Nope, you're not alone. I've been using solid state amps exclusively for years, with pedals for dirt. I get exactly the sounds I want, and it's cheap, compact, and scalable. I love it when people get upset by it.
I'm pretty much right with you. I've gone the digital model/multi route for years. I take the output from my all-in-one and feed it thru whatever stereo amp I happen to have lying around, then into my guitar cab. It's weird but it works for me. Another consideration is a lot of amps' distortion didn't really sound good unless the amp's turned up far louder than my hearing or the congregation at my church will tolerate :D . WIth effects I can get however much and whatever quality of distortion I want without ear splitting volume.
Michael, everyone does different things to shape their tone. After a while they get use to the tone they use and like. I really like natural tube overdrive, and although that is considered distortion by some, to me it is very different in a subtle way. Natural tube overdrive has a different sounding saturation, and when combined with the guitar it feeds back and gives interesting even order harmonics that I find pleasing. If I were to use an amplifier in a live setting, I use the volume on my guitar to shape the tone. I've had a love/ hate relationship with pedals, although one of my favorite pedals is the Ibanez Tube Screamer. There are many pedals that use a 12AX7 tube to create overdrive in a circuit, but most of them use a 9volt power supply, which never drives the actual tube. There are a class of tube overdrive pedals that creat 300volt or more, here's a list jedistar.com/preamp-pedals-high-voltage/
I know Angus Young for example has his marshall amps on a pretty high distortion, but that he uses the volume knob of his guitar to achieve varying degrees of distortion, from a clean rhythm sound to a roaring solo sound when he rolls up his volume knob to the fullest. But personally, I also prefer keeping my amp clean and using distortion pedals instead. With a clean amp you get more headroom, which is really important if you want to play dynamically.
Exactly. My main amps are Marshall tube amps. I dial it in for my rhythm tone; lowering the guitar volume and pick attack cleans up nicely; increasing the guitar volume above my rhythm setting gets me to my lead tone. No need for pedals, but I also have a simple set of tones I need: clean/edge; crunch rhythm and dist lead. I don't use other effects such as delay or reverb as they dilute the guitar sound in the mix. IMO
You are spot on. It is not really the amp but the cab. IR technology + dynamic EQ is the future. I've been playing guitar for 34 years. Had several amps along the way and none got me close to the tone that I was looking for. My secret sauce today: a compressor pedal, a gain staging/overdrive pedal, vibrato pedal going to a Two Notes CAB M+ pedal and finally a reverb and tape delay at the end for stereo out. I can make it sound like any amp I fancy with the EQ capabilities of the compressor, OD and CAB M pedals. If I need to leave it bare bones, it would be OD, CAB M and the delay. Did take me some time to learn how to properly EQ the CAB M though (and I did get some of their additional IRs), but well worth it! My favourite: BHG The Guru - 1X12. Would have never ever thought that was the gateway to the tone I have been searching for at least 15 years. If you are getting a sh*te tone out of the CAB M, then it is up to you to up your EQ game. If I had to do it all again with current tech, I would look for a decent OD plugin, good IRs and systematically/academically learn how to use EQ (nothing fancy, the ones in the DAW will do). Knowing EQ + techniques early in the game is a superpower that will last all your musical/sound design life.
It's easy to forget the tone coming out of your amp isn't what the audience hears unless you're going old school using your amp for all your stage volume. We have a few dive bars around here where this is still done. What the audience hears is your amp's speaker (usually just one speaker, regardless of how many speakers you actually have) with whatever mic the sound guy has (unless you bring your own, and he/she uses it!) into the FOH mixer, and whatever the sound guy decides to do to it, before sending it to whatever PA cabs the room has (unless you bring your own PA, and the house lets you use it)... TL;DR; whatever you use for your sound is likely going to be post-processed before it's recorded in your DAW or sent the FOH PA cabs. IME
I don't even use an amp! When I play live I run everything through an HD500X straight to the venue's mixing board. And now that I've learned amp distortion means nothing, I'll probably eventually scale it down to a few pedals I like and an IR box. Putting a mic in front of a speaker cab to record guitar in this day and age is like pointing a camera at your computer screen to record copies of youtube videos.
Nowadays I prefer solid state amps, but I also like one channel tube amps. You can push them with a booster to get a great overdrive sound. If you want a cleaner sound, just roll back the volume knob on your guitar.
Appreciated! I use GB but always want to turn off its preamps, always sound too harsh to me, but in reality it's really easy to sound good, just the virtual pedal board and a good IR, done, move on to music.
This is why I always cringe when older musicians in gear forums and groups start their daily rant about how "all ya need is a good tube amp none of them dang peddles". Yeah, cranked tube amps sound amazing... if you only use that tone and nothing else. A good clean platform will let you do so much more
I haven't played guitar in a band since I was in college 10 years ago, but amp distortion can be nice for expressiveness - set the amp on the edge of breakup (maybe 2 or 3 o'clock), and vary the dynamics of each note. Pluck hard, and you get distortion, and pluck softer, and the tone is clean. Use the volume knob on your guitar to change the threshold - set it to 7 and you have to pluck very hard to get a hint of distortion, and set it to 10 and most of your dynamic range of plucking will have some distortion. I am sure there's a way to do this (volume-sensitive distortion) in the DAW too, I just don't know it yet. BTW thanks for AnyAmpIR and AASamplePlayer, they are both very enjoyable to use :)
The VST plugins usually react well on dynamics of playing as you described. If you aim for more dramatic effect the Guitar Rig from Native Instruments has modul called Modifiers. Those modifiers can be assigned to every parameter of every amp, cab and effect in Guitar Rig. There are modules Step Sequencer, Analog Sequencer, LFO, Envelope and Input Level. The last one can be assigned acts as envelope follower which means it reacts on intensity of incoming signal and applies it on "control signal" to assigned parameter. It simply turn knobs according to how hard you hit the strings. For instance you can assign it to gain control on amp or drive and it turn the parameter up when is hit hard. I tried it and it is fun. Although, the amp and drive effect simulations already react well on players dynamic. I bet there are plugins or modules which acts as envelope followers in DAWs
I bought a bass amp with distortion for the first time after playing bass for 25 years. And then I instantly came to the conclusion as you. The sound of the distortion only worked for very specific situations, so I only ever use my pedals. Actually even that isn’t true, because usually I just record clean and use Logic’s built in effects which sound good.
Does the amp have separate gain controls for high and low frequency for bass distortion is pretty much useless without it. iv wanted to try Olas chug pedal cause it has it
That's one way of doing it but Metallica's black album tone is the amps lead channel distortion and people chase that tone more than anything in the metal world. It's also still the best selling metal album, to this day.
@playpm Like many bass players, I think of the signal chain components separately. A typical guitar "amp" is actually three pieces of gear put into one box: 1 a preamp, 2 a power amp, 3 a speaker cabinet. Other times only the preamp and power amp are combined in one box, called an "amplifier head". While the IR has a massive impact on the tone, implying that an IR loader can simulate all three devices is not accurate; it only simulates the speaker cabinet (and also the recording chain used to capture the IR, technically speaking). The compression, saturation, and EQ effects of the pre- and power-amp must be simulated using a hardware preamp or a software amp sim to recreate a full "guitar amp" signal chain. (Depending on the design, power amp effects can be minimal, and might be omitted, but sometimes they are important.) The classic Tube Screamer is an example of a hardware preamp which simulates these things. Melda's MTurboAmp is an example of a software amp sim which takes an approach similar to Jim Lill's Tackle Box Amp, whose video was previously referenced. ( As a Melda customer I created several bass amp and pedal sims using the MTurboAmp platform, which Melda decided to include in the official release. So, I suppose I am affiliated with them now but it seems relevant because of the previous Jim Lill video reference and also because I think you might like it. There is a built in GUI designer which lets you customize the look, so a minimalist can keep only the controls that are most important. It is also not intended to be a cabinet simulator.)
If you have tonestack settings included while capturing IR, then it will have the amp head tonestack info burned in, only no compression and distortion, which is what a od/distortion pedal would do. My signal line now is whatever od/dist into an amp IR, sounds pretty great.
@@playpm It's great you found a workflow that suits your style. Sharing it with others is nice to do. Typically, speaker cabinet IRs are captured using very clean power amplifiers with flat frequency response. In other words, without EQ. I've actually never seen any cabinet IRs for sale which include the tone stack from a head's preamp. I've seen very few cab IRs with mic pre / console EQ added, but zero with tone stack from a head.
Not a fan of this take, but I see where you're coming from. For me tube amp overdrive and distortion is p much unmatched by any pedal I have tried besides maybe one exception. Like you said, however, it's not always practical or possible to bring your heavy tube half-stack to every show you play. This is an app after all and not a tube amp, so I'm less concerned about the distortion as I probably wouldn't like it anyway in this context. Also it depends on your style, and if you are going for a classic rock or blues sound (jimi hendrix, led zeppelin, eric clapton, etc..) then I can see the issue of not having at least some kind of gain or overdrive setting on the amp. Many people don't use overdrive/boost pedals alone, but in combination with the amps overdrive to get their tone.
The “old school” way is to use volume or boost pedals to push an amp that is set clean(ish) into distortion. Since distortion also compresses, there isn’t a big jump in volume when you do this. Also, some people like to combine pedal distortion with amp distortion. That said, I’ve almost never used amp distortion myself. I’ve always played solid-state amps or ran a multi-effects pedal into a PA. I have a tube amp, but I’ve never played it live, and I’ve just never found the magic of tube amp distortion that some people seem to have. Thanks for the IR AUv3, by the way! I’m running the free Nembrini Black (a Ratt-style distortion) into it with a free Fender Twin IR into a Dimension D style chorus and a spring reverb and getting a tone I love. (Those last two aren’t free ones, but they are ones I like a bit better than the free options I’ve seen. Although I could probably get pretty close with free ones too.)
I think the sounds from your app are much like the UI a caricature of the real amp, because while it gets there 70% maybe, it’s missing some important details. With an IR you are merely capturing the frequency domain at one given dynamic level, but even without the distortion, amps sound different with varying dynamic levels. Tube amps fx. Sound the best, if push the volume to a certain point, because it gives you saturation, slight clipping and compression, which sweetens the sound and for many guitarist, that is the idea, clean sound, but IRs can't capture that. That's why there is modeling like ToneX or GuitarML which is free btw. or Kemper or all the other amps and software. Also i think it is an stylistic choice wether you use the amp distortion or not, Amp distortion just sounds different than solid state, not better, not worse but different. How i do it, is setting the amp to the edge of breakup and pushing it with pedals, either a boost if i want more distortion from the amp or a fuzz and distortion if want a different flavour and most of the time i use the volume knob to turn the distortion down (volume pedals do the job as well, if you need your hands. If this way works for you thats great, if it works for other people buying your app thats great, but it wouldn't work for me. We are all different in what we want and need and we all develop our own strategies, to get that. Theres hardly any right or wrong, when it comes to music anyway.
Distortion pedals started as devices to push your amp further into distortion. Then they started trying to model an expensive amp's overdrive sound, in order to replace it.
Yep. Haven't owned an EHX LPB-1 in many years, or a treble booster (had an EHX Screaming Tree, noisy pedal!), but they did what was needed. Now many amps have enough gain to get me where I want to be without pedals. IMO
I don't use pedals of any kind.... I use the gain from my Peavey XXX .... Yep , I only have ONE SOUND I don't switch, it doesn't get BORING because I fucking write good music.... Good tube amps almost always have a foot switch so you can get different sounds immediately if you want.... Gain texture and qualities vary wildly between different amps getting one that will do what you want WITHOUT A PEDAL is important.....
Holy mother of the God of Forbidden Light!!! This guy just literally crushed the self respect, integrity and the dignity of the guys to whom it may concern, p.s. one point, they might’ve never got them! Respect! ❤❤❤❤ Love you!!! Such sincerety and honesty seems the rarest thing to find in RU-vid these days! ❤❤❤
A*Tanh(B*x[k]) lol. Sure you can do bias for asymmetric compression/soft clipping (simulate "grid conduction") but like, saturation all sounds the same, EQ can do the rest, as well as architecture (stages of amplification, eq and/or compression in between) It's just tricky to get the hang of how to design the architecture, it doesn't sound good anywhere in the signal chain except the end when it's right. To really be tube-like you supposedly need to split the positive and negative halves, run through asymmetric saturation on each, and intentionally get crossover distortion when they are summed (the positive half will soft clip to some negative values and vice versa) for the really heavy distortion
Depends on the genre. For example, Blues, I would set the amp dirtier and clean up with guitar volume. Metal well use diffrent amps for clean and heavy tones. So 5150 type with TS infront set with heavy distortion. But mostly, I play ambient and CCM, and for that, I use an amp set to the edge of breakup and use pedals to get more drive, distortion, or fuzz. You are making some sweeping statements here that I don't think apply to all scenarios and genes. And so if what you are saying was true everyone should go get themselves Fender amps or whatever pedal platform amp you prefer and then buy a bunch of amp in the box pedals and voila you should have every guitar sound that ever existed.
Is the app open source or closed source? Where did you find info about how to create an IR loader. I am saying this because for the Synthstrom Deluge, whose firmware is now open source , we would like to port there an IR amp sim (code is C++)
Many bands use the Gain/Distortion channels the very reason why God invented channel switching. If I want clean I use the Clean channel with a chorus/Reverb/delay. If I want some hard rhythm I switch to the "crunch" channel and use a tube screamer to keep the flub down, if I want face melting leads, I go to the fire breathing channel. Or you can bypass all that and use amp/modelling profiling and switch them on/off as needed.
lots of high gain amps are two channel amps so you can switch between clean and distorted with a pedal. some amps have a really good distorted tone that suits a particular sound. a distorted tube amp has a lot of richness complexity and dynamics that can be hard to replicate with solid state + pedals. there are plenty of ways to get a good sound from solid state gear too. I don't think there is a right or wrong way, just depends on your ears and sound and budget.
not correct. since the majority of complexity and blah blah. comes from your speakers. theres plenty of evidence out there. the amp itself is believe it or not. is infact not where most of the tone comes from. EQ and Speakers has the most to say.
@@SubutaiTuul idk man I have a whole lot of amps and the tube ones have a different feel even going through the same speaker- especially the dynamic way that tubes compress under heavy gain. solid state amps can emulate this but they are modeling what happens in a tube system ultimately
@@cybergaian i understand that you like tube amps and why people like them. If people want them they should. but where i choose to draw a line is when people say how much better they are and how big of an impact they have on tone, which just isnt the case. theres far to much A/B evidence out there showcasing how little of a difference amp swapping on the same speaker does, and that makes sense since everything be it your EQ/amp/distortion/pedals has to go through your speakers filter, which is what gives the speaker its unique tone and sound without it all speakers would sound the same. the difference the amp makes is not big enough to matter over a full mix. and in the end im sure we both agree on, is that all that matters is. does it sounds good?. Im aware of what the solid state does because the whole point of them is to be lighter and cheaper while achieving what an tube does. same with digitals. im not saying a tube amp doesnt have its charm but the difference really isnt night and day. a speaker swap though is night and day.
Welp, I guess this applies to people who play in low-gain genres anyway, like pop-jazz-funk even rock. But about 100% of hard rock and METAL bands use amp distortion! OR nowadays many use a profiler like Kemper/AxeFx etc. (which model AMP distortion of their choosing).
I love your channel but you need to chill out mate. I use amp distortion everyday and have done for the last 29 years and have done in touring bands and local bands and busking. Everyone has their own preferences and needs so it’s easier to respect that and realize that your music tastes different cause that’s what you like, I like chili on my tone coz I like it hot, but doesn’t mean I’m right and your wrong just means we both like different things. Nothing to do with being moronic 😊
This does not apply in real world situations for the majority of metal guitar players. Most touring bands are using high gain amplifiers with a boost pedal or they are using modelers/profilers which emulate high gain amplifiers.
While I do like the channel, I couldn't agree with a statement simply because there are a lot of built-in amps and circuits that sound great out of the box and have an external footswitch to control it during the gig. When I was trying to replicate it with an audio interface, I've been struggling a lot trying to achieve that sand-free balanced combo sound, tried all sorts of amp sims and whatnot - nothing works better then the amp and the mic, unfortunately..
Wait hold on. I haven't made it to the end of the video. But are you perhaps confusing distortion with overdrive. I know that overdrive is a type of distortion. However the reason why some of your guitar players who may not be familiar with distortion on a nap is because they probably call it drive or overdrive. Russ distortion is a very specific hiking type of driven sound. I just wanted to get your input on that. Do you think this would account for why seemingly no one uses distortion on the ramp. In other words they say they don't use the store because they don't call it distortion overdrive or they call it break up?
Most guitar players Ive come across over the years always use amps in the way you described it here. You find the amp clean sound that is on the edge of break up ( distortion) and then you use your pedals, overdrives, distortion pedals, delay, treble boost, etc to drive the amp to the desired effect. Tube amps in particular usually have a sweet spot that resides around the edge of break up. Utilizing pedals to enhance this when your wanting heavier sounds I believe and apparently lots of other believe is and has always been the best way to get great sound out of guitar amps. I have also heard some professional players typically that record a lot, say that using the amps distortion is better than pedals pushing it but they are not the majority.
Built-in amp distortion is more of a music store feature, so when one plays the guitar in the store, the dynamic range of the amp is clipped and more easily controlled. A less understood factor in the 'cranked up tube amp' sound is the damping of the speaker by the output impedance of the amplifier. Tube amps were always designed historically with the idea that the load on the amplifier is not a resistor, but a speaker, which is much more complex than a resistor, in that a speaker has inductance, capacitance and resistance which all change dynamically for varying input levels and frequencies and enclosures etc. Transistors were developed later and tend to use lots of negative feedback in the power amplifier circuit to force the speaker to behave more like an ideal resistive load. The output impedance is generally much higher for a tube output circuit than for a solid state one, but not simply because one uses tubes and the other uses transistors. The difference us more about the damping factor of the output circuit due to the negative feedback. One can design and even modify transistor amps to have high output impedance by altering the feedback circuit (usually just a couple of resistors) and get what is regarded as 'tube like' sound, and one can go the other way and apply heavy feedback to a tube amp and make it sound like solid state. See this for an excellent explanation of the characteristics of varying types and amounts of negative feedback in audio amplifiers - sound-au.com/articles/current-drive.htm I have modified some small solid state Vox pathfinder amplifiers by converting the voltage feedback of the op-amp output stage to combined current and voltage feedback, and the difference is dramatic. It's the clean tones that benefit the most, there is more bass response from the built-in speaker for example, there is more thump and less bark if you know what I mean. Some solid state amps are designed to have a good output impedance, where the amp treats the speaker as an impedance rather than a resistor. Quilter for example. I have already typed too much, but understanding guitar amplifier distortion not from the path of the guitar to the amp, but rather from the speaker backwards through the power amp is important. The speaker feeds a signal back to the driver stage of the power amp to compensate for the varying impedance that the speaker presents to the amplifier, and the amount and type of that signal has a huge effect on the character of the amplifier and speaker as a system.
I love my amps with a foot switch to channel switch. Also, I do use effects loops, which puts the reverb in the chain after the preamp sound. In the end, an amp is just one way to make distortion. There is nothing special about how you make your distortion. In your amp is not better or worse. Playing your amp as a clean "pedal platform" is absolutely how a lot of guitarists work. And a lot use their amp distortions, with effect loops or without.
I guess you can't really call it a GUITAR amp if it doesn't have a preamp and tone stack If the impulse was sent through the front of an amp then maybe you could get the tone stack imprinted into the IR but the preamp still remains Also a lot of the free IRs do not have tone stacks baked in since they are designed to sit AFTER the amp in the signal chain As an IR loader your plugin works excellently
I have argued a similar point on various rotary amp pedals and sims. It is almost impossible to get the sound without the volume and mass of a Leslie speaker giving a Doppler effect. Good distortion at a live performance is an ambient sound and space filler. It is not going to come out of anything without a lot of dbs.
Same for me, I don’t use the distortion on the amp. I play gigs at different venues around town, each venue or practice studio has a different amp, often it’s a Fender twin or a Roland JC, more rarely a Marshall, so for the same reason as you it’s just more convenient to make my sound with pedals (Ibanez WH / ProCo RAT 2 / Sansamp British + something a Boss Chorus).
My Engl can switch between 4 channels/settings via a footswitch and reverb and delay I put in the fx loop to not distort the reverb trails any further. Guess he never heard of that. At least that is how he presented it. I use pedals to shape the sound further. No issue with using only pedals. I do have issues with how he presents it
Guitar players can be a very ignorant bunch. Many of them think their way of doing things is the only correct way of doing it. You would expect much more of a group of people who are supposed to be creative.
I'm brazilian, and having an amp with good distortion is very expensive, it's much better buy a good distortion pedal, even a "amp in a box" pedal to achieve a decent distorted guitar tone. So yeah, I'm a moron
Some dirt pedals into a 100% clean amp do not sound good at all - you can hear this clearly if you put certain fuzz pedals into a clean amp. They can sound thin and raspy. When people like Hendrix used fuzz he was going into an amp that was already a bit overdriven and the result was his full, thick fuzz sound. What a lot of people don’t realize however is that you can easily solve this problem by running your fuzz into a mildly overdriven drive pedal before going into your 100% clean amp. This gives the exact same sound as if you run a fuzz into a dirty amp.
@@playpm It is exactly. The point is that if you stack one drive pedal into another, you eliminate the need to have a nice overdrive from your amp. If you stack drives, you can go into even a clean solid state amp and it can sound good. If you run a big muff into a clean amp it sounds like a tin can full of bees; run a tube screamer into a clean amp it sounds like an ugly nasal honk. But if you run a big muff into a mildly driven tube screamer into a completely clean amp, it can sound great. David Gilmour uses Hiwatt amps 100% clean and stacks drives for his dirt sounds.
The line 6 is kinda like the metalzone where at low volumes (room tone) you can get a good sound but when you try to turn up an play with a band the amp can't keep up and the tone just turns to crap
I definitely use amp dist. You got a valid argument against using it, but I already have amps that sound sick and I don't need pedals for dirt. If I was starting out today, I would not recommend buying an amp unless you're dead set on the whole pre 2000's experience for your band - which is fun, but expensive.
@@playpm Mostly punk / surf. My amps have very nice dynamic breakup so I can vary it with pick attack and vol knob. I rarely ever use a completely clean tone. This is expensive, inconvenient and self limiting, but I have the most fun like this. It's funny, I'll balk at the idea of an OP-1 and use free software, but then favor my tube combo amp over sims.
Yes I (like you) for a long long time. (and still mostly to this day) use many of the excellent Distortion,overdrive, fuzz, gain, pedals available and use my amps (mostly Marshall 100w plexi superlead Heads as a"pedal platform......But for some time now I use an "Attenuator" to allow me to turn my heads way up to allow me to access true output tube power amp break up (this adds the rich complexity and harmonic color that can only happen with a tube head being turned way up. Of coarse if I am getting too much "break up" from the head I will either use my digital time based fx (like delay and reverb) in the "Effects loop of the amp OR if actually even turning the whole head way up I'll use the Effects loop inside the power amp attenuator box itself. Although it is true that going back to the head itself to adjust the amps "pre -amp (for amp crunch) is impractical for live instant switching....using the a fore mentioned methods of running a tube amp "hot" sounds so good that I seldom go without some type of "Amp distortion" However I can certainly admit that the sheer number of great "Gain "pedals out there Make it entirely possible for any guitarist looking for a "crunchy gain sound" to get a very natural and very "amp-like" sounding pedal
I ran a digitech rp50 into a 5000 watt pa system for an amphitheater.... And that cheap thing sounded freaking awesome lol however on a small solid state amp, guitar amp in general wasnt kickin that much. Tube amps do push the speakers differently... They react differently then solid state amps too... Captain obvious here... But whatever works, works. Lol I currently use a boss katana, record out, and that's it. I do have a 5150 that i also run a tubes distortion and tubed od and i gotta say, both work wonderfully for what all i like to do. I have a cheap2x12 cab with gt75s in it. Micing off the cab with either amp sounds freakin sweet and the record out on my boss katana sounds fantastic as well. I have so many options tbh I still use my amps distortion... I just use other drives as well lol... Versatility yo
You are absolutely correct. 110%. :-) Don't let yourself distract from idiot guitarists. Ignore them. Stay away from everyone who has an account on gearspace. ;-))
I haven't played shows in over 10 years by now, but when I did I always brought a clean amp and a multifx unit for all my tones. If I were to do shows now, I'd just bring my Boss Katana since I can make patches for everything I need. For recording I don't get why you wouldn't use the best sound option, even if it's amp gain.
The cool thing about playing guitar is that there are multiple ways to achieve a similar goal. You prefer using the amp as a clean pedal platform which makes sense if you use a backline live. My tube amp has three independent channels (one clean, two dirty), so I can switch between three sounds using a footswitch. It also has an effects loop plus a "boost" switch to raise the volume for solos. Works great live. But if you can't take your amp with you, use a pedal board or a modeler.
Agreed - built-in "distortion" effects in an amp sounds like crap. I've always pushed the tubes or put a overdrive or distortion pedal in front of the amp. Thanks for your plugin!!
With EQ you can get many sounds; with an amp you can get a range of sounds; adding pedals to your amp expands your range of sounds. You have to determine the sounds you need. Then find the gear that gets you those sounds. For example, when I played in cover bands, I needed a wide range of sounds to cover the different songs, bands, musicians we covered. When I played in originals bands, I needed a range of sounds to cover the sounds I wanted for my parts in our music. When you know the sounds you want and need, you can look for an amp that does it. If you can find an amp that can do most or all of your sounds, you are lucky; if not, then you may need to consider pedals for OD, Dist, Compression, EQ, etc. I have three amps that can get several sounds I want, with my most flexible amp providing up to 12 sounds. I can get my sounds without pedals.
I’m no guitar player but I knew that guitar amps are used to add tones and depending of what type of music,why the need for distortion on a guitar or a bass amp,isn’t it obvious?Maybe,you guys aren’t morons after all😂😂😂
I like setting an amp on the edge of breakup and letting my picking dynamics bring out the overdrive. But honestly I use pedals with a clean tone when I use a tube amp. Lately I have been all Kemper and their morphing feature is amazing for this kind of thing. I really appreciate your perspective on gear, subscribed!
AnyAmpIR + ProF.E.T. by Ignite Amp or the Aurora DSP Goblyn + noise gate and you have a pretty decent high gain sound. The IR I like to use is a free one from signing up to the Kohle Audio Kult. I also added a Mercuriall free OD for additional gain. Result is a pretty solid high gain tone that competes with my expensive plugins. As long as you are getting it from somewhere, it's fine. Plenty of good pedal options these days. For my physical rig, I use a Victory pedal amp that lets me load IR's into it and XLR out. I use the gain on that, but it's also a multi-channel pedal with foot switches.
Personally, I always try to steer away from the tasteful, conventional guitar sounds & look for unique or interesting tones. Cheap gear that guitar snobs turn up their noses at is great for doing that.
I was led to believe that best way is to use amp distortion and with effect loop when my interest for guitar gear started. But I found rather soon that non of my favorit musicians use it. So, I decided for guitar->effects->amp setup. I'm happy I did. It just works.
You could also do both, some pedals before the preamp and some after. It's really not that inconvenient either. Instead of one cable from the pedal board to the amp there are three (with labels). It only takes a few additional seconds to set up.
Where I live in America, we don’t have bar amps. But every act I’ve play with or seen use distortion pedals on relatively clean amps, including metal. Myself included.
Calling bs on metal. As a metal musician, even in my touring days, the only time an amp isn't used is 9/10 because the player couldn't afford one. You probably experienced more of a hard rock environment.
You see its posts like this with the clickbait thumbies that is simply ridiculous these days..."Guitar Amps Distortion Is Actually Useless " . Useless? No. "Different"? Yes...And then your eg of having 2 hands so can't switch to distortion...Mesa Boogie or any other of the 5000 amps with 2 channels to hit a dirt channel much? Shit, lots of shitty cheap amps made in your own country can help you here....This isn't a "boomer" POV. Its a POV of a recording guy that has recorded 100s of amps over the years..Its different, not "useless"...The fact still remains, that most.every.single.artist that has influenced you guys and the new millennial breed of Hensons, ICHI's etc played or plays through amps. Just accept it move on, and do your thing. All said, I have several plugins I use and an old Traynor HI HEADROOM clean amp that can work as a "pedal platform" but there is still a lot to be said for the purity of a Guitar > Cord > Amp > Mic > Recording desk or interface .. A guy in the comments mentions Angus Young. Both he and his brother got most of their distortion from the power amp section of their amps. A very unique tone and feel that only people that have stood next to a dimed out amp can understand...No IR, plugin etc will get your there as its the interaction of the *useless* 🙄 amp's SPL hitting the guitar that creates the lovely overtones..do that with a plugin and good luck with that!
I’m not quite a boomer. I’m gen-X. For what its worth, for me, it was being surprised by how many of my guitar heroes used solid-state amps or distortion pedals into high-headroom clean amps or recorded direct that helped me give up the quest for the magic of tube saturation that I was never able to find. To each their own, but my influences are what led me away from amp distortion.
@@RobertFisher1969 The only rock influences of mine that I'm aware of that used SS amps are Ty Tabor (Lab Series) and Dimebag, but I'm sure there are more. I actually wouldn't consider Dime an "influence, but respected his playing and quest for a unique tone. DI to a desk for clean, yes. Creamey distortion? Please let me know who as I started recording in the 80s and worked in some pretty decent studios and I never ever saw one distorted rhy track recorded DI (I'm talking pre-DSP DI) because it sounded hideous, liken to DI from an acoustics bridge PIEZO which is awful. Reeling in The Years guitar solo sounds like it could be DI but thats a 1 /1,000,00 solo.
@@MoreMeRecording To give just three examples: The Beatles Revolution distorted guitars were recorded direct overdriving the mixing desk. Def Leppard’s Hysteria used the Rockman X100. One of my favorite tones of Robert Quine’s used a SansAmp. He was also known to use Peavey Bandits. The list of artist on equipboard that have used various SansAmp and Rockman gear alone is huge.
did Jimi Hendrix distort his guitar? To create the distorted sound that his signature sound is famous for, Hendrix used a Fuzzface pedal. You will be unable to reproduce Hendrix's distinctive sound without a fuzz pedal.
he Octavia (also known as Octavia Fuzz, Octafuzz and Octavio) was a prototype when Hendrix used it. It was designed by Roger Mayer - Hendrix's sound technician. It mixes in an octave higher than the original input as well as add in some fuzz distortion.
Your reverb/delay rationale for not using amp distortion only applies if your amp doesn’t have an effects loop and therefore forces you to put your effects before the preamp in your signal chain. When I use a physical amp, I put any overdrive/distortion and wah in front of the amp like you describe, but everything else is in the amp’s effects loop, which in terms of signal flow is after the preamp (where built in amp distortion lives) but before the poweramp (which just takes all that prior signal and sends it to the speakers). I think what you’re missing is that using distortion is using distortion regardless of whether your have one or more external pedals generating it or one or more channels of an amp generating it. Either way you’re hitting the amp’s preamp section with distortion. For what it’s worth, I’ve used both approaches over the years. There’s no right or wrong here. And clearly the built in distortion on a three channel boutique amp like my Bogner Ecstasy 101B isn’t useless, otherwise companies wouldn’t be selling pedal and plug-in versions of what’s already in the amp.
No one is a moron for choosing not to use an amp’s distortion. It’s all about getting where you’re trying to go. It’s very telling that the sound examples in this video and the previous one were made with a guitar that has practically no body (low sustain and resonance) and with sounds that (depending on your perspective) have very low-gain distortion. In contrast, a guitar directly into an all tube amp overdriven into saturation is a very different sound - and one that I’ve heard approximated, but never reproduced by pedals or software. Again, choose tools that get you where you’re trying to go. If you’re trying to make sound similar to those in this video, then guitar amp distortion probably is useless for you. The attitude in these last two videos about this guitar app is off-putting. As a relative synth newbie I’ve enjoyed this channel, but I’m now questioning how this narrow-mindedness may have influenced the opinions expressed in videos with subject matter I know less about.
i think it denpends on the music genre you are playing... metal for example (mostly) only needs one type of sound (even on a live gig for 2 hours). high-gain 24/7, so there is no need for these type of players to use your audio effect. on the other hand, the scenario that you are relying on in this video is for the "less-distortion-in-general" type of player. these players will shure get any good clean sound that is out there so that they can add or remove wahtever FX they need for the specific situation :)
@@playpm well my setup is the same as you - pedals control overdrive/distortion/fuzz but when I saw acdc and heard the guitar sound live I almost cried. I guess I'm a tragic but I'll never be able to afford/have room for Marshall stack
The only ones who use amp distortion are metal heads. They have 15 different amps that all sound nearly identical but pretend like there are huge differences. They don’t know that to a normal person a guitar pretty much just sounds like a guitar. Leo Fender made amps as clean as he could manage, the most recorded amp in history is the Deluxe Reverb. No distortion. There ya go.
Michael, the guitar amplifier industry , and in fact all amplifiers were first created to give the listener the highest headroom before distortion that tube technology could allow. So all original amplifiers created prior to the 1960's were very hard to get distortion from. So the viewers that commented that your free amplifier wasn't an amplifier, because it didn't have distortion, is historically incorrect. Secondly, one of first distorted sounds recorded on a record was actually made by a speaker with cuts made to the paper cone with a razor blade, and poked with a pencil(The Kinks-You Really Got Me). Prior to that it was either faulty equipment, or the Fuzz pedal (which isn't distortion in the terms of your commenter). Michael, you keep doing it your way, and leave the trolls to us in the comment section. You're doing a great job.
