Marshall JCM 800 VS 14 Guitar Amp Modelers!

Dinosaur David B

To be honest, for recording, the recorded outputs all sound VERY similar to my ears. Frankly, I think the biggest difference would likely be the FEEL of playing through the real amp vs. the sims.  That is, whichever rig lets the player create the best performance would be the differentiator IMO, because the recorded sonics aren't different enough to worry about.  

cvansickle

A club audience would never hear the difference.

Dinosaur David B

cvansickle said:

A club audience would never hear the difference.

Yeah, but I think these options are more for recording..

inmyhands

I'd need the way a tube amp reacts to my playing to sound my best in a recording studio. This would probably be more of a performance / tone heard while recording than a playback / finished product issue. Some of those modelers sound like a JCM800 track that's already been polished up and ready to combine with other tracks. I play guitar in a specific way that's been developed over many years using and utilizing the idiosyncrasies of tube amplification. Now I always expect this to result in this and that to result in that.

Modelers have come a long way in the way they can copy and reproduce favored amplifier tones. I guess for newbie guitar players they also make playing and sounding good a hell of a lot easier. I wonder how a concert violinist would react to a low priced modern modeling violin that gave far less talented individuals the ability to create the same violin tones and recorded voices that once required a $300,000 instrument and 30 years of practice and performance? I'm thinking those towers that postal workers climb up would get pretty crowded.

Dinosaur David B

inmyhands said:

I'd need the way a tube amp reacts to my playing to sound my best in a recording studio. 

That's really it. If you're not comfortable, your performance will suffer.  Back when we were recording Feints, and we were doing the scratch tracks to record the drums, I would try and play through and Amp sim so the drummer and everyone else could hear it in the cans and play along, but it completely screwed me up. I played terrible. I just wasn't used to it.  

These days, I use Amplitube all the time for practicing, and I'd probably do better. It's also possible that Amplitube is a little better than Logic's built in amp farm.  What I hear in these videos sounds a lot better than what I remember back then. And this is only 5+ years later.

Cyberattack

These do sound good, but they're all understandably going for a typical JCM800 sound. I have some vintage 50w JCM800 of my own, and in the last couple years I've dialed in some unusual cleaner tones for recording. I love what I got, but it's not something you'd expect to use a JCM800 for. And since it's not, I have to wonder if the modelers have nailed those kinds of aspects of the amp yet.

Tatosh Guitar

I went thru this a couple times. Quite interesting and revealing, IMHO. I am glad he recorded a sample with Amplitube 4, as that's what I have and I have been unable to get a tone good enough for my tastes. He sounds great here, but that's probably other things in his signal that get it to sound that good. My understaning is that a good IR makes all the difference in the world, but I am new to this modeling world.

Thanks for posting this!

Bytor

Geez, Surprisingly close in that setting..