Real Amps + Pedals VS. Amp Modeling/Profiling: The Massive Line 6, Kemper, & Fractal Audio Shootout! 

Thank you everyone for the awesome feedback on this video! I hope this continues to be a valuable resource to anyone that is considering buying a new tube amplifier or one of the digital solutions featured here. The POD Go, FM3, and Kemper have all sold!

Can't wait for the director's cut blu-ray of this.

This man is insane, and I love it. Kidding aside, I've been watching your videos for a long time and I have to commend you for sticking around through all the shit you've been through and still remain ethical and truthful. You are an example of professionalism that is so lacking in this industry nowadays.

Holy shit! let me get my popcorn

worth waiting, already watched a few minutes and I am blown away...thank you for saving us all the trouble..and in detail!!!

Yesss, this is like a cinema movie with one of the best channels on RU-vid. Thank you so much for that!

This is insane and I love it. I really like the Fractal stuff here. They all sound pretty fantastic except the Kemper. The tubby lows and kinda plastic distortion is iffy enough, but the top end is also kinda... fake sounding or something. It isn't awful but it's certainly showing its age by now lol. Another epic PSS masterpiece!

Forget hero of the lunch hour. Ryan just saved the second half of the workday. Muchas gracias, amigo!

I appreciate this video so much! Thank you so much for taking the time to create this and sharing!! I hope to see your character grow in the next year!

Man! Thanks for this brother! I can't even imagine how much work this was. Super cool! I love all your content. This one was extra wicked! Keep up the wicked thorough hard work. I think I speak for all of us when I say how much we appreciate it👊👍

Awesome comparison video 🤘 Take care and happy holidays!!!

amazing video, i have not gone digital yet and now I'm even more sure of my decision since i`m collecting all kinds of (tube) gear since decades, its just like an addiction and can not be satisfied with any kind of digital stuff, real gear is also a great investment especially the older tube rack and iconic amps while you will just lose money when you sell digital gear again. the portability is a big advantage of digital vs real gear for sure. i think that we will end up with hybrid devices like the new soldano stro 20 combining anaolg and digital technology iin a smaller lower wattage portable form factor chassis. cheers 🎸🎸

Cool video! Especially the real cab vs IR section! Cheers!

long time but always here :D, thank for see you again

A few key points I'm pulling out of my butt while watching this: It's interesting to me how often the Fractal and Line6 have a similar type of sound / raw kind of texture to them, that is unlike the Kemper, which is also unlike the amp. I'm surprised in general how different the Kemper sounds to the amps. Especially that low-medium gain example at the start was... interesting. And not in a good way, in my opinion - I expected better from it. All in all, awesome awesome video. Super nerdy, but that's exactly what I love to see (and hear).

this 3 hour video is just cheating, since he introductory talking takes more time than the actual content😂..just kidding you are one of a very few gear related channels left that is worth watching and not just stupid infomercials with just boring commercial content. by the way i have traded my kemper for an very old jcm jmp original condition with some quality pedals and have never regretet it haha 💯

oh my god. commenting and liking before even watching the video. thank you Ryan!

Great work! Thanks a ton for this.

The madlad finally did it. I can't imagine how much effort and money went into this, but i'm glad this bonkers project is finally done. Pardon my comically long comment to accompany the comically long video, the TLDR is more or less in line with the video's conclusion. I love watching these types of videos with them either minimized or whilst i'm otherwise not looking at the video during the initial loop of the comparison so that i'm not listening with my eyes the whole time. Something that struck me as funny with this is that every time i notice the sound had changed in a way that was important enough to make me check on the video during comparisons to your real amps, it was ALWAYS because it had switched to (or away from) the Kemper. Whether or not i preferred the sound is irrelevant to my point, but the Kemper never sounded like the other modelers *or the amp*. The preamble and caveats leading up to the comparison with no control group is a brilliant example of why i don't like the capture method from a usability standpoint. If i'm trying to dial in a sound with a specific amp, i want the controls to behave the way they do on that amp, even if that amp's controls don't work like they do on other amps (Mark series, Valvestate, etc). Kemper, PG Bias, ToneX, etc not doing that drives me insane, even if the tones are good. All in all, these 3 platforms are perfectly good, but between the workflow quirks and sound differences, I personally wouldn't like to use the Kemper. It's fine, but even the POD is a tier above in my opinion. I'm shocked at how good the Line 6 sounds a few years after launch. For me, the Fractal did the best on average of sounding like the real gear, and in the situations where it was digital vs digital vs digital I felt it and the Line 6 traded blows. Given the cost of the more capable Helix units compared to that of the FM9, and given the debatably overkill specificity on the Fractal model selection, i think i'd go Fractal out of the modelers you can buy new, but the POD Go specifically is something that shouldn't be overlooked.

I sold my mark iv, KSR Orion, Headfirst Alta 100, and Adam jones spec plexi from ceriatone over the past couple months. Not cause I really wanted to but had shit come up. Not to mention I'm just playing at home so it's kinda dumb having all this. I'm using an FM3 now and I gotta say I'm digging it. I had a Kemper, a couple HX stomps, and a Quad Cortex over the past few years. I didn't really want to deal with Fractal cause it seems like they come out with something new every other year but I finally grabbed the standard fm3 and I'm really content with it.

i came for the amazing riff collection ... now its time for the leon todd podcast to the comentary version of this video hahahah

Ui Yeah , thanks for that Buddy ! Pure Entertainment and so much Work, you catched me with the traped under ice Riff at the beginning. Now I'm going to get myself a coffee and keep watching! The algorithm is not good for the video !!! This is a shame I just had to get this off my chest Sub 🤜🤛

01:53:27 good ol' FEARED:) Loved the BLS and Cannibal Corpse bits before too

I'm not even half way through this video, but already thanks for the enormous efford man, your content is always really freaking interesting to watch. I have to say, I love my Helix, I've been using it for 6 years now, but I absolutely noticed a MASSIVE improvement in my tone when I started pairing it with the Tonex pedal 2 months ago. And in this video as well, the tones are absolutely not bad, but a bit... lacking as it were.

I would have liked to see the Stomp as I think it's a closer rep for Helix to the FM3 but the PodGo is sounding better each update. Great Vid.

Thanks for your efforts. Just subscribed

Looks like fractal audio is still the king!

I watched the whole video, I was a little surprised at how much better the real rig and pedals sound. I expected the real rig to sound better but there was a bigger difference than I expected. One of the high gain leads sounded a little weak on the real Mark IV but to me it sounds like the reamp box is not outputting enough gain on that particular clip. I really like the FM3 except for the cleans with wet fx, I thought it sounded thin and distant.

Thank you for putting chapter markers.

Feature length PSS video?! Sign me the Hell up!

The PodGo is missing some detail in the high end, no matter how much I crank the treble I can't get sparkling cleans. Bumping the treble and presence on my PowerStage poweramp helps but I've been thinking about swapping it for a FM3 just for tone reasons.

This is what the internet was made for.

Great content. I’m running a boss G1 until I build my own pedal board. I am only going to go thru real amps. That’s what my hero’s used, so will I,

why pod go little bit similar to fm3 ? Do you feel it?

I want to get an FM3, but having an HX Stomp already and still getting significant updates from Line6 kills my GAS

Cool video. Slightly related but how is the fm3 to change settings from the front panel? Recently sold my ax8 and am sticking to my hx stomp, purely from ease of adjusting on the fly.

Dec. 7. Watched it again. Just so needed. I just like the "feel" of real amps. I usually run 2 4x12s, thru my effects unit, from my amp head. What I have found in the last several years of playing 4 to 5 hours a day, I can set the volume at 2, and achieve with the use of the eq, and tweeking the delay and reverb. I don't do covers but I do do tone. I can get the tones that I want, or pretty damn close. I don't know how this applies to using computers and monitors, but I want that punch from a real amp. There is no substitut for me.

Hi. Great video far. I'm only 40 mins in but just wanted to ask a question before I forget. If you make an impulse response of your cabs would a null test against the real cab show any differences as I think i can hear a very subtle difference in the higher end of the frequencies. I could be totally wrong but thought I would ask.

Danm dude, this is great. As a bassist I'm still annoyed at fractal for having less than 10 amps. Hell, if they juat modelled and Aguilar head I'd jump ship straight away. EDIT: I should add as a daily HX stomp user the bass amps saturate way to fast compared to their real counterparts

Man I was ignorant of the fact that Cab / Mic IRs don’t capture non-linearities. I thought they were accurate as long as they had enough resolution. Thanks for the note about IRs and non-linearity there. Maybe for amplitude non-linearity a compressor block can be added after the cab block in modelers to get somewhat better results.

What would be the best speaker/amp system that you would recommend most for the fm3? Thanks🍻

Okay so I haven't watched all the way through yet but: any experience with Ik Multimedia/Amplitube 5's ToneX? I have it and don't use it but I've heard its pretty decent

😎😎nice vid dude😎😎

Well, looks like I just developed a cough bad enough to miss work today.

Well, I know what I'm watching tonight 😁😁

So much riffing!!! \m/

ryan do you feel a big difference in playing them? of course a cab and mic can sound very very close to a plug-in and ir or modeler etc. but what about actually playing it?

Did you have Kemper's "pure cabinet" on or off in this test? I find it makes everything sound a bit stale and cuts the hight end if its on.

@ 1:30:00ish, is that some of your Siderum stuff? I recognise it... Children of the Stars?

Another PSS to dive into today!

@plaguescythestudios I’m about to grab some popcorn and watch this. Was going to ask for some advice though, You made a free vst Devin Townsend tone tutorial and it was pretty solid. What would it take to get the tone from SYL’s City? Is the main idea to use a 5150 amp sim, add a tube screamer, a ton of reverb, delays, and a low volume ping pong pitch shifter? Think they use a preamp called a gp100 to get a lot of their sound, but yea was curious to see if you’ve ever tried to get a solid emulation of their tone, preferably with the free stuff. Cheers m8

@55:00 ish that Exodus riff comparison \m/

01:17:34 badass NILE riffing

what pickups are you using on this test?

i have noticed that a lot of famous musicians are switching back to real gear again even on stage, a lot of marshall jvm`s and synergy rigs showing up on the bigger stages and less kemper and other lifeless digital gear is used live or in studio, most likely just as fx units or backup.. thank you for that great video 🙏🙏

🖤

It blew me away that the fractal sounded more similar to the real amp than the Kemper in the high gain tones

I only watched your conclusion haha. But I agree with what you said. I had an FM3 a couple of years ago and sold it for tube amps. Then decided to get a Kemper with the excuse of many of the bands I like are on Kemper (and it had the powered version option). I was a Kemper boy for almost 1 year. Then I decided to get an FM3 with a SD 170. I sold the Kemper one month later hahaha. Fractal is by far the best sound you can get. And you can tweak your tone any way you want. Only downside is that using the unit itself to tweak your sound is a pain! I also have an HX Stomp XL for gigging purposes (I don't feel like taking the FM3 out on gigs haha).

I heard the best tone I heard in my church over the weekend we have Helix guys Kemper guys, this tone was coming from a Valveton gp200! No need for premium priced products anymore

Holy shit

No Headrush? Start over and make it longer

Kemper profiles are off because DI profiles are very sensitive to the box and the IR impedance curve. It would be more accurate for kemper if you had a studio version with cab and mic and merge those instead of using IRs

you better not try the fender tonemaster pro...at 1700 its a joke

The Whammy effect is dogshit on both my PodGo and our other guitar player's Helix. It's so bad I have a real Whammy in the FX loop. It is slow to follow the expression pedal and if you play more than one note at a time, forget it.

I have a Rockerverb, a JVM, a Dual Rec, a GT1000, a pod hd500, and a crate gt1200h. And lately its just been the hd500 for delay and reverb and the crate head. Simple simple

Kemper all day. Having owned Line 6, Fractal, Headrush, various amps and finally Kemper. Hands down Kemper for me. The scrutiny of studio recordings reveal a lot. Of course excellent profiles are a must, so whenever people make judgments, the quality of the profile is crucial.

Noice

What about BOSS GX100 ?!

Pod Go don't have the same oversampling of Helix, not the best representative of Line 6.

Neural DSP got it together,,.cortex blah..Too little too late un fortunately, at least for me.

Just get a Quad Cortex and be done with it!

One things for certain based on this video. I really dislike how the Forton 33/Grind/Blade pedals sound.

almost 3 hour video, jesus christ

Shame the criminally underrated Boss GT-1000 is again left behind. ( i don't own one)

0:11:11 *is being _run_ Ouch, dude...

Incredible spergery on display here - I salute you, sir. 🫡. God speed.