Real amps vs fake amps

Hey Cagey, when'd you get an FX? Crazy... I've been out of touch. :tard:

The way I see it, a "fake amp", as in a very good modeling amp/preamp, can do anything a tube amp can... You can make an axe fx sound just like a vox ac30 or a fender twin, but it doesn't go the other way. I think the biggest reason people have stuck to tube tech is that a good modeling amp is expensive... But tube amps are a lot to keep up.

I've been looking at a few options for my own rig. My amp right now is an old Gallien Krueger bass amp through some EV 12's in a couple homemade cabs... And while it can sound great, I need to move onto something better when I have the cha-ching. Axe FX would be nice, but at $1500, it's just unreasonable until I can find a good, steady job.

Anyone have experience with the Line6 Pod HD Pro's? They seem to be like the Fractal units, but a step down in sound and price... Would that be accurate?

Also thought about going for a good Orange amp and a nice cab, and holding off until I can afford an Axe Fx...

Thoughts?
 
It's been a while since I got mine. Early 2012, I think. Right after they came out with the Axe Fx II.

There's really no such thing as a "fake amp". All amps take a relatively small signal and make it large. How they do that can vary quite a bit, though. What the Axe Fx excels at is being able to do that a lotta different ways, and include some very high-quality effects while it's at it.

Line 6 Pod HD Pros can be had relatively inexpensively now, since they're outclassed by most modern gear. But, that doesn't mean they aren't useful. When they were first released, they were the thing to have. I'm pretty confident you could have a lotta fun with one. Hell, I had a lotta fun with just a Behringer V-Amp Pro for a long time, and they're really easy to get these days. Most of the bad press they get on the forums was from guys who didn't take the time to dial them in properly. As delivered, most of the effects were so overdone they were nothing but cheese. But, that's true of a lotta programmable effects. If you don't tame them, they sound ridiculous.

Many dedicated single-purpose amps sound pretty good these days. It's tough to get a bad one, really. The state of the art has progressed somewhat since the '60s, to put it mildly.

Unfortunately, saving up for an Axe Fx isn't enough. You still need an amp and speaker(s), the speaker(s) should be of the FRFR design, and a MIDI pedal board is more or less a required accessory. So, it adds up fast. It's not unusual to get to the $4K-$5K mark before you're happy. That's a mighty hunk of money if you're not making money with those tools. You have similar problems with most tricky preamps - they don't stand alone like a combo amp does. That's why people get excited over things like Fender's Mustang III, a Line 6 Spider, Marshall's DSL line. etc. It's one-stop shopping. Buy one, plug it in, and have a blast RFN.
 
Welp, just found a negative to real amps v 'fake' amps.

Went to fire up my old tube amp & realised the preamp tubes & power tubes probably need replacing. Been so long since I used it I guess, and the last time I played on it, the sound was getting microphonic...
It's Sunday here in Australia, and there's not enough music stores in my region that would stock a few 12AX7s, let alone ones of any sort of quality!
Coming to the end of a pay cycle (pay day next week) & needing to shop online for decent 12AX7s and a 12AU7 means I will have to wait til late next week (after I pay some bills). :sad1:

Back to Kemper.....
 
We have somewhat better availability of tubes (valves) here in the states, but it's still a pain in the shorts. You don't know how a different part is going to change your sound because they're highly inconsistent, and even when they aren't in failure mode they change their behavior over time. Then you have issues with filter caps drying out, the numerous socket connections losing integrity, resistors burning up, on and on. Tube amps are just consumable, so you can't count on them. Do you have a full roll, or are you on the last sheet? You can't tell until it's too late.
 
Cagey said:
We have somewhat better availability of tubes (valves) here in the states, but it's still a pain in the shorts. You don't know how a different part is going to change your sound because they're highly inconsistent, and even when they aren't in failure mode they change their behavior over time. Then you have issues with filter caps drying out, the numerous socket connections losing integrity, resistors burning up, on and on. Tube amps are just consumable, so you can't count on them. Do you have a full roll, or are you on the last sheet? You can't tell until it's too late.
Click to expand...

It's what drove me to amp simulation a few years back. Eventually put up my last savings to get the Kemper & happy to have it there for my home studio.

Even if the weather gets too humid those tube amps can misbehave & start sounding 'flat'. I saw quite a few old Marshalls try to survive under extreme conditions, on stage, in a pub, in summer, in Australia. Roadies would have fans going full bore on the back of the heads just to keep the things going & not imploding. Didn't help that the amps were probably poorly biased & were running hot because they were being driven hard to get the sound.  :help:

But when you get a good sound out of them, you really don't want to let that moment pass, do you? And on stage they can move air pretty well....  :evil4: :laughing7:

High maintenance bitches though.. and I don't have much time these days to get into music after work & home take precedence. Oh to be 15 again!
 
Re-Pete said:
Oh to be 15 again!
Click to expand...

:icon_biggrin:

It's not that great though... I can't get the job I want until December, and the wait is killing me...  :sad: I need the gear funds!

Not doing too bad though. Just gotta make compromises here and there... New guitar vs. new amp vs. new preamp vs. new drums... Etc, etc.

I'm actually considering continuing the drums as a side hobby and switching to programming instead... I've done drum programming for a while, and I think at some point pretty soon I want to get Superior Drummer and Cubase and have my own nice little home studio. After that a better amp will be in order, then perhaps a line6 hd pro or even an axe fx if I'm actually at "that level".

Money's a bitch. :laughing7: Just gotta keep practicing for now!
 
To be honest, I'd rather have a top-of-the-line modeller, and a dedicated FRFR system. But the buy-in for such a system - properly done - is pretty danged steep. I'm convinced that it's the way to go, and that it's the way things are shifting. I feel - an opinion only - that we'll see more and more of it in the future. Not that tubes are gonna go away - no, they'll always have a place. But there's just so much good stuff that's come out, I can only see it get better.

And hopefully, get cheaper. It's the way things go - early adopters pay the premium price, for having it RFN. But then the MBAs start to say "hey, we can water these down a bit and sell 10x as many for 20% less each". And thereafter it's a push-pull between dropping prices and retaining features. In our capitalist world, and with so many bright industrious entrepreneurial peeps lookin' to get their slice and make their mark, eventually there's a range of excellent choices. Look at cell phones. The first ones were cinder blocks. Then they got better. After a while along comes the iPhone, one cell to rule them all. And now they've all got more features than any one person will ever use, and the price keeps dropping. I can only hope that modelling technology (while a drastically smaller "niche" market, economically speaking") will follow a similar trend. Why wouldn't it?

But for today, we have a couple of excellent top-end choices, at system prices that'll buy a reasonable used car. And some lesser-functioned offerings that, while quite good in their own right, are definitely in a different class.

So I'm out until prices drop or my lottery luck improves. In the meantime, I went for a tube amp. My first decent one was a Super Champ X2, which I mentioned before. Nice, but I wanted more. So I did a lot of shopping around, and got a Mesa Mark V. Yup, the MotherOfAllPreamps. It's touted for its metal-level gain, but you know what? I can dial in really sweet rock and/or blues (my main pref) on all three channels. All different, all good. So while I'm in livin' in Tubeland, I'm by no means locked in to just one sound. Add a good set of pedals (compressor, delay, reverb, EQs) and it's a great rig. The limit to it is that I'm now running a single 1x12 with a V30. So that "flavor" is in everything.

Not that I want to detract from the other threadlet-topics going on here, but what does anyone else think about a versatile amp for one sort of middle-of-the-road-ish compromise?

One other twist. I also have a Roland GR-55 synthesizer. I run it through a PA-type system that I use for home sound. It's not a true profiler like the Kemper. And it doesn't have all the modelling (or quite the modelling quality) of the AxeFX. But it does model different guitars, and amps. This is with the COSM technology. And there are effects to add as well. Programming it ("setting up the patches") is not too bad for someone who takes their time to learn their way around, and there's a third-party Windows application that puts all of it onscreen, and that's really handy.

So that's another option, more on the "fake amp" side of things. Definitely more affordable than Kemper or Fractal, but not the same quality and fewer features. Worth a look for others who don't want to sell a kidney to finance a new rig.
 
Another thing to consider if you don't have or want to spend Fractal/ Kemper levels of money.

Get a Boss GT100, Line 6 Pro X series or similar and then get a Torpedo CAB or Lodgidy EPSI to use for loading Cabinet and Mic Impulse Responses instead of the Cab IR in the Boss or Line 6.

Some are reporting reasonable success with this approach as a lot of the tone is in the cab and Mic modelling and by doing the above it raises it up a level.

 
Hats off to this thread - finally a little objectivity in this discussion.

Both choices have the capacity to sound horrible or great. Meanwhile, let's not forget that any incredible recording that made us want to play in the first place was ultimately an approximation of something "real."

Do whatever you gotta do to make your noise, folks.


 
Last week I had a little meet up with some other members of a danish guitar forum. There were two main purposes. One was to make a "shoot out" of a handful of digital devices - modelers - namely: Line 6 Pod 500X, Boss GT-100, Eleven Rack and Axe FX II. Sadly we weren't able to hunt down a Kemper.

Secondly was to try out the Yamaha DXR10 active monitor which some claim to be the new black as a monitor for said devices.

The modelers was tried out using these guitars: Dean Colt semi hollow, Suhr Guthrie Govan signature, Fender CS Telecaster, A PRS SE with P90's, my Warmoth La Cabronita and my Warmoth Blue Flake HH stratocaster. We were mainly focusing on the Vox AC30 and Soldano models. Apart from playing through the Yamaha DXR10 we also used a PA with some JBL-speakers.

The conclusion after this was not surprising at all. The consensus was that the Pod and the GT-100 was very much in the same class. Decent - but somewhat "two dimensional" in their sound.

The Eleven Rack was noticeably better sounding - especially the AC30 model.

And then the Axe FX II was in whole other league of it's own. I have always hated the term - but for a first time I understood what people mean when describing sound as "three dimensional". It really was. Granted neither was put head to head with the real thing - Vox and Soldano. But I don't think you would be better of with those instead of the Axe FXII.

I'm currently using the Eleven Rack with the Boss GT-100 using 4CM. Mainly because I use a lot of effects and I find the Eleven Rack a bit lacking in that department. They sound good - no doubt. I just need more.  :icon_biggrin: And the GT-100 has all those fantastic Boss effects and the ability to use them in parallel. Triple delay anyone?  :sign13:

I think my setup blend fine when mixed in with the music I make. But I can see myself getting an Axe FX if I can save up and not spend it all on Warmoth projects.  :help:

Oh - and a couple of those Yamaha DXR10's. You should really try those out. Fantastic sound and very wide projection with the same sound quality. And they they are really easy to carry. Lightweight indeed. 

Some pics from the event:

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2014-08-28%2020.06.55.jpg
 
SustainerPlayer, I think that's a pretty fair assessment.

I owned an HD500 then an Axe FXII which I sold around firmware 9, and now am using a GT100 in 4CM with an amp so am reasonably familiar with most of the ones you had in the shoot out.


 
Thanks for the review!

I think it's significant that Cliff Chase (the genius behind the Axe FX) is unimpressed with anything out there other than the 11 Rack, and your experience seems to bear that out. But, we're just talking sound quality here. I agree, the thing doesn't offer as much tweakability or as many effects as anything else out there, so it's not a complete solution. 

The latest and greatest Axe Fx is the II XL, but it's essentially the same thing as an Axe Fx II with some features that I'm not sure are worth the added cost. You can get an Axe Fx II new for $2,199, and you can flip the the 11 Rack and the GT100 for roughly $700-$800, which means an Axe Fx II would only run you $1,400-$1,500. That's a little easier  :icon_biggrin:

Problem is you kinda/sorta need a MIDI pedalboard for it, and the MFC from Fractal is another $750 or so. Although, you could do the Voodoo Ground Control Pro for about $300 used. Then a power amp, some decent FRFR speaker(s). It starts to get away from you.

But... happiness! The thing is the whip. Nothing else is even close.
 
Yes, I did. Got almost no time on it at all.

My initial impression is the time-based effects (reverb/chorus/delay) are top-notch. You could dump any other stuff you have to do those things, unless you have an Axe Fx II.

The distortion, not so much. But, that's probably just me. I'm really hard to please when it comes to distortion. For most folks using Tube Screamers or the occasional Muff Pi, I suspect the distortion would be tits. But, I prefer the distortion produced by a spanked amp, and have yet to find a pedal that will do that effectively. The Axe Fx is the first unit I've ever heard with the good "natural" singing distortion/overdrive you can get out an abused amp. But, it's not bad. It's just not me. Somebody else might fall deeply, hopelessly in love with it.

I haven't spent a lotta time with the 11 Rack because I never really wanted the thing in the first place and intended to sell it right away. What I wanted was Pro Tools, and basically it comes free with an 11 Rack, or vice-versa. I suspect that's why you see so many of them for sale on eBay. Helluva deal, really. For $350 or so on eBay, it's a beast and it cuts the cost of Pro Tools in half if you sell the 11 Rack. Beats the living hell out of a lotta other stuff out there if you don't mind the rack thing vs. pedals. But, I may keep it.

Time-based effects (especially a good reverb) are very processor-intensive, and you can off-load that duty from your DAW to this thing to free it up. So, it may end up taking on that duty. We'll see. My DAW is dead at the moment, so I gotta tear the damned thing apart and find out why.
 
Here's a quick question for ya, Cagey. If you had bought the Eleven rack before the axe fx, how would you have felt about it? $400 or so is nothing for a good amp... Wondering how good it could be for that kind of money.

I could easily run one of these into any daw... Cubase, mixcraft, protools... Right? Protools isn't a requirement?

 
Don't be fooled by the price. - they're probably the deal of the century. They sound very good. They are somewhat limited in the effects area, but most of what you'd want is there and of high quality. For what isn't, you can always feed the front end or insert in the effects loop. A pretty good run-down of what's in it and what it can do is here.

You don't need Pro Tools; it stands alone just fine. It's designed to be an outboard processor for a DAW, but can be used independently without any trouble. As with any device like this, though, you need a transparent amplifier, a MIDI controller board and an FRFR speaker or two to get the most out of it for live use.
 
I'm using the Eleven Rack with Cubase and Presonus Studio One. Combined with the stand alone editor you don't need Pro Tools.

I gave it a spin when I first bought it. But I was not up to learning a new DAW. I have been using Cubase since it was named Steinberg Pro 16 running on a Commodore 64 - so it's an old habit.

And if you wonder why I switched to Studio One it's because it is some of the old Cubase guys who has made it and it works just like an updated and better Cubase IMO.
 
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