Best High Gain Modelers

[CGord]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

I don't know about amp modeling amps, but for recording, I like my Line6 GuitarPort just fine.

Here's my latest clip: E Standard & The Big Hair Bunch

That's my HellRaiser, EMG 81b. The tone patch is the 5150 II.

 

[Pink Unicorn Horsey]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

I don't know about amp modeling amps, but for recording, I like my Line6 GuitarPort just fine.

Here's my latest clip: E Standard & The Big Hair Bunch

That's my HellRaiser, EMG 81b. The tone patch is the 5150 II.

Sounds great to me, bro!

- Keith

 

[vinterland]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

Looking at the Fractal's manual, I can't tell if it can do 2 separate preamps at once.

The Fractal is nice, but the Boss GT-Pro does about the same (and in some instances more) for 1/4 the price. You are paying for it being a low production item and for frequent updates, which you don't get with the Boss.

If I was honestly going to spend that much on a modeler- the better choice would be a MacBook Pro with some of the awesome plug-ins out there...a Mac would have much more processing power, and would be a lot more configurable. John McLaughlin has been going this route for a few years, and it sounds great.

You are paying for it blowing any boss product or any other modeler in general away in terms of sound quality. The effects on that thing are on par with Eventide, Lexicon, T.C or whomever else you want to throw in as high quality effects. Let me just say for the record that I've never been a fan of modelers. In my mind they're always a compromise, but I did have the priveledge of hearing one of these in person and was blown away. Mostly because it doesn't act or sound like a typical modeler at all. All the modelers out today sound like modelers, this is more of a pallet to create whatever sound you'd like.

http://www.g66.eu/images/stories/audio/afx_medley3

If someone can pull off the sounds above with their other modelers then I'd love to hear it cause I haven't heard anything come close.

 

[Colin Bruce]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

I use a Line 6 Spider III 150 watt 2 x 12 combo and i know it's not in the same price range as the high class amps but it still has a great rock sound.
From blue to classic rock, hard rock to plain old death metal and has a serious ammont of high gain when it's required.
It has 400+ presets which you can alter and save and as my Ibanez is loaded with a JB Trembucker and a George Lynch Screamin' Demon i can get just about any sound i want.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

You are paying for it blowing any boss product or any other modeler in general away in terms of sound quality. The effects on that thing are on par with Eventide, Lexicon, T.C or whomever else you want to throw in as high quality effects. Let me just say for the record that I've never been a fan of modelers. In my mind they're always a compromise, but I did have the priveledge of hearing one of these in person and was blown away. Mostly because it doesn't act or sound like a typical modeler at all. All the modelers out today sound like modelers, this is more of a pallet to create whatever sound you'd like.

http://www.g66.eu/images/stories/audio/afx_medley3

If someone can pull off the sounds above with their other modelers then I'd love to hear it cause I haven't heard anything come close.

I does sound good, but i dont think it is on par with dedicated Eventides or other high end studio processing. You are also going to see less and less of high end digital processors like this for guitar as processing power gets cheaper and cheaper and software takes over. I have heard even better recordings made from tweaked out Macs and PCs- no hardware box is a configurable, updateable or has as much memory.
My point is that if this box had come out 5 years ago, Id buy it- I am one of the few people out there who can spend hours building sounds and uses modelers a lot in my professional life. In fact, I am this company's target market.These days, my guitar synth/looping/modeling rack can all be replaced with software- this late in the game, there is no reason to stick with hardware anymore.

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

I does sound good, but i dont think it is on par with dedicated Eventides or other high end studio processing. You are also going to see less and less of high end digital processors like this for guitar as processing power gets cheaper and cheaper and software takes over. I have heard even better recordings made from tweaked out Macs and PCs- no hardware box is a configurable, updateable or has as much memory.
My point is that if this box had come out 5 years ago, Id buy it- I am one of the few people out there who can spend hours building sounds and uses modelers a lot in my professional life. In fact, I am this company's target market.These days, my guitar synth/looping/modeling rack can all be replaced with software- this late in the game, there is no reason to stick with hardware anymore.

Very interesting. So by extension do you think at some point it's gonna come down to having a base processing unit or a laptop with a port etc that you plug a foot controller into along with your guitar and that will be the basic end of hardware upgrades? The software and the algorythms will be the deciding factor in terms of sound quality and feel. That does make sense in terms of how the modeling evolution SHOULD go, but will it? I think it's a 50/50 split really. Eventide would lose a fortune unless they have copyrights on their algorythms. Something tells me that they do, but it would be a losing battle for them if everyone suddenly started focusing on software because the hardware aspect became standardized. The playing field would become level and somewhat stagnant to the high end folks rather quickly. The average player would benefit tremendously, but the industry may suffer just a bit.

 

[sosomething]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

I does sound good, but i dont think it is on par with dedicated Eventides or other high end studio processing. You are also going to see less and less of high end digital processors like this for guitar as processing power gets cheaper and cheaper and software takes over. I have heard even better recordings made from tweaked out Macs and PCs- no hardware box is a configurable, updateable or has as much memory.
My point is that if this box had come out 5 years ago, Id buy it- I am one of the few people out there who can spend hours building sounds and uses modelers a lot in my professional life. In fact, I am this company's target market.These days, my guitar synth/looping/modeling rack can all be replaced with software- this late in the game, there is no reason to stick with hardware anymore.

What specific software are you talking about? I'm afraid I'm tragically behind the curve.

I love what Toontrack has done for drums and dig on some of the easier-to-use stuff like Izotope Ozone and Trash, but outside of that....

 

[Mincer]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

Very interesting. So by extension do you think at some point it's gonna come down to having a base processing unit or a laptop with a port etc that you plug a foot controller into along with your guitar and that will be the basic end of hardware upgrades? The software and the algorythms will be the deciding factor in terms of sound quality and feel. That does make sense in terms of how the modeling evolution SHOULD go, but will it? I think it's a 50/50 split really. Eventide would lose a fortune unless they have copyrights on their algorythms. Something tells me that they do, but it would be a losing battle for them if everyone suddenly started focusing on software because the hardware aspect became standardized. The playing field would become level and somewhat stagnant to the high end folks rather quickly. The average player would benefit tremendously, but the industry may suffer just a bit.

Well, lets port this idea over to synths, which I trigger from guitar. Korg, Yamaha and Roland's best hardware synths cannot compete at all with a good software synth. What they have is control- lots of knobs, ribbons, infa-red...all kinds of control. But the sounds? Even if a synth has 128mb of waveforms, it can't compete with 1 piano that is 50*gigs* of samples for 1 sound. Hardware synth makers are losing a fortune- and the times are a-changin.
This is why huge touring bands have 1 master controller, and a laptop.

Over to guitar, outside of the 'plug n play' of something like the POD, modelers can get really deep- you can spend hours with routings, outputs, different combinations of all sorts of things. Most guitarists don't want this. They want to sound good. They don't care. A few like endlessly tweaking, but there is a reason why the LP and Strat are still popular- both easy and sound good.

A few guitar programs like Amplitube, sound great. Companies like Lexicon are putting all R&D into software effects. Eventide will do the same- we will see an Ultra-Harmonizer, the $8k piece of hardware, inside a VST plugin with 4 years. It cost a lot more to make hardware- software is a lot cheaper. I'd rather see the R&D go into any configurable/routable preamp that is purely software. A controller USBs (or ethernet or firewires) to a laptop, which sends the sound to an audio interface then to the PA. No, its not like an amp and pedals, but hey, most guitarists dont understand MIDI either and its almost 30 years old.

How far away is Duncan from making a 'blank' pickup that you can download 'pickup models' to?

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

Well, lets port this idea over to synths, which I trigger from guitar. Korg, Yamaha and Roland's best hardware synths cannot compete at all with a good software synth. What they have is control- lots of knobs, ribbons, infa-red...all kinds of control. But the sounds? Even if a synth has 128mb of waveforms, it can't compete with 1 piano that is 50*gigs* of samples for 1 sound. Hardware synth makers are losing a fortune- and the times are a-changin.
This is why huge touring bands have 1 master controller, and a laptop.

Over to guitar, outside of the 'plug n play' of something like the POD, modelers can get really deep- you can spend hours with routings, outputs, different combinations of all sorts of things. Most guitarists don't want this. They want to sound good. They don't care. A few like endlessly tweaking, but there is a reason why the LP and Strat are still popular- both easy and sound good.

A few guitar programs like Amplitube, sound great. Companies like Lexicon are putting all R&D into software effects. Eventide will do the same- we will see an Ultra-Harmonizer, the $8k piece of hardware, inside a VST plugin with 4 years. It cost a lot more to make hardware- software is a lot cheaper. I'd rather see the R&D go into any configurable/routable preamp that is purely software. A controller USBs (or ethernet or firewires) to a laptop, which sends the sound to an audio interface then to the PA. No, its not like an amp and pedals, but hey, most guitarists dont understand MIDI either and its almost 30 years old.

How far away is Duncan from making a 'blank' pickup that you can download 'pickup models' to?

I'm ignorant on the synth subject, which is why I'm going to ask the following question. How do you use 50 gigs of samples at one time? Most computers can't use more than a 8 gigs of ram at a shot AFAIK. So is this software synth basically a plugin that lays the sounds down on a track after the player inputs his Midi data/performance? I just don't see how it could function in realtime.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

well, you can have 88 keys recorded at very high quality with several velocity layers which add up to a lot of disk space. Most 'super samplers' stream the samples direct from disk, so you had better have a fast machine to run them. Things like guitar processors don't need nearly the space, since it isn't triggering samples, but applying effects in real time. The machine needs to still be fast, though.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

^ So what you're saying is it can have 50 gigs of samples just for the piano sound, right?

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

I've done some research and it seems as if IK Multimedia Production is doing exactly what you discussed. Seems like the future is already here. They even have a floor USB pedal/converter for their Amplitube software.

.
It would be great to be able to select a series of presets/plugins and dial them all in with your laptop etc and then hit the stage or studio with a bunch of great sounding presets that really sound good. I've heard that the plugin's sound really convincing on recordings.

 

[G&Legacy]

Re: Best High Gain Modelers

Hey Guys, to Clarify, I am mainly looking for live use. I want a good High-Gain sound but don't have the money to buy a really good high end amp. I figured modeling would also give me some flexibility