The real deals and modelers and gain - Rock festival lesson

[deeaa]

Last weekend I spent three days at a rock festival and saw quite a few bands. The headliner was Nightwish...never realized how great a show and how good they can be. That wasn't the post point, however.

A lot of the bands used modern high-gain amps, and some probably modelers as I never saw an amp or at least a head on stage. Some, like Nightwish, can't see them anyway. And for Nightwish, for the most part, guitars have a supporting role really anyway.

Some notions I made included that
a.) it was a delight to see so many bands still hauling full Marshall or whatever stacks to stage
b.) most of the 'younger' bands played with far too much gain, making the sound basically quite a feeble buzz or mush rather than hard it was supposed to be
c.) for many, again 'young' bands, and partially becuse of the point b. two guitars were unnecessary and only making the guitars a mess with each sound struggling to be heard.
d.) EASILY the best sounding bands all used a classic simple amp/stack with sensible gain.

There was one band that was just a trio, and the singer/guitarist played into a Marshall 2203 pretty much straight it seemed, employing the volume knob a lot for sound change, and the bassist played a Rickenbacker which had the signature clanky yet deep sound. And it was waaaaayy above any other band for how good they sounded. Everything came through crystal clear - tiny mistakes as well - but the sound was simply marvellous and strong and at best even hair-raisingly hard and raunchy.

They were followed by a metal act that played really well, and it looked like they used modelers because the guitarists were stomping on something quite fervently changing sounds for different parts of the song (I later heard at least one of them was a Line6 Helix)...and it sounded absolutely terrible in comparison. Of course, I don't know if they simply picked the most mushy and ball-less gain sounds in the devices, but it simply had zero dynamics, everything was just a steady nice mush of lots of gain.

Some bands were somewhere in between there, one trash/grunge act had two guitarists both with Marshall JVM halfstacks, and boy I had an itch to go and turn down their gain knobs down a little. They sounded good, but I could not help thinking how much better and hard-hitting it would have been with a little less gain so you could have had some more dynamics and clarity too.

Well anyway what I took home about it was that I'm gonna stick with my low gain approach and it's obviously a good thing, and I need not worry about hauling my Marshall onto gigs, obviously it will work fine even today...and also that I'm gonna further reduce my guitar playing while the other guitarist also plays. I don't need to play all the time, it will only be better for clarity and dynamics if only one guitar plays during verses for instance, and I'll join only for choruses on many songs. And definitely we never have to play the exact same thing with two guitars simultaneously.

[toomanycats]

Interesting observations.

It is true that some of the the most hard hitting, heavy guitar riffs (at least from my point of view), were recorded with relatively low gain by contemporary standards. I'm thinking of stuff like Malcolm and Angus' tones on "Back in Black", Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", Judas Priest's "Grinder", Schenker on UFO's "Lights Out". It's that straight cranked Plexi tone you allude to above which is raw, focused, dynamic, raunchy but defined.

[deeaa]

Yeah, and if you really listen to a lot of much more recent metal songs, say Megadeth for instance...there's actually very little in the way of gain saturation going on. The heaviness doesn't come from fuzz but more like crunch and layering and such.

[golem]

I recently got a Helix LT used. Honestly, this thing has a learning curve and I haven't mastered it yet. I can easily imagine this thing sounding terrible if you don't have it setup right. One user who responded to me on TGP mentioned he'll have four versions of his sounds. One if he's using an FRFR speaker, one if he's going into a PA, one if he's going into an amp head using the four cable method, and I'm not sure what the last one was. But... I think it's enough to say that it's something you have to learn how to use to get the best tones out of. If you're used to going direct to amp and not fiddling around with things, this might not be for you. It does a lot, but there's a lot to learn.

I've gotten OK sounds out of mine and a few amazing ones and I honestly still haven't really figured out how to mess up mic placement, cabs, pedals, what the best way to EQ for FRFR is, what IR is, etc. So I guess I'd just say that don't buy one of these if you aren't willing to invest the time to learn what they can do and how to get the best out of them and that I could easily imagine someone using these in a band and not understanding the best way to use it (e.g., to send sound to the sound board) and it sounding terrible as a result.

[deeaa]

Yep.

I think the problem with modelers isn't that you can't get excellent sounds from, but that it's so easy to fall into candyland when adjusting them - and the presets tend to be very laden with tweaks as well.

In a way, with a simple tube amp, all you do is _additive_ to get maybe a little more gain, or add a little delay or whatever. So the base sound is fine and simple and soundmen everywhere know how to drop a 57 in front of the cab and get a great tone. Even if at home or something it may sound hard and not very pleasingly polished, miked and amplified it's great.

Whereas with modelers you often end up having to be _subtractive_ when building sounds, as they are already full of EQ's and stuff and usually way too much gain. And the sounds are built so that they sound awesomely huge and thick when you play them thru your home kit or headphones or something. Even when you build sounds it's so easy to try some FX or tweak and MAN it sounds great...

But then you put it thru a huge PA and all those additions add all kinds of extra noises and background stuff which doesn't necessarily work all so well when with other really loud instruments: the reverbs that sounded great in headphones may clash and swell in the PA with other verbs and get exaggerated by compression etc.

I'm sure most any modeler can do superb sounds today...hell I can get great sounds from the old GT-8, especially when I bypass all the speaker modelers and FX and basically just use the amp model and EQs and some dirt and then squeeze it thru a simple cab sim...the presets suck hugely but the sound is fine when you just turn the gain from 90 to like 9 and beef it up with comp and EQ instead.

Also, some modelers suffer from not really scaling with the guitar. I mean, if you get a great rhythm sound from one, and then try to make it clean by lowering guitar volume, it just doesn't. It just gets cleaner, but still has the same drive buzz only weaker, whereas a real tube amp can open up and turn crystal clear spanky when guitar volume is dropped, and smoothly scale to full scream and thick, compressed OD when volume is cranked.

I do hope that's something the best modelers already can do well. But for now I find with modelers you often end up having to have 10 different patches for your rhythm and lead and clean and whatnot, while with a real amp you can even survive just one sound teetering on the edge of dirt and clean.

But, they certainly ARE getting better every day and I do believe when adjusted right can yield just as good results as amps do.

[uwmcscott]

Along those lines, I was doing some late night surfing and came across a rig rundown type video for Wayne Lozinak from Hatebreed. While I'm not a giant fan of their music or the genre overall, some of their songs have some killer riffs and their lyrics are pretty thought provoking.

All that aside, what was somewhat surprising was that he too basically just plays a LP dimed plugged into a stock JCM2000. As heavy as they are you'd guess there was some uber-gain going on somewhere but it's a super basic setup.

[Chocol8]

Way way way too many amateur guitarists are using too much gain.


The simple signal chain of guitar and amp, or at least minimal pedals, has always been my favorite. That said, I can get VERY similar tones from modelers.

The problem is, if you don’t have experience with real amps and getting good tones out of them, you are not likely to get good tones out of a modeler. I think too many young guys are starting with modelers and lack the knowledge, experience and ear to set them up. It doesn’t help that none of them come with well put together presets out of the box or that the configuration options are so complex, non-intuitive, and poorly documented.

Finally, too many guys set their tones in isolation and don’t consider or understand how they need to fit in a mix. That just leads to mud.

[deeaa]

Way way way too many amateur guitarists are using too much gain.


The simple signal chain of guitar and amp, or at least minimal pedals, has always been my favorite. That said, I can get VERY similar tones from modelers.

The problem is, if you don’t have experience with real amps and getting good tones out of them, you are not likely to get good tones out of a modeler. I think too many young guys are starting with modelers and lack the knowledge, experience and ear to set them up. It doesn’t help that none of them come with well put together presets out of the box or that the configuration options are so complex, non-intuitive, and poorly documented.

Finally, too many guys set their tones in isolation and don’t consider or understand how they need to fit in a mix. That just leads to mud.

Exactly. Agree with all of this.

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