Has Modelling Taken over ?

John_A

Gadget said:

John_A said:

Gadget said:

I like the hybrid idea.

Keep the valve amps, but feed them into a load / IR box like the Torpedo, Ox, etc.

Better tones than I've had with modellers and a get to keep tasty warm with my lovely valve amps

I’m sure it sounds lovely, but when you have 20 minutes to set up in the dog and duck, it’s not all about tone

I don't gig. If I did, I'd just take a valve amp.

And either mic it up complete with spill over from the drum kit, or have the singer not being able to hear themselves because you’re too loud.  Add on a big pedalboard for a big variety of sounds and you have anything but simple.

The sound out front is more important than how it feels to the player IMO, and the less I have to load in to the car at 1:00am the better

Majorscale

I don't know any guitarists using modelling for gigs around here. 

I dipped my toe into the digital world with a Helix, with the intention of simplifying life in my cover band and going straight to the PA, but modelling just didn't work for me and I'm now back to valve amps and pedals as I just prefer the feel, tone and operational simplicity.

Majorscale

John_A said:

Gadget said:

John_A said:

Gadget said:

I like the hybrid idea.

Keep the valve amps, but feed them into a load / IR box like the Torpedo, Ox, etc.

Better tones than I've had with modellers and a get to keep tasty warm with my lovely valve amps

I’m sure it sounds lovely, but when you have 20 minutes to set up in the dog and duck, it’s not all about tone

I don't gig. If I did, I'd just take a valve amp.

And either mic it up complete with spill over from the drum kit, or have the singer not being able to hear themselves because you’re too loud.  Add on a big pedalboard for a big variety of sounds and you have anything but simple.

The sound out front is more important than how it feels to the player IMO, and the less I have to load in to the car at 1:00am the better

My approach is what Gadget mentioned. My valve amp is DI'd from the speaker out to the PA (I use a Palmer PDI09 DI with speaker sim set to "mellow"). This means my amp's stage volume is not high enough to cause problems (i.e. interfere with the singer), and most of my stage signal comes through the monitors so I can hear what the audience is hearing. Simple and effective!

exocet

p90fool said:

rsvmark said:

Consider this fellas. Just watching live lounge on BBC4. Almost every act has a keys player with a piano sound. They sound great to my ear at least. Not a Joanna in sight. 

They do sound great, but pianos are simple, push button instruments. 
Once memory became cheap enough to run several layers of velocity sensitivity they respond to player input just like the real thing. 

Guitars and amps are far more complex and interactive. 

Have to disagree here. Real pianos are far from simple push button instruments. Touch and feel on a piano are just as important as on a guitar. Modelling of Piano is similar to modelling of guitar amp albeit the piano has a much wider frequency range to model...you don't see concert pianists playing digital pianos. 

mixolyd

I haven’t watched any piano performances on tv this year so maybe things have changed but every piano sim I’ve heard up to now has sounded nothing like a piano.

 Digital pianos and workstation keyboards have been a live staple for decades so there is no expectation that the piano sound like an actual acoustic instrument.  Pop and dance music use these faux pianos in the studio all the time for their consistent attack and eq.

Of course there are some great vst pianos with deep multisampling and these are heard on a million film and tv scores, but that’s a very different sound from the keys that are used live.

Heartfeltdawn

p90fool said:

They do sound great, but pianos are simple, push button instruments. 
Once memory became cheap enough to run several layers of velocity sensitivity they respond to player input just like the real thing. 

Guitars and amps are far more complex and interactive. 

Are you a pianist? 
 

rsvmark said:

Consider this fellas. Just watching live lounge on BBC4. Almost every act has a keys player with a piano sound. They sound great to my ear at least. Not a Joanna in sight. 

It's all about convenience.  

Almach

I've got a Gorilla amp stashed away in the loft as part of my investment portfolio. It will rise again my friends when the modelling backlash comes.

NOTHING SCREAMS LIKE A GORILLA !

MentalSharps

John_A said:

Gadget said:

I like the hybrid idea.

Keep the valve amps, but feed them into a load / IR box like the Torpedo, Ox, etc.

Better tones than I've had with modellers and a get to keep tasty warm with my lovely valve amps

I’m sure it sounds lovely, but when you have 20 minutes to set up in the dog and duck, it’s not all about tone

I'm curious (never gigged), why would it be difficult to set up live?

Isn't it just an XLR from Loadbox into the PA and Bob's your uncle?

octatonic

Strike a pose.

John_A

MentalSharps said:

John_A said:

Gadget said:

I like the hybrid idea.

Keep the valve amps, but feed them into a load / IR box like the Torpedo, Ox, etc.

Better tones than I've had with modellers and a get to keep tasty warm with my lovely valve amps

I’m sure it sounds lovely, but when you have 20 minutes to set up in the dog and duck, it’s not all about tone

I'm curious (never gigged), why would it be difficult to set up live?

Isn't it just an XLR from Loadbox into the PA and Bob's your uncle?

That’s pretty much it

p90fool

mixolyd said:

I haven’t watched any piano performances on tv this year so maybe things have changed but every piano sim I’ve heard up to now has sounded nothing like a piano.

 Digital pianos and workstation keyboards have been a live staple for decades so there is no expectation that the piano sound like an actual acoustic instrument.  Pop and dance music use these faux pianos in the studio all the time for their consistent attack and eq.

Of course there are some great vst pianos with deep multisampling and these are heard on a million film and tv scores, but that’s a very different sound from the keys that are used live.

I do dabble a bit with piano in my studio, but have had previously cynical players who have never played any kind of digital piano be astonished by the depth and complexity available from VST pianos. 

Some digital pianos are up there in terms of quality, but don't forget that pianos are often EQ'd to sit in a pop mix, where a full on Bosendorfer sample would swamp every other instrument. 
Most pianos in pop mixes sound thin and plinky compared to a real concert grand, but that's usually deliberate. 

The most important point in an average gigging band though is that the choices are between fake guitar amp/real guitar amp and fake piano/no piano. 

TheBigDipper

Modelling has its place along with everything else. Some people will prefer it for the playing they do in the environment they normally play in. Others won't. 

Have they taken over? I don't think there's one answer for all situations, so no. We've just got more credible choices now. 

When the humbucker became available, I don't think people decided the single-coil was dead, did they? They just decided with their ears which one they wanted at what particular time. If they only had one or the other, they made do in those situations were it may not have been the perfect choice. 

Re Pianos: My pianist friends all own things like Nords for their band work and playing at home. They do the job very well. Every one of them would want a grand piano in a nice room to play at home if they could manage it. More rewarding and a more complex sound. Bit like one of us playing an electro-acoustic in public but generally preferring to record a nice guitar using great mics in a nice room.

Dominic

The original question is a good one..........I don't think modelling has taken over but ultimately it probably will.
Another 10 years will see 3rd generation modellers achieve perfect sound re-creation and the die-hard 50year old guitarists who live on memories of Marshall stacks and the sound of the 70s will be dying out, giving up playing or simply too long in the tooth to be bothered with the weight, hassle and nuances of worthy valve amps.
 Of course, there will always be old school purists and I dare say that in 30 years there will be a new found craze for original Valve Amps " like they used in the year 2012 "
 MORE IMPORTANTLY....will there still be guitar players as we know it ? Will the instrument itself be in demand and even have a place in the music of year 2030.......it may be no more relevant than the Bassoon is today because it's gradually becoming less and less relevant to contemporary music and a guitar solo is about as desirable to a producer as a 4 minute drum solo both of which were the highlights of a rock concert circa1976 .
 Then again the Acoustic guitar was a dead duck throughout the 1980s /90s and look how that has resurfaced in the Busker type prominence of Ed Sheehan and similar acts

smigeon

John_A said:

Gadget said:

John_A said:

Gadget said:

I like the hybrid idea.

Keep the valve amps, but feed them into a load / IR box like the Torpedo, Ox, etc.

Better tones than I've had with modellers and a get to keep tasty warm with my lovely valve amps

I’m sure it sounds lovely, but when you have 20 minutes to set up in the dog and duck, it’s not all about tone

I don't gig. If I did, I'd just take a valve amp.

And either mic it up complete with spill over from the drum kit, or have the singer not being able to hear themselves because you’re too loud.  Add on a big pedalboard for a big variety of sounds and you have anything but simple.

The sound out front is more important than how it feels to the player IMO, and the less I have to load in to the car at 1:00am the better

I guess we’re all different (and thank god we are), but I’m just the opposite. It’s very important for me to have an inspiring sound on the stage, because then I play better and with greater enthusiasm, and that comes over to the rest of the band and hopefully also to the audience. 

The spillover issue is solved in my case with a Palmer DI dual-locked into the back of my valve amp. This provides a good-enough FoH sound. And the pain of car-to-venue-lugging-at-1:00am is not intolerable with a compact-but-loud 30w combo.

I sometimes like digital for messing about at home, but on the few occasions I’ve tried it playing out I’ve never been quite satisfied and have always gone back to a valve amp for the feel and the immediacy.

fftc

Have modellers taken over?
Not in my house!

I'm coming from a slightly different position from some other contributors in that I don't gig and have no ambition to. I play electric guitar* purely for my own enjoyment and don't need to jump through any hoops in terms of pleasing others or sitting in a mix etc.
I have tried a few modellers/hybrids and always felt that there was something lacking in the sound but I would struggle to define what it was. When I got my Champ all of a sudden there was the full sound I had been after, so I will continue to use a valve amp for the foreseeable. I do still use my THR on occasion when it is handy to do so and I don't think it's sensible to limit yourself to one technology just for the sake of it, but no takeover here.

One caveat to this is I haven't used any topline modellers so far, eg Kemper etc. I would be interested to try one at home if the opportunity arose just so I could form my own judgement, but I can't see me buying one just to try.


* Bass is different.

p90fool

Mic spill is an overstated issue, it's quite often the glue which holds a mix together. 

The percentage of drum kit spill in an e906 pressed against the grill of a loud amp is negligable anyway IME. 

Jez6345789

I think in my head after my lottery win there is always my fantasy amp room where I have my collection of early marshalls through to modern boutiques a great selection of boogies etc where I can pop down to the east wing for the morning and shred myself happy all running at full tilt through a selection of cabinets. 

Then I wake up and think just a fantasy but hey I still have the Kemper. 

It is always a personal choice and for a lot of people, they feel their tube amps drive their playing and inspiration the good old feel factor that of course anything digital could never match and that's fine. 

For me I gave up worrying about valve amp years ago probably around the line 6 era and to me, the Kemper is the logical conclusion of modelling. I will also get round to add a Helix HX at home shortly for some additional tone and effects. 

Haych

For me I think it depends upon the use case.  For playing live I don't think I could imagine not playing through a real amp, just because it's easy to set up and easy to use.  

In the studio, particularly a home studio setup I think modellers come into their own - I haven't turned my amp on for weeks and since acquiring Bias Amp 2 and Bias FX I don't think I will for a while.

I might have to buy MainStage and see whether I could build a live rig out of a software amp, though, just for the hell of it.

But there is a certain magic about an old valve amp turned up loud that I've never felt with any modeller.  Crank a Super Reverb or Bassman reissue and it's just epic

Jota

In the kind of cover bands I'm in almost everyone is going direct and even rehearsing with IEM! I f*cking hate it!

I was in a band where I could use my amps while everyone was playing direct (except drums) and monitoring through IEM. Right now I'm in another band where we can't even use amps at the rehearsing space so I have to go direct with a cheap Joyo pedal. I'll keep my amps for shows but I feel like a rare bird sometimes!

crunchman

sweepy said:

What prompted the thread originally was the crazily low prices of previously high end amps, even Mesa's etc at bargain prices and it set me thinking that maybe the high end stuff from the mass producers has had its day and its the niche/custom builders that will carry the valve flame in the future. Those Gigging with Modellers in smaller venues etc are probably facing the same type of learning curve that people had in the 60's when Vox Marshall etc came to the fore and it was a case of PA for the vocals etc and separate and very noisy backlines and all the compromising etc etc that that brought with it

I think that is a separate issue from whether modellers are taking over.

With the lower stage volumes you can get away with today, there is a move towards small amps, so the big old 100W heads and the associated cabs are not in demand any more.

There has also been a change in the way valve amps are manufactured.  If you go back 15 years, almost all valve amps were produced in the US or Europe, whereas now a lot of it is produced in the far East (or Mexico in Fender's case).  All valve amps were expensive 15 years ago.  That started to change with the Valve Jr, which was introduced in 2005.

Since then, brands like Jet City have come along with their "offshore" production, with really good amps at very affordable prices.  The likes of Marshall have moved production to the far East to compete.  What people expect to pay for a valve amp has come down.

In the particular case of Mesa, that kind of sound probably isn't as fashionable as it was, so that is another factor.

All of these things have affected the second hand price without even considering the effect of modellers.  I'm sure that modelling has played some part, but it's definitely not the only factor, and probably not the predominant one when considering the prices of second hand Mesas.

Modelling is the future.  I still use a valve amp playing live at the moment, but when Kemper eventually get round to releasing their new reverbs, I'll probably switch to Kemper.  As it is, if I take my Big Sky separately, I lose the advantages of the all in one solution that the Kemper provides.

Whether it's in the form of a modelling amp like the Katana, or a direct option like Kemper/Helix/Axe FX, I would expect modellers to be predominant in 20 years time, if not a bit sooner.  The weight savings and the improved reliabilty over valves will mean more and more people switching over.