To go digitial?

goldtop

lincolnblue said:

goldtop said:

lincolnblue said:

Could I use a Torpedo Captor (there's one for sale here) and plug a headphone amp into the DI output thus giving me silent playing at home and still using my amp?

Yes. Although I find that dry guitar through headphones sounds 'wrong'. Good news: the Captor X that's also in the Classifieds here adds IRs, room reverb and includes a headphone output.

If I use reverb on my board would it not sound OK? It has cab/speaker sim doesn't it?
Sadly I can't stretch to the Captor x

Yup - you should be fine with reverb in your signal chain. I don't know how good the Captor's speaker sim is - maybe check some reviews.

TTBZ

It's not great. Has that typical analog cab sim "cardboardy" mushy sound, for lack of a better description! Digital/IRs are much, much better. 

Wazmeister

If you want to use something At home, try the Boss IR2. It’s ground breaking and has seen off some of the big guns. 

You can also use it with your amp.

Waych the Andertons video.

randella

TTBZ said:

It's not great. Has that typical analog cab sim "cardboardy" mushy sound, for lack of a better description! Digital/IRs are much, much better. 

The Captor's great - one of the best value guitar things I've bought in years. I do use it with a laptop/IR/DAW setup though which takes a bit of spontaneity out if you just want to grab a guitar to figure out a riff or practice a scale for ten minutes.

I use it to get a more realistic 'big cab' room sound from my amps at low volume. It absolutely excels at that for £130.

lincolnblue

randella said:

TTBZ said:

It's not great. Has that typical analog cab sim "cardboardy" mushy sound, for lack of a better description! Digital/IRs are much, much better. 

The Captor's great - one of the best value guitar things I've bought in years. I do use it with a laptop/IR/DAW setup though which takes a bit of spontaneity out if you just want to grab a guitar to figure out a riff or practice a scale for ten minutes.

I use it to get a more realistic 'big cab' room sound from my amps at low volume. It absolutely excels at that for £130.

That's my concern with the Captor - if I don't want to plug into a DAW it's not going to work from what I can see. I just sadly can't afford the Captor x

Blackbooks

If you want headphone use only for practice, what about a Boss Katana Go? I'm impressed with mine so far. 

goldtop

Blackbooks said:

If you want headphone use only for practice, what about a Boss Katana Go? I'm impressed with mine so far. 

But if @lincolnblue wants to use his existing amp, it's a bit more complicated. Could be done this way:

1. get a low-cost dummy load* with a Line Out
2. plug the valve amp into the dummy load
3. get a widget like the Katana Go or Nux Might Plug Pro
4. plug that into the dummy load's Line Out
5. switch off the widget's amp sim
6. (because you already have an amp creating your tone)
7. choose a cabinet IR from the widget's library
8. add as much of the widget's reverb/delay/etc as you want
9. plug in headphones
10. widdle away in silence
11. for extra fun, switch the widget's amp sim on and try cascading a real amp into a virtual one, using the EQ to get tones you can't get otherwise

(* It would be ideal if the dummy load was reactive.)

TTBZ

goldtop said:

Blackbooks said:

If you want headphone use only for practice, what about a Boss Katana Go? I'm impressed with mine so far. 

But if @lincolnblue wants to use his existing amp, it's a bit more complicated. Could be done this way:

1. get a low-cost dummy load* with a Line Out
2. plug the valve amp into the dummy load
3. get a widget like the Katana Go or Nux Might Plug Pro
4. plug that into the dummy load's Line Out
5. switch off the widget's amp sim
6. (because you already have an amp creating your tone)
7. choose a cabinet IR from the widget's library
8. add as much of the widget's reverb/delay/etc as you want
9. plug in headphones
10. widdle away in silence
11. for extra fun, switch the widget's amp sim on and try cascading a real amp into a virtual one, using the EQ to get tones you can't get otherwise

(* It would be ideal if the dummy load was reactive.)

FWIW I tried this with the NUX and a Captor and it didn't work like I'd hoped. Got a horrible feedbacky squeal even on clean sounds. Not sure what it is, maybe something to do with the line out being TRS and the NUX being TS? IIRC could kinda stop it with the jack being wedged halfway out of the socket so I suspect something with the jacks not matching properly.

I'm not sure if I find loaded down amps through IRs are worth the faff to be honest, it's nice to know you're playing the real thing, but by the time it's gone through IRs etc I'm not convinced the sound is any better than a digital model. The feel is subjective and maybe that's where it is slightly better, but depends on the modeller. Mercurial, ToneX and Genome plugins feel (and sound) better than Line 6 imo. Not been a huge fan of the Neural stuff, feels a bit dead to me. 

goldtop

^ Yes, the Nux has a few idiosyncrasies, including with TRRS/headphones - mentioned on some other threads. On some settings, just switching from the Studio Compressor to another type solves it. 

I'd rather use an IR on a real amp that I knew and liked than an amp model. But you can do both at the same time.

lincolnblue

Thank you for all your comments. I think that I can’t afford what I ideally want so I either save hard or buy something like the Simplifier and just don’t use my amp for silent playing 

goldtop

Fair enough. The Simplifier is great, too.

TTBZ

goldtop said:

^ Yes, the Nux has a few idiosyncrasies, including with TRRS/headphones - mentioned on some other threads. On some settings, just switching from the Studio Compressor to another type solves it. 

I'd rather use an IR on a real amp that I knew and liked than an amp model. But you can do both at the same time.

I did wonder if there was some kind of TRS to TS 1/4" jack converter I could use to plug the NUX straight into the line out of the Captor to see if that would get rid of the noise, but never got round to researching it much. The Captor + NUX would make a nice cheaper version of the Captor X with the addition of a Bluetooth aux in.

Snags

At under £200 you needn't worry about not wanting to use a 'real' amp again

In your shoes is be tempted by one of the new mini-modellers like the IR2, or the Line 6 one or the ToneX one, or ... a Quilter Superblock (probably the US one) which is a real amp, but solid state, and would double as a backup.