them, but convenience/necessity would be the only reasons I'd use them over my amps.

I think with Metallica, it's their tone choice, rather than the modellers. They would sound shitty with real amps too. Their ears are toast. Their tones on the last few albums have been horrible too, and they are using the same amps that they've used forever.

madrigal77 wrote:I think with Metallica, it's their tone choice, rather than the modellers. They would sound shitty with real amps too. Their ears are toast. Their tones on the last few albums have been horrible too, and they are using the same amps that they've used forever.

I kind of assume Metallica has a team of audio engineers that dial in things for them both live and in the studio. I highly doubt James is putzing around trying to dial in his Fractal through a massive stadium PA.

madrigal77 wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:My issue with the user error argument is when you see bands like Metallica. Those guys has the top audio guys in the world working for them. And it still doesn't sound as good as they did with amps.

But I have seen bands get good/ decent results.

I'll make a clip of the Amplifire tones I've dialed in. I don't hate them, but convenience/necessity would be the only reasons I'd use them over my amps.

I think with Metallica, it's their tone choice, rather than the modellers. They would sound shitty with real amps too. Their ears are toast. Their tones on the last few albums have been horrible too, and they are using the same amps that they've used forever.

The tone is fine. Most modelers sound good. It's how it sits in a live mix that bothers me. It's not only with guitar. Digital and analog are like paper tissue and poster board. You can print the same picture on both and they will look the same until you put both pictures side by side.

Telephant wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:Here's the AA3. Crunch, lead and clean. Through my pedalboard amp and 4x12.

It's not a bad rig, but again I wouldn't choose over any of my amps. Also, it took me a lot of tweaking to get this while my amp takes between 1-3 second to dial a tone. But if I had to play a gig with this, it would neither be my worst or my best night, it's definitely usable . This video is also a stark reminder of how badly I play a strat.

That sounds good to me! I actually watched Steel Panther rig rundown last night and he's using same thing. Your tone sounds basically the same to me.

Yeah it's interesting because he said he's using the 5150 model and I'm using the Friedman model and yet they sound nearly the same. Yet in real life they're very different amps.

I took the modeler to practice today to try to go DI. What a miserable time that was. Through the studio PA, the presets I programmed didn't sound anything like they did at home with my studio monitors. It sounded thin and shrill and just awful. So frustrating.


Thankfully the studio had a Marshall Valvestate so I plugged straight into that and dialed a workable tone within seconds and I was able to finish practice.

It's probably user error, I should have tweaked it more etc... but I give up.

Landshark wrote:a new challenger enters ....



saw a couple videos ... looks pretty cool. i like the fact that it has all the additional controls and switches of a Mesa MkII, or a Friedman, for example. seems pretty simple to use as well

And it's like $1700

madrigal77 wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:My issue with the user error argument is when you see bands like Metallica. Those guys has the top audio guys in the world working for them. And it still doesn't sound as good as they did with amps.

But I have seen bands get good/ decent results.

I'll make a clip of the Amplifire tones I've dialed in. I don't hate them, but convenience/necessity would be the only reasons I'd use them over my amps.

I think with Metallica, it's their tone choice, rather than the modellers. They would sound shitty with real amps too. Their ears are toast. Their tones on the last few albums have been horrible too, and they are using the same amps that they've used forever.

I actually thought their guitar tone on the last single they put out sounded awesome and I don’t even really like Metallica. Doubt they used modeler in the studio though.