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So before buying Cab IRs first I wanted to try some free EHV IRs. I don't have a DI that can be plugged between the power amp and the speaker but then I realized as mine is a hybrid setting and the solid state power amp does not overdrive at all (lots of clean headroom with 180 watts mono) I decided to just skip it and plug my AMT SS-20 output (FX Send of a real amp should work) directly into my Focusrite 2i2. So my track is the preamp signal into the EVH Cab IR and I have to say I like it way better than the sound of the Cab Sim output of the SS-20.
Then I decided I wanted to do another comparison and mic my own cab with Celestion 7080 to see how "real" this recorded sound is compared to mic'ing the amp as everyone else does, I used my AKG P220 for this. Again, as my current tone comes mainly from the preamp I don't really need to crank the power amp section to get the tone I like at the room into a signal level usable by the condenser mic. I was surprised to hear the mic amp recorded sound does have the same feel, not the same tone but the feel is the same, I guess it has something to do with how guitar speakers attenuate the higher frequencies. Actually the preamp into Cab IR sounds better to me, I guess my room acoustic and my actual speaker have a lot to do.
So my conclusion was that for my particular rig and recording interface I don't need a load box or a DI box in order to make a silent recording at night and use Cab IRs because I don't get any overdrive/distortion from power amp section. For people using cranked power tubes, I guess they really need some kind of DI to get that power amp signal properly into a recording interface line level or something.
I am not saying this is THE way to do it for everyone, I am not even sure if this may work with different amps or recording interfaces but it seems to work for me and now I feel more confident of investing some money into buying professionally recorded Cab IRs like the RedWirez for example.
Please let me know your comments. Are you taking a different approach to the same concept?
Then I decided I wanted to do another comparison and mic my own cab with Celestion 7080 to see how "real" this recorded sound is compared to mic'ing the amp as everyone else does, I used my AKG P220 for this. Again, as my current tone comes mainly from the preamp I don't really need to crank the power amp section to get the tone I like at the room into a signal level usable by the condenser mic. I was surprised to hear the mic amp recorded sound does have the same feel, not the same tone but the feel is the same, I guess it has something to do with how guitar speakers attenuate the higher frequencies. Actually the preamp into Cab IR sounds better to me, I guess my room acoustic and my actual speaker have a lot to do.
So my conclusion was that for my particular rig and recording interface I don't need a load box or a DI box in order to make a silent recording at night and use Cab IRs because I don't get any overdrive/distortion from power amp section. For people using cranked power tubes, I guess they really need some kind of DI to get that power amp signal properly into a recording interface line level or something.
I am not saying this is THE way to do it for everyone, I am not even sure if this may work with different amps or recording interfaces but it seems to work for me and now I feel more confident of investing some money into buying professionally recorded Cab IRs like the RedWirez for example.
Please let me know your comments. Are you taking a different approach to the same concept?
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