digital amp concepts..

[MVI]

I'm considering a digital amp, maybe a Line6 for example. Does pickup output have any effect on digitals the way it does on tube amps ? Does it really matter what guitar, configuration, or settings come from the guitar if you can model so much at the amp level ?

[aleclee]

Re: digital amp concepts..

Except for the Roland VG systems, modeling amps don't model the guitar so changing guitars will give you a similar change in timbre as changing guitars with the rig being modeled.

[larry_emder]

Re: digital amp concepts..

yes it most definately does have a difference!

[LesStrat]

Re: digital amp concepts..

It depends. The low end amps are much more sterile. It certainly makes a difference in the better amps. However, you CAN make quite a bit of difference by changing the amp's settings.

I play through a POD xt Live. the amp knobs on it respond VERY much like "real" amp knobs. Tone adjustments, pick attack, etc. all affect the sound in a similar fashion to other amps.

[zionstrat]

Re: digital amp concepts..

MVI-
Modeling started making sense to me when I understood how it varried from sampling and maybe this will help you as well-

Sampling is nothing but a digital recording- So when you play back a classic synth from a midi keyboard, you are hearing a digital recording that can then be affected just like an analog signal.

The 'affected' aspect of modeling is the same, ie if you can flange an analog guitar, you can flange a modeled one.

But here's the differnce...when creating a model hundreds of 'samples' (digital recordings) are made of the inputs to an amplifier and the outputsas well- For example, a lespaul open e string played lightly, and then played hard, an open E soft and hard, a barred A with vol high and low, etc.

All of this data is dumped into a computer and it calulates the differnce in the input wave and the output wave, ie if the clean E looked like this reglar wave form, it came out with this desticntive nearly sqaured wave from when it came out of the overdriven plexi..

So a good model takes hundreds of these data points, the 'sample' or actual sound is ultimately discarded, and all that is left is a modle that says, at this setting, if something comes in looking like this (clean LP E string), I will create a new sound so that it goes out looking like this (overdriven LP E string)- In other words, it is now a signal, but not a recording at all. And as others have pointed out, other than the VG series, the model doesn't know that it was a les paul that was modeled.

The beauty (and complexity) of modeling is that you can feed just about anything in and get just about exactly the analog equivient on the other side- Just for fun one day we ran a wurlizer paino through a marshal stack POD and I think Kieth Emerson would have been proud of us

And this is why modeling can be so incredible or so bad- If you dont get enough data points the model can't understand the complexity of a waveform under enoguh differnent circumstances to soudn realistic.

But even the worst are good enought at telling how much gain the input signal is providing and this is one of many factors that the modle will use to figure out how the output wave form should look.

I'm sure I've got soem of this messed up to one degree or another, but it's really helped me over the years, especially when I compare modles, to make sure I'm taking advantage of all of the complexity of any particular model-

Cheers