Tube Amps VS Modelers VS Amp Sim plug-ins
This is a debate that has raged for a long time, and if I know guitarists, it will probably rage until the end of time. I’m here today to tell you, that it doesn’t matter. Chances are, if you’re listening to modern metal and rock, you love albums that were done with tube rigs, you love albums that were done with high end modeling units, and you love albums that were done with plugin amp sims. You listen to an album and all you notice is rather it sounds good or bad. Your ears have no way of telling what they used. They can all get great results time after time after time. People, especially us nerdy guitarists, get way too focused on the how (what gear was used), instead of just asking, “does the end result sound good?”
“Does the end result sound good?”
Tube amps.
They’re awesome. They’re tried and true and have been the standard since the beginning of time. There are a million different varieties and flavors to choose from and most of them are sweet. They’re also expensive and there is a degree of maintenance involved. You have to get new tubes every 1-2 years to keep them sounding their best, sometimes capacitors, fuses, and other internal components can go bad, so you’ll have to find a qualified technician to go in and fix them. They’re loud…. Like reaaaaally loud. Which can be mitigated by using a reactive load box, which is a really neat piece of hardware that you use instead of a speaker cabinet, and it takes the loud amp level signal, and converts that down to a signal your audio interface can take. I have one and they are game changers. I use it any time I’m tracking or reamping with my tube amp rig.
“There are a million different varieties and flavors to choose from and most of them are sweet.”
Digital Modelers
Digital modelers, like the Fractal Audio Systems Axe-FX, Kemper Profiler, Line 6 Helix, and Neural DSP Quad Cortex, are my favorite option. They play great with pedals, you have a massive selection of amp models and speaker cabinet models instantly at your disposal, along with pretty much any other pedal or effect you could ever possibly use. A good modeler costs about the same as one good tube amp, and you have immediate access to any guitar tone you can imagine. As far as tone and feel, modern modeling units pretty much nail it. In recorded music, there’s no way to discern the difference. On the modelers, when you turn up the gain and master volume, the models behave pretty much exactly like real amps do, including the noise and sonic characteristics that come with that. You never have to retube, they’re incredibly low maintenance, and every time you turn it on, and load up your favorite patch, it sounds like you remember it sounding because it doesn’t have tubes that die or any components that may need replaced. There were some modeling units in the past that……. To put it nicely, sounded really bad. Computing power increases at an exponential rate, so now the algorithms they run account for every component in the signal path, how it reacts to sound, and it is all packaged together to run as a single system with full control right at your fingertips. You can mod the amps in the user interface like you would take a tube amp to be have the same things done. High end modeling units that are coming out today, are sonic gold mines, and that is a hill I will stand on until I’m too old to play guitar.
Amp Sim Plug-ins.
Amp sim plug-ins have come so far in the last decade. Like hardware modelers, there are a lot of old amp sims, that were straight up garbage, so like modelers, among older guitarists, they have a really bad reputation. At this point, amp sims are right up there with digital modelers. Bias, Neural DSP, and ML Sound Lab are killing the amp sim game now. They’re the most convenient and affordable option for recording yourself at home. You can plug your guitar into a di box and send that into your interface, and set your tone up entirely in your DAW. You’ve also got the flexibility of instantly tweaking your guitar sound after it’s been recorded. If you’re using a tube amp or modeler, the only way to change that tone after the fact, is to reamp the guitar di tracks. Reamping is great and I do reamps on about 60% of projects I do, but the convenience to change a tone on the fly after it’s been recorded is the single biggest advantage to amp sim plug-ins. When you’re done tracking guitars with your amp sim, all you have to do is bounce one stem of each guitar track with the amp sim turned on, and one stem of each guitar track with the amp sim turned off, so you have a DI and an “amped” track of every guitar part in the song to send to your engineer for mixing.
Mixing engineers are usually setup with a combination of all three options. I have a tube amp, pedals, a modeler, and a couple amp sims that I’ll pick from. I use whatever I think will work best for the song. Sometimes that winds up being whatever the client used when tracking. Sometimes it ends up being a fresh reamp.
Next week, I’m going to discuss in detail, what makes a good recorded guitar tone for modern metal. I’ll give you starting points to go from, in order to get you to a point where you end up with sick tones that your mixing engineer won’t have to reamp. The principals I’ll discuss will apply to tube amps, modelers, and plug-ins. I’ll see you then!
Interested in professional mixing and mastering for your project? I can help.