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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
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For me a hybrid setup is the way to go. A valve front end and digital back end work best for me. My current squeeze is a Blackstar HT50 MKIII which has the cab rig direct out on it. I can run it direct at home without a speaker load (It has a reactive load box built in). You get all the loveliness and dynamics of valves with all the convenience and consistency of digital (IR's / Cab Sim).
I do miss playing through a valve amp though, so may have to figure out the 4CM method with one of my amps....
So I bought a blue series Vox Valvetronix 2x12 AD120VTX with the VC12 floor controller, and soon after got the AD212 extn cab. I put a 7 band EQ in the fx loop and later added a BBE Sonic Stomp Maximiser and a BBE Boosta Grand for clean volume boost. It was a game changer. Phenomenal versatility, very loud, and sounded and felt like a valve amp. It was the best amp gigging rig I've ever had, but I had to retire it from gigging over 10 years ago because the weight and set up and pack away just got too much for me.
So I switched to the Valvetronix Tonelab SE and LE that are still my main gigging rigs. I use them either straight through FOH or through my Headrush FRFR 108 powered speakers that only weigh 19bs each. The AD120VTX is just under 60lbs on its own.
Last year I picked up a mint Blue 1x12 Valvetronix AD60VT that I've upgraded with a neodymium Celestion G12 Century Vintage. It's way more manageable size and weight wise than it's big brother and nearly as loud. It just gives me the option to gig with it if I fancied.
Every sound guy compliments my sound and I'm just as easy to work with as anyone with the latest digital flavour of the month toy. I play a seriously wide variety of music and no song has ever been found wanting. Need different shades of OD? Thats what the guitar's volume pot is for and as @Nerine said, gain range, type of guitar and pickup choice makes a huge contribution to the sound.
Each to their own and of course, a lot of people love it but I'm yet to be convinced of this digital thing.
I'm well aware that pro players can utilise non modelling gear to achieve similar with custom made pedal boards, complex effects racks, midi control, and a good sound engineer. That's fine if you're re Joe Perry with back stage personnel to also hand you umpteen different guitars fully tuned, to match each song. But not if you're an ordinary Joe (pun intended) playing covers in a pub band.
Other key advantages are size, weight, cost, speed of set up and packing away. A lot depends on what music you're playing. Being an oldie I was brought up with using volume and tone roll off and working with a much more limited pallete of tones. But there's no way I'd want to go back to those days, especially as I no longer gig with a guitar amp.
There are no rights or wrongs here people and views and preferences will differ which is absolutely fine. What's important for any player is simply to find the right gigging solutions that fits their needs, criteria and budget. Digital solutions have been revolutionary particularly for home and pub/club players and even for pro players.
It's a perfectly valid approach to embrace and be open to both digital and more traditional gear. For example, Nita Strauss does a lot of gigs with a Boss GT1000, as well as using her full more traditional rig for bigger concerts. I'm just an amateur/semi pro player, and even I have a traditional pedal board and valve amps in addition to my digital gear. But although I like to have options, I rarely use these.
I’m going to get a Fender FR-10 in time for my next gig, because I’ve missed having a cab behind me, but the sounds are great.
I came across a load of older recordings recently when sorting out some drives. Over the years i've used HiWatt, Marshall, Blackstar, Kitty Hawk, Fender, Bugera and a few more amps.
Listening back to some Thin Lizzy tribute gigs I did I know I used a either a Fender Twin, a Marshall JPM-1 or a Blackstar HT5 but I can't actually tell now which is which on the recordings.
I think as long as it's a good valve amp and it's the amount of gain I like, then I pretty much sound like me no matter what I'm plugged into. Whether that's a good thing or bad I'm not sure but that seems to be the case.
It does have to be a valve amp though, because having an output transformer helps tame the nasty hi end overtones you get when playing more melodic chords with gain (not just root & 5 ) ... This IMO is something all the digital modellers I have tried don't get right ... there's something a bit strange in the high end that grinds me. When I gig'ed my Pod Go I ran it as hot as possible into a passive transformer dual Radial DI and this improved the high end quite a lot. If you have a modeller, try it.
It's funny, as you get older your ability to detect high frequencies drops off but this actually forces the brain to extract more information out the upper mid frequencies. The guitar doesn't really have anything going on much above 5K anyway, so the upper limit of your hearings frequency response isn't so applicable as it might be to other instruments. But any nastiness in those treble overtones really bugs me.
I'm lucky to have a few valve amps as well as an HX Stomp and a Fractal FM9. Typically, I amplify the modellers through a Fender FR-10 (FRFR) and have settled on a few IR's that work for me (York Audio in the main) and don't seem to suffer from that nasty, brittle, spiky, fizzy treble that can be problematic. If course, there's always the option of high cuts on the "cab" if needed.
With my valve amps, however, different cab/ speaker choices have a big impact on what you hear -some combinations sound awful but the same amp into a different speaker/ cab can sound great.
Of course, everyone has their own way of doing things but my experience has been that the modelling/ digital environment provides considerably more options to sculpt your tone. The flip side is that you also get a million and one ways to screw it up!
All of the above is based on a live, in the room, sound and not a mic'd recording though.