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I played a Helix in a shop recently. Was pretty impressive, but the I plugged into a little Fender Princeton and knew instantly which I preferred...
Rift Amplification
Brackley, Northamptonshire
www.riftamps.co.uk
I spent 100 quid on a used Jet City head a couple of weeks ago, and I just can't stop playing it, it's just reacts to my playing input like a real musical instrument.
To me, a model is like fake film grain in a phone app. It's trying to ape something else. Even if it gets there 100%, then it still can't produce happy analog accidents. For instance, an overdriven mic preamp can sound so good that you might it turn it onto a pedal (the Broadcast). This is a happy side effect of misusing the preamp.
For an overdriven digital preamp to add saturation, or playing dirt, to a sound, it has to be designed in consciously.
Digital effects, on the other hand, get interesting when they depart from modeling (copying) analog effects and do their own thing. The Eventide H9 is a good example.
I'm not ragging on digital. I love it, and it's so convenient. Often, it sounds as good as the real thing, especially when recorded. But it's fundamentally a different concept. Analog gear is built to do a job. Digital is built to copy something from the real world.
I don't have the space or even the need for a practice amp tbh, so I ditched it while it was still worth a few quid.
My life has suddenly reverted to absolute simplicity - turn up, bung amps in a heap on the stage, turn the knobs to exactly the same settings as last night, play guitar.
No more Algorithm Angst.
For anything direct digital is fantastic these days for most things.
Not knocking digital, there is some great stuff out there though.
This.
Even analogue solid-state amps don't do this, they tend to go the other way - they clip fairly abruptly, and when clipped they produce more fundamentals and high frequencies which not only sound farty and buzzy, it essentially scoops the midrange and tends to make the amp disappear in the mix.
Valve amps, for all their totally unintended limitations, just 'work' for electric guitar. I've always thought it should be a fairly easy thing to simulate with solid-state or digital given the sort of circuit analysis and processing power available in the modern world, but it really doesn't seem to be...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
It could also be that the Pignose has almost no low or high frequency response anyway...
And it's not exactly everyone's idea of the last word in tone .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I've owned about three or four of them - I think all bar the first one were given to me broken because the build quality is shockingly poor and they're often not economically repairable. I fixed them for the fun of it and then sold them to people who were looking for a battery-powered busking amp, before you could buy proper things like a Micro Cube.
And the casing has to be held open at precisely 43.65º to get 'the sound' .
So in reality I don't think that having an output transformer is what makes an amp good - or at least not by itself. There are a few other solid-state amps with them too - and they don't, really.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Agreed, I love the sound of guitar through a valve amp but I have a Helix as well. I use as a programmable pedalboard with the valve amp (Mesa Express+) and as full modeller for direct recording and quiet practice.
Best of both worlds, except 4CM is pain in the tits at times.
For me, the thing I love about valve amps and guitar speakers is that narrow bandwidth of tone, that mid range thing. Modellers through FRFR have too wide a bandwidth and sound too hi-fi, even with IRs etc, there is too much high and lo end and I don't get that satisfying thick midrange sound.
Also, what is it with modellers than brings fret buzz to the fore on clean sounds? It's like when you used to DI a guitar into a portastudio back in the early 90s. A clean sound on a good valve amp with the same guitar doesn't;t allow anywhere near as much fret buzz sound through.