It's an older i3/SSD Lenovo laptop I bought for 80€ and forced Win11 on. Basically there's nothing but Neural's Plini plugin and Amplitube 5 and Tonex plugs installed.
Got a used MOTU USB soundcard as well, two channels & MIDI, 100€, and a sliding rack tray (50€). The chassis was built by someone pretty professionally, got that for 20€. The Boss SE-50 I have had since the 80s.
GPA-100 guitar power amp was 120€. Then I got a Greenback 60W 16ohm, because the amp delivers about that much power per channel at 16ohms. That was an even 100€ as well.
Everything, power strip, supplies etc is wired at the back, one pic is of the backside without the back panel and some bits still missing; there is now also a 19" rack panel where I soldered fixed connectors for MIDI, ext.speaker out and XLR modeled out connector.
So basically the guitar goes into the motu,
Into the plugin of choice,
Into the Boss (it merely adds a little bit of 'softening' to the otherwise fully digital signal). It's actually pretty crucial, but almost any analog pedal could work in stead.
But, the most important thing is, on the right channel I'm using all modeler capabilities to send a signal with speaker emulation and all to PA or recording to DAW, BUT the left channel is sent to the power amp without speaker emulation, and a real speaker.
That gives a MUCH better dynamic and punch than using an FRFR speaker. We have for instance a 2000w FRFR speaker, and it's funny how a 60w guitar speaker puts it to shame in how it moves the air, produces volume, and has that midrange punch you can literally feel.
For control, I use my Boss GX-100 pedal board. It's handy as it controls the plugins easily via MIDI, but is also a good modeler on its own, so it can be a backup. So I have three different banks programmed in it; one feeds and controls this new system, but one does the same sounds but the modeled line goes to PA direct from the Boss and uses the Origin halfstack on the background for monitoring.
And the third bank sends just stereo modeled sounds direct.
We've played maybe like 5 hours on the system and it works great. Plugins are little work for the laptop, so it can happily run in there lid closed, I only need to open it up if I want to change the sounds.
Only one thing I should maybe add and only just now occurred to me...I could see if there's an USB sleep switch available for the laptop, so that I could wake it up and put it to sleep without having to open the lid at all. Hmm.
Sent from my M2103K19G using Tapatalk
