I wanted to make my loosest completely unfiltered Dual as a plugin to really show what that uncontrollable low end on the loosest Cali amps sounds like. The end results was comments suggesting that my amp has to be broken.😄 But yes when you're put into a blindfold comparison between a real amp vs a modelled amp 100% always vote that the tighter one is the modeller. It has a little bit to do with modelling/resolution/saving CPU but overall that's one of the most difficult things to model well and accurately. Even the top of the line AI capture platforms we have nowadays start showing flaws in that low end area. That's the tell-tell sign.
I actually loved the looseness and big low end of ML Dual. It felt like something else because every ampsim out there sounds tight. ML Dual felt different, and this different tool in my toolbox inspired very different riffs - big and explosive instead of tight and percussive, if that makes sense.
A tight sound can also be achieved by reducing gain a bit and not scooping all mids into oblivion. I have played rectos, 6505, and Mesa mark series amps for the last 25 years, and always felt that boosting and excessive gain took away dynamics, tightness and touch sensitivity; all qualities that make tube amps desirable in the first place.
It's not the same. Metal players want razor tight precision for staccato riffing. Those amps will never give you that without cutting some bass at the input with an OD pedal. Turning the gain down doesn't give the same effect.
@@justsomerandomguyman put modern on the orange channel of a Rectifier gives the bass control the better taper when it's turned down. You can in fact turn it down until there's no more rumble.
@@SonovaBish We're not talking about the overall amount of bass. It's not a matter of how much bass there is in totality. It's how much bass is coming into the input and being distorted through the preamp circuit. Think of how many people split bass guitar signals into a clean sub low track and a distorted high mid/treble track. It's for the same reason. A lot of low information content getting distorted = loose, flubby, mushy, warm, etc.... This can be great for leads if you want a liquidy sound, but it's often the exact opposite of what you want for modern metal. You can always add bass back through the amp's controls. The input signal stays clean and sharp, but you can bring the "rumble" back on the amp without affecting the character of the attack and making the tone mushy.
Ryan, thanks for this video. I'm 53 and after a 20 year hiatus into Bluegrass and classic country, I've recently got back into hard rock and metal. In the last couple of years I've bought (and returned) several high gain amps because I've expected them to have that tight Metallica/Mergadeth crunch and they consistently, by themselves, do not. This video seemed to break down a wall for me and I purchased a TS 9 Turbo and am running a TC Elec. Sentry in front of it and a Horizon Dervices Precision Drive after, running into a Marshall DSL 20, and Ohhh Myyy Goooodness. I've finally got that tone I've been chasing for 5 or 6 years now. God bless you, man. Keep up the good work.
“That mentality is wrong.” Preach my recto brother. The best sounds in the world are looser amps tightened up with an OD. Plus it gives all of us a chance to sculpt our own sound with whatever overdrive, compressor, boost, or whatever works for each of us.
Amp modellers for recording at home - real amps and speakers for playing live. Just my way of doing things. I'm old and have been playing rock and roll, metal, indie, weird shit since my early teens and always had real amps until a few years ago. My favourite amp ever? My old 1978 Marshall Backbreaker... sorry Bluesbreaker (if you've carried one, you'll know what I mean). Loud and proud and impossible to get a bad sound out of it. Just use pedals for OD and everything you want to add, like getting the pizza base and sauce perfect and then adding the toppings. But now I mainly record stuff at home, I find the modellers I use - a Tonex and a Headrush MX5 - are perfectly brilliant for what I need to do with recording along with some favourite pedals. I agree, amps shouldn't sound like plugins or modellers for that matter. But both have their uses in this great age of affordable gear.
Sounds like a bunch of metallica/Megadeth/death metal "rip off" artists yelling at clouds. Everything sounds similar to something, tonewise and writing wise. We just like what we like.
@@PariahVSGear I agree. It's just an example of how every 10-15 years, people get bored with what's current and want to go back to the previous trend. It's cyclical. There's gonna be a movement towards flubby "organic" tube amp sounds for about a generation. Then, people will want their tight, compressed sound back. Just new wave boomers complaining about shit lol.
It just depends what you are going for. If you want modern metal…tight is good. If you want rock/nu-Metal sound…make sure it’s a little more flubby and scooped. We all have to understand that it’s about what we are going for.
Great video, great points. Tech has changed how we think about amps. Being in my 50s now having had a lot of different amps over the years like Mesas, Marshalls, Friedmans, etc. high gain amps I always expect to boost in front with a TS/OD, and I don't think I've ever NOT done that, especially a recto, to tighten up an amp...To your point, maybe a little aside, is what I've noticed after years on the Axe FX is two things: 1) I've gotten used to the "in the mix" sound on demand which is incredibly tight. 2) even worse is I'm addicted to stereo now and it's almost impossible for me to enjoy mono through 1 amp without all of those cool, bouncy modulation effects going L/R for huge sauce. Even if I run 4CM through arguably one of the best amps money can buy in a Friedman BE Dlx, I go back to the modeler for anything not purely chugga-lugga or boomer-bendy.
Plug-in user and Quad Cortex owner here. Recently I purchased a new Mesa Boogie Recto cab from a local shop. Got to try it out with a Soldano SLO-100. Sounded phenomenal. The low end was all there, and I could really feel the "cabinet thump". It was such a joy to feel the full frequency range of the Soldano being pushed through the cab. I brought the cab home and hooked up my Quad Cortex with a power amp... I wasn't getting the "thump" that I knew the cab was capable of. My custom presets were dialed in to the point of "mix-readiness" by taking out much of the low end. After changing around some EQ and amp settings, I was able to get back to a "real" amp-in-the-room feel. I'm grateful that the QC has the flexibility to do both!
I think a lot of this might also stem from the fact that a lot of plugins come with some amount of noise gate already engaged [e.g. all the Neural plugins seem to run a noise gate in basically all their presets]. So you have (i) no noise from the amp/guitar because of the digital signal path (and often active pups) + (ii) a noise gate + (iii) more purpose-driven amp sims + (iv) listening on desk or in ear monitors with less bass response from the get-go = you sound like a way cleaner player than you actually are. there's nowhere to hide if you have a 5150 in a big room
When my Mesa Mark IV came out in the 90’s, plug-ins didn’t exist. It didn’t need a boost then and it doesn’t need a boost now. So it’s not necessarily a new thing to be a tight metal amp on its own. You could argue the eq and pre gain are boosts but this is a really old design.
Boosts can be fun and allow you to create interesting sounds, but it's probably clear to see that there might be a problem if you own more boost pedals than any other type of pedal which is often the case with metal guitarists. Not surprising when the alternative trend to just wanting tight amps out of the box is youtuber-producer-types shilling all sorts of boutique tubescreamer variants and claiming certain rectifier revisions have some sort of legendary unmatched tone. Pedal sales and inflated Rev G prices ensue. It's not just Fluff either, and it's a trend way more common than what Fluff is describing in this video. Loose amps and boost pedals aren't going anywhere as evident by the entire generation of boosted recto metal players in the comments here and the massive amount of hyper specific educational content on the topic here on youtube.@@Ottophil
The mark series kind of works like other amps with an OD though. You have a pre EQ which allows you to greatly shape the type of drive you want, and then you have the post EQ in the 5 band, which allows you to set that tone. It may be an older design, but the signal chain is very much the same as an OD in the front of other amps. Especially as the first EQ section is pre gain. Id almost go as far as to argue that a lot of people were using OD pedals to mimic what the mark series was already doing since the mid 80s with the Mark 2. The difference between the Mark series and modern "tight" amps is that if you want more flub, or a darker tone, the mark series is absolutely capable of that too.
I guess it's kind of personal taste. I have a Peavey 5150 and a Friedman BE100 and I don't use a boost or OD with either one so I don't know how to gauge when a boost is "needed". I would argue that many hi gain amps are tight enough without adding a pedal. Turn the gain down and the volume up!
I have always been wandering myself. Since for that modern metal sound we almost always use an overdrive, how come no amp designer (with probably very few exceptions that I am lacking knowledge of) hasn't included the "boost" in the amp?
it was very common in the 90s and 00s but got shittalked so much by tube purists. putting a pcb with overdrive circutry in, that is. most famously was the jcm 900 which was despised for that by most marshall purists. I got a engl thunder, one of the least "metal" Engl amps, which also has a boost that basically serves the same purpose: overdriving the input stage of the preamp and thereby shaving off some bass. the laney gh series had boosts as well, serving the same purpose. However, they always were seen as just a 0.5 channel, lesser than an actual further channel with a different voicing, and so the real high end amps established different channels (besides a clean and a gain channel) with different voicings.
I totally agree. Some of the best sounds I’ve gotten have come from boosting an amp. Orange Rockerverb, for example, is a killer metal amp with slightly more unique tone when boosted.
Oranges higher gain amps sounds awesome, my favorite amp sound imo. Orange as a sound all its own, not a Fender or Marshall clone like sooooo many other companies try to do.
If the amp is too tight, it has less tonal variety. That's why I love my Marshalls. Saggy and old school, but with a Boss SD-1, they turn into tight metal machines.
Well, any overdrive is a (transistor) amplifier that drives the input of the Amp harder than the already built-in input driver. You could take the same circuit and just solder it into the amp. The question is do you want variety by switching the circuits in the form of pedals, or do you want variety in the amp with switches. One drive circuit is required anyway.
Sag and Tightness are not mutually exclusive. Some of the tightest tones I've ever played were from Marshall amps with the power section saturated as hell. There's a balance.
@@RX120D Sag can help with saturation but they're not the same thing; but I don't think the issue is whether you can get a tight sound out of a Marshall, everyone knows you can do that. The issue is that with some modern amps, that's the ONLY sound you can get out of them, but with a Marshall tuned properly and some smart things in your chain, you can get whatever sound you want, including a tight sound.
That need to create your sound in one of the actual amplifiers is part of the fun. People want that certain sound because another guitarist decided that they needed more out of their Mesa, Engl, Bogner, Marshall, Soldano, etc. Have some fun with your favorite gear, make new tones
Regarding boosts, when it comes to TS style overdrives, not only do people like the mids it adds, but they also like how it tightens up the low end. However, I would argue that one of the main things players seem to like about boosting the amps is the compression these types of pedals add. I recommend trying a compressor as a boost, nearly the same affect as the TS in terms of cleaning up the sound and tightening the low end, but far more controllable and no mid-hump.
People want instant gratification nowadays and have a short attention span (thanks social media). Modelers and VST plugins get you ultra tight/polished sounds for recording and practicing, at the cost of everyone having similar tone. Using a real amp and pairing the right overdrive is part of the tone quest. As is picking unique speaker choices, pickups that work for you, and even the technique you work on. Sometimes my best and most unique tones come from a combination I was not expecting. I can't tell the difference in most modern recorded tones anyways because the mixes are so dense and everyone uses the same Neural DSP cabinet modeling...
> at the cost of everyone having similar tone. Using a real amp and pairing the right overdrive is part of the tone quest. As is picking unique speaker choices, pickups that work for you, and even the technique you work on. But why? There's nothing stopping you from mixing and matching OD pedal emulations in the box, changing IRs (or making your own IRs), using your own compression/saturation/EQ techniques, etc. to achieve something unique completely with plugins. It's a matter of knowledge, experimentation, and technical skill with mixing and music production. All the experimentation you can do with real amps and hardware gear, you can also do completely in the box. You just need to understand what you're doing and be willing to experiment.
@@justsomerandomguyman you're not wrong. There is plenty to mess with in the box. I am a huge fan of blending plugin tones with miked up cabs/amps. I'm also a fan of happy accidents: safe mismatch with a tube amp and cabinet, using a "non-industry" standard microphone to mic the cab, blending real room sounds that are completely unique (stairwell in apt for example). I think my point was that younger recording artists and guitarists in general use presets from there favorite repository and most of the "modern" tones I am hearing nowadays are uninspiring.
@@libertoproductions I find I get way better results with plugins with custom impulse responses, and I often mix and match OD drives from different plugins. Sometimes, I will even run more than one OD in series at the same time.
@@justsomerandomguyman what kind of impulse responses do you use? Do you make your own? That's a good idea with different OD's. I use a Boss SD-1 stacked into vst OD's once or twice.
The GOAT metal tone still is Dimarzio SD-equipped guitar in D-standard tuning, ran trough a José-modded Marshall JCM800 with a greenback-loaded 1960A 4x12 and boosted with a Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer
I’d change that JCM 800 to a JMP50.I’m old enough to remember when the JCM800 was the newest Marshall, and all I could think was, “why is it so Fizzy sounding ?” The JMP series is far less popular but way better sounding IMHO. Clearer, bigger sounding, less distorted….but add a GE-7 with the mids and gain boosted and you get supreme crunch. That’s just me tho’….
@@jasondorsey7110 most common doesn't mean best. Angus Young, Eddie Van Halen and Slash all recorded great guitar tones with Greenbacks, as did Iron Maiden. Granted, their tones are far from modern metal, but IMO that's a good thing.
@@MaxBoogieOverdrive the biggest tonal difference comes not from the amp, but from the speakers. A JMP50 is a great amp, but maybe not quite as well suited as a JCM800
To my tastes a great tube sound has to be not tight at all, also i think 1x12 openback cabinets are the best to achieve more of a rich nuanced 3d tube sound, they lack bass responce, but that is the tone i prefer, but that is just my taste and what suits more my playing
Asking for an Amp to be tighter is like feeding the cow nothing but A1 steak sauce and hoping the steak will come out tasting like A1 and wont need the added steak sauce......very dumb
Amen dude!!! IMO nothing beats a tube amp. I have zero care what anyone tells me, I loooove my tube amps AND my modelers/plugins but tube amps just have more character IMO. Like you said, whatever makes you create is awesome
Agreed. But no one needs the 76345th high hain amp that just sounds and behaves pretty much exactly like the 5150 for example either. So I would perfectly understand if amp makers would build amplifiers that have the *option* built in. Let's say you can have the classical unboosted tube amp but you can also activate a built in boost section and a noise gate. That would make perfect sense - especially in amplifiers that are aimed towards a scene where everyone tries to sound pretty much the same anyway. 🤐🤐 But that's another topic... 😄
I feel like there's a massive trend towards the 'perfect' high gain tone, without really thinking about the texture of what different pedals and amps can give you - I think I've only learned that recently as well. From my first steps with tube amps, using your ML plugin, with my old line 6 pod go and my old kemper - it's nearly taken me about 10/12 years of playing to realise what overdrives, fuzzes and distortions do in terms of texture - Now I've got my dream amp, I'm using different overdrives, fuzzes and distortions to create different textures rather than desperately hunting for the "perfect" high gain tone. It's genuinely the most inspired and happiest I've ever been as a guitarist!
I 100% have been one of those people who have said I wouldn’t want to use a boost to find my “favorite amp” or it shouldn’t need one. But I must admit I have been wrong. I feel like this video is sort of the icing on the cake to that. I always want the flexibility for the base sound. But now as someone who has an always on pedal going into cleaner amps. It’s all just eq stages. Or spices on the recipe. I feel like thats such a great analogy. Wonderful video and thank you for taking the time to educate us all. Keep throwing down these hot takes.
Martin Kidd the designer of Victory amp was asked in an interview if he could build an ultra tight sounding amp. He answered that he could build one but people would still immediately plug in an TS after seconds of playing it. I think what most people don't get is that they are actually looking for a amp+pedal distortion sound and not necessarily an ultra tight amp sound. And even if amp builders would include a boost, people would start complaining about it and still end up using their own prefered pedal instead.
I’m coming at this from a different perspective but a comparable one. I’m a once classical musician turned recording and mixing nut and one of the things I’ve always struggled with when it comes to some of my clients is real instruments played by musicians over samples or physically modeled stuff, specifically horns. I’m a saxophonist by trade and whenever I’m talking with someone, whether it’s a producer or a composer who never went the route of academia, and they tell me they found this incredible new saxophone library I listen to it and just can’t ever think of a time where I’d want to use that over a real musician due to the incredible amounts of nuance and harmonic complexity you’ll get from a real saxophone. Now there’s a place for that synthesized “fake” sounding instrument but I still think that having the real thing will always do more good than bad. I think the same with amps. I personally hate having the bazillions of options we do as far as amp sims go. I run Amplitube 5 so I have every option for amplifiers under the sun it feels like to get the sound I want for every guitar and bass related thing that comes my way but I use all the same stuff. Cleans either the Dr. Z Maz18 Jr or a fender deluxe/fender twin with maybe a JC120 here and there and I don’t really do a lot of work in heavier genres so I haven’t played around with that much but I’d usually gravitate towards a Marshall or Mesa. For bass I almost never use anything other than an Ampeg SVT CL or a Sansamp so I leave those on my template as stock. I just had a H&K TriAmp mk2 fall into my lap and after a few little repairs I think I’ll be able to stop using Amplitube altogether in favor of the TriAmp and IR’s and that makes me so excited. I don’t have to worry about the bajillion options in the box and I’ll have something that sounds uniquely mine. I am ALL for that. This bug’s also making me want to buy a bass amp for the same reason. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with modelers but i also don’t think physical amps are going to go extinct because no amount of circuit modeling will ever truly be able to replace the individuality of different tubes, different caps, resistors and then individual speakers in individual cabinets. I think there only way it’ll ever truly get there will be when the plugins have a slightly different model of all these components to a very individual level based off of your individual serial number but that’d just be a hassle.
"If I paid $200 for a stake it should not need a $2 pepper to be tasty" it's a better analogy, I think. You're right, and that's why I don't like amps with solid state/diodes to boost or drive more, because I want to add (or not) my own drive preference. That's a common argument that say: "You don't want diodes in your amp, but you add a pedal with diodes". Yes, I want to add my own, and when I boost it with the Drive=0 and Level=Full I don't add the clipping diodes and I don't need an internal boost circuit either, because I use an SD-1 or a TS-9 and I get different results that suit different playing and songs.
I have a Diezel VH4 6L6 head and a VHX head. I boosted them both with a centavo, precision drive in a simple boss, SD-1. why? Simple… It’s fun and the amplifiers have a little too much bottom and sometime so I really enjoy tweaking with overdrive pedals.
From a producer lens, makes sense to have amps that allow for maximal sculpting/creating tones. However, if we’ve progressed to the point where an overdrive to tighten up a high gain amp is as standard for modern metal tones as needing a fork to eat, makes sense to at least bake in a switchable OD/tight circuit IMO.
I definitely learned about this the hard way when I went from a Marshall VS102R to a DSL100. Could not for the life of me figure out why such an expensive amp didn't sound as heavy as my old one and kept going back to the Valvestate. In fact, I could never get a sound out of it that I liked. Growing up I thought OD pedals were a joke because I had only ever put one in front of a solid-state amp and seen it make no difference or sound worse. I miss both of those amps. I'd give a lot to have them back.
I agree completely, overdrive is a spice to place on top of an amp like a rectifier. I turn the gain down a little on my rectifiers when I feel like using an overdrive, that way I can get the flavor of the overdrive and the rectifier and not have too much noise and still have great tone..
I don’t think super tight amps are either a new thing or a new want in the guitar community. My first "real" amp was a 99 Rev G dual rec. I needed an eq in the loop and boost in front to get it to remotely do what I wanted. I was always tweaking my rig. Then I aquired a VHT/FRYETTE Pittbull Ultra-lead and literally within 5 seconds knew THAT was the response I wanted. Shortly after, I aquired a Mesa mk4 and same thing....LOVED how tight and punchy it was. This was all before the RUclips, social media or modern bands playing in drop G.
The first amp I ever bought myself when I got a real job was a VHT Deliverance 120. It was ultra tight and dry, I literally shaped my playing around that amp. Later I got a Mesa Mark V and it also scratched that itch. Everything else I've played it feels like there is some burier between my playing and the sound I get. Most modelers aren't even as tight and percussive as an UL or Mark series amp IMO.
Here's another take. I play with transistor only amps. For one big reason : I use 3 amps on stage, 2 guitar, 1 bass. I'm not bragging just giving context. Of course, I need an ABC, but also I need to send overdrive/distorsion/younameit pedals before the amp, because I tend to prefer using clean amps and pedals before. I'm not saying I AM RIGHT, but this works fine for me, and I have some feedback from the audience about how "huge" and "original" my sound is. Still, I had several times some gearheads telling me that "if you wanna have a better disto, use a tube amp". Yeah, sure, maybe it will sound better. But I don't wanna for these reasons : - It's more expensive - it's heavier and takes more volume - I crafted my sound with these pedals, honestly I could just use eq pedals and DI boxes. If you want a "already tone worthy amp", you might miss the point
Yes on the annoyance about needing a boost in front of supposedly high gain amp to make it sound right. Some reviews don't even bother showing amp being unboosted, it's just a given it will be boosted and they show you and compare what boosts they are using.
Staying on the cooking analogy I think a lot if guitar players follow pre-made recipes and never check with their own taste buds. I use the evh 6l6 stealth on red channel with no boost for death metal, there is no need to tighten up that channel, but people will put a tube scremer in front of it to "tighten it up" cuz that's what the recipe calls for.
I respectfully disagree 🙏 I'm probably older than you and spent decades trying find a tube amp that would deliver a focused (you call it "tight") distorted sound. I'm not a metal player but I love to hear(experience) a very immediate attack when I am playing especially on the low E and A strings. Most of the guitar sounds on most rock records have a fairly focused tone especially when it comes to any kind of palm muting riffs. From 38 Special and the Cars to Metallica and beyond, many classic rock (and of course metal) songs utilize palm muting in some way shape or form. TO MY EARS, the distortion on all of these riffs sound very focused (tight). Also, most non palm muted parts have excellent string definition. I bought many amps over the years trying to find the type of distortion that I had been hearing on records for years. When I see $3000 + head being demonstrated and some one needs to use $99 pedal to make the amp do what it's supposed to be doing in the first place, I just have to asl why? Is it really that hard to design an amp that breaks up in a way that will give you a focused tone with excellent string definition?
One of the best pieces of guitar sound advice I ever picked up was a review for the Peavey 5150 in which the editor said the amp was surprisingly moderate in the bottom end but that's what you have bassists for. It's all in the mix... Anyway, if you're familiar with guitar electronics you know that a certain degree of low-cut is built into every single dirt pedal via the input cap. So if you run your guitar straight into an amp which (presumably) has the EQ after the gain stages (like the Fender Bassman, unlike the Twin Reverb - check yourself what amps are based on which) and turn up the gain it doesn't surprise me you lose tightness. And remember folks: Tony Iommi used a treble booster and that didn't make him less heavy :p
I'm not really a metal guy anymore but when that was more what I played, I always did the TS9 into 6505 thing when I wanted it to be super tight. Except I didn't always want that. I think it's one thing if people are building a boosts into their amps, but if that's the default state, you sacrifice a whole lot of flexibility just to save yourself $99 or whatever a tubescreamer costs these days.
All people want is to have the boost/overdrive/low cut built in somehow. It can be switchable, that's fine. It would make sense for it to be that way, since by rule, tube gain is pretty much *not* tight. It's absolutely silly to rail against this. It's just purist bullshit.
I really appreciate you coming out and making this statement. I mix demos for a large retailer and run into this paradox often. What high gain amps actually sound like vs. what the public believes they sound like. People have become accustomed to hearing heavily processed signals or signals that have been reinforced with samples. You're almost destined to attract negativity due to everyone having a different perception of what the middle ground is. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using samples or plugins to mix heavy music. But, it's problematic for retailers, manufacturers, and professional reviewers as our job is to represent a product accurately. It's akin to professional athletes doping in a sense. A standard has been set and unfortunately, that standard isn't rooted in reality.
> A standard has been set and unfortunately, that standard isn't rooted in reality. Yeah, it is. It's just that most people have no clue about mixing and music production. They don't understand how to properly mix albums, the importance of specific speakers and mic placement, the important of using an OD pedal as a boost and how to adjust the amp's EQ settings when doing so, etc. This stuff was always kind of a dark art that only great producers like Andy Sneap and Colin Richardson understood, and only a tiny subset of the population really understood this and studied how they achieved these sounds. Most guitarists have no idea how to go about recreating these sounds in an accurate way.
Interesting take. Kind of scares me considering I've never owned a real tube amp. Part of the generation who started playing with digital or solid state, but I love tube amps. I've only ever played them either at a music store or someone else's. It's just a bummer that as someone who's not well established in my life yet, I am possibly experiencing the dying of a very enjoyable era of music gear. Mostly because I don't have a lot of money but also because it's becoming more of a luxury day by day. I mean, I think tube amps will probably never go away, they will just become more niche, like vinyls. And after a while there will be a resurgence when the next generation gets inspired to play the real thing (instead of the plugin versions).
That's one of the many things I like about the invective. It's RIDICULOUSLY gainy, it's brash and bassy and huge.... But they have a tight switch right on the front. They have a boost switch right on the front. They have a (very strong) noise gate right on the front. And they have the ability to turn all of that off with a footswitch... Or the buttons: Right on the front. So I can use the boost on the amp and have an all in one solution. Or I can have a ts808 or a metalzone or a ds-1 or whatever else. Yes, amps shouldn't sound like computers, but it's so freaking awesome when they have the option.
Good points man. I grew up in a time when distortion effects were limited, and all the sounds were from your amp and pedals. No syms. Never had big high gain rigs, but I did have sound guys tell me to turn down. Even now, after 25 odd years using digital recording software, I'm only recently starting to use plug ins. I've always preferred using pedals and committing to the sound at the start as color rather than pissing around later with multiple hues and not really nailing down one to keep. Recording on 4 tracks in the early 80s, we learned quickly to work out the sound, work out the song, learn your parts good, and play.
I love the sound of a driven OR120, with the FAC control set as deep as possible. That floods the following stages of the Amp with so much low end its got this slow mushy chunk to it. Can you get tight? Yeah, if you back off the bass and boost with an overdrive... sure. Super tight and sterile? Don't drive the tubes at all and run high gain pedals into the amp. EQ is still essential to getting the right tone and gain staging.
I have this old crate tube TDP preamp. The sound on that thing is scary tight and it gets tighter the higher you turn up the gain. Over drive pedals do nothing and it doesn’t need a gate. I don’t know how they built that thing but it’s something that needs to be replicated.
I needed this video. Over the last weeks I was contemplating buying my dream amp from about 10 years ago and was a bit discouraged because it might not be as tight as amp x or y. Now I realized that all the reviews are talking out of the box without a boost since boosts were as common as today around 2010. I have a bunch of boost flavors at my disposal and have boosted pretty much everything since discovering the magic of the 808 on my muddy and loose triple rec. This has nudged me towards buying the amp and just enjoying it(and boosting it if I want some toight riffage)
I got bored pretty quick with tightening up my amp and that’s what I always strived for growing up. I’ve been turning down my gain more and more these days and blending my pedals. It’s just fun and I can see why people spend theirs lives looking for “the sound”. Would you even want to?
Thank you. I don't want my amps to be super tight out of the box. If you can pay €$2-3,000 for an amp, you can pay €$50-200 for an overdrive to boost it/tighten it up. I love my 5150, my Victory Super Kraken and my Rockerverb, and I boost the shit out of them, but I don't want that sound ALL. THE. TIME. If people can swap out EMGs for Fishmans or boutique passive pickups and buy super high grade organically grown, free range cables for their signal path, they can buy a nice overdrive as well. Fight me!
I usually agree with you but on this I gotta.. When I was coming up back in the early 90s I couldn't afford a Marshall which pushed me in the direction of Crate and Ampeg solid state amps like the VH 140. Crushing gain without needing a overdrive. Just couldn't wrap my head around "high gain" amps that weren't crunchy on their own. I bought a couple tube heads in the last few years that just don't crunch and finally went back to solid state.. Some of us want a amp that can do it on its own.. great video man, got me thinking
Dude hit the nail on the head here. I've been playing for about 12 years now growing up with Peavy solid state and the POD so my ears we're very used to the digital realm of things, but when my gear head homie sat me down in front of a Rivera KR100 with a TS9 in front of it I could not pick my jaw up of the ground. I would never in a million years wanna replace that altogether with the "perfection" of the digital tones regardless of how identical they can get to the real thing. It completely takes the personality out of the guitar players tone and when you go to local metal shows one of the more exciting things about it(at least for me) is seeing what gear the shredder is workin with. If everyone had the same tones all night it would be a snore fest regardless of how tasty the breakdown would be. I think stuff like the Boss Katana MKII is perfect for practicing at home and recoding music with but for live shows you gotta have them tubes, 4X12, overdrive, gate.
I like how real amps can be dark and flubby and sometimes seem like they don't really want to give you all that gain. Once you boost them, they have that grind that's satisfying. On the question of plugins, I think we should rant about how they almost always have a latency that drives me nuts. No thanks.
Get a better interface and latency won't be a problem for you. You want 1. A computer with a powerful CPU and 2. Something like an RME interface which has great drivers and lets you keep the sample buffer rate low. The powerful CPU is so that you can run more processing in real time without raising the buffer sample rate so that you can use compression, reverb, delay, eq, etc. while tracking.
Stay ignorant and keep complaining about latency then. lol. Why complain about something that professional gear solves if you aren't willing to use it?
@@justsomerandomguyman I bought a new Mac mini and I own a 3rd gen Scarlett 18i20. Should I spend even more to reduce latency? Even compared to the Strymon iridium, the latency is very noticeable. Between that and real amps, I can avoid latency. I’m not ignorant-I’ve compared them and I prefer real amps and even the Strymon. Why would I spend thousands on “pro gear” to fix a problem I don’t have with other options? This is my opinion. Keep fanboying on plugins though.
@@TheRodge2112 I'm not fanboying on plugins, I own a ton of real amps and cabs, but plugins are also useful, and latency simply isn't an issue in real life for people who know what they are doing. You don't need to spend a fortune. An RME Babyface Pro FS costs $1000 new and can be had for as little as $600 used and has very low latency (48 samples). Many people who love real amps track DIs with plugins and custom impulse responses nowadays and reamp later with real gear simply because the plugins are good enough, and it's much more convenient for tracking DIs. All you need is something that feels good and sounds close to capture the performance.
This is precisely why I believe in owning a couple “tight” amps ( KSR, Omega) and a couple loose old school style amps ( Rectifier, Uberschall). I love plugging in my maxon od 808 into my rectifier and just feeling the organicness of a amp
I'm perfectly happy with going straight into my Peavey Rock Master and A/DA MP-1 for "high gain", the Peavey is "tight" enough for me. I only use boosts/overdrives with vintage gain single channel amps.
I love the subtle differences in coloration between different ODs & distortions/boosts in front of various tube amps of differing tightness. That spectrum is a pretty important feature of real gear vs modeled gear.
@@scamp808 I'm pretty happy with my MX5 and Tonex for recording. Haven't tried them live yet but don't gig these days so not an issue. Have a nice small tube amp and some pedals for jamming and noodling at home so best of both worlds now. I agree the new amp modelers are awesome :)
@scamp808 I have amps that haven't been modeled yet. My Peters Pro Series 50w, for example. Admittedly, models are getting better by the day (I own a ton of plugins and several modelers), but there will always be room for tube amps and OD pedals in my studio.
You can do the same thing with plugins and profiles (Tonex, NAM, Tonocracy, etc.) though. There's nothing stopping you from experimenting completely in the box by mixing and matching different ODs from various plugins with amps from others or from inserting pre and post EQ to further tailor the sound. In fact, I think this is the best way to use plugins. It lets you come up with something unique and really dial in the sound to bring out exactly what you want, just like you would in real life by experimenting with different gear.
As someone who uses both tube amps and the Quad Cortex I will say that modeling has came a long way. However as good as the QC is there are sounds it just can’t do. If you play modern metal and your rig is a 5150 w/od it nails that easily, but if you are playing fuzzed out doom it doesn’t fully capture that the same as a tube amp. The way I treat modeling is I think of it as its own thing. I don’t think of it as a Marshall, but more of a Marshall type amp if that makes sense. I use mine for fly ins and venues that don’t have space and it gets me almost to my sound, but if I have the option I’ll always go with my 2 amp rig.
as someone who loves physical gear, i think all this digital stuff is pretty great. i'm glad that rock music is so accessible to nearly any budget. but i do worry that modern rock music will have the same issues that modern country music production has where everything just sounds super "tight" and clean. something like a tube amp recorded with a sm57 just add this natural space to mix. still, these plugins get more and more impressive.
@zachsabbath1 honestly... can't disagree. at least for the mainstream. everything sounds like it's at the front of the mix all the time, overly compressed, and all the guitar just sounds so DI. quite unfortunate.
I agreed with this completely, and what wasn’t mentioned as well is that volume affects your thickness also as analog, digital is always there. Why I mention this? You get harsh speakers at low/practice volumes analog and if you’re super tight to start you can’t have a similar tone quieter and it’s just overly bright.
Mesa boogie marks are great because you can make them looser or super tight with the bass knob. To me it’s weird that the manual always warns you against running the bass anywhere noon or higher. It sounds better with the bass run higher in my opinion. I wasn’t really satisfied with my amp until I decided to disregard the manual and run the bass near noon. Sometimes even above.
I’m right there with you. I like being able to tailor my sound to what I want. I have a handful of different drives and I look at them like condiments. I’ve also owned a bunch of super high end amps that sound incredibly tight and polished. Those ones usually only last a little while in my collection before I move on.
I have no problem with using a pedal to adjust the signal amplitude and frequency going into the amp, as long as it does not add too much noise or unwanted harmonics. I did buy my Mesa Mark V so that I could have many sounds, one of which was a tight high gain without boost.
Very interesting video... One things peoples tend to forget is ; when we use amplifier, we most of the time play connect to a cabinet... So, what make it DIFFICULT (probably impossible) to replicate that tightness is probably the feeling of AIR MOVMENT from this cabinet. Simply, because the amps DAMPING Factor... THIS IS what make ears and feel the tight sound. For peoples who doesn' t know, the damping are in resume what is controlling the speaker movment in the cabinet... Some peoples said it' s about ""pushing"" the speaker ( so the air...) BUT in fact they retained the mspeaker movment ( controll it...), so : they make it THIGHT. My 2 cents.
The secret to making an Amp sound like a digital modeler. Od into noise gate into the front eq in the loop. Dial down the lows a lot and the high mids slightly. Boost the mids Hella hard. Dial in the high to taste. Do this with the over drive set to with no gain Max level and tone. Noise gait set high enough that it's kinda on the edge of too much but not too much. Leave the Amp gain and eq settings at noon. Use a 2x12 cab. It'll sound more like a digital modeler than any other analog rig I've ever put together.
modelers sound like a mic'd amp. Guitar amps have a sort of trumpet effect, where unless you hear it in real life, you are not getting the full effect of the sound. That feeling of air being moved at you and through you just gets lost through everything in the recording and playback process. Parts of this are intentional, like how you have to constrain the guitars a lot via EQ, because if you don't they're a massive wall of sound that takes up everything from mid-bass to treble, but a lot of it is also the physics of mics and the limitations in recording gear that don't quite capture everything.
As a seasoned guitar player who loves the sound of a real tube amp, I can say maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for some of these amp makers to add in some type of "boost" that mimics a tube screamer, as well as a good noise gate, to help those type of players who come from the digital world, get the sound that they are looking for. I mean why not? Especially if that's what some players might be looking for. Recently I did sell my tube amplifier head for a digital rig. But that was more of a necessity vs a want. Just makes traveling with my rig easier. But when I did have my tube amp (I owned a Bugera Infinium 333xl, which sounded amazing by the way) I only had to put an Exciter pedal (which came from my Zoom effects pedal) in front of it to sound tight and heavy. The Bugera already had a very decent distortion lead channel so there wasn't much more I had to do to make it sound good. Anyhow, yeah an added boost to mimic a tube screamer or other overdrive wouldn't be a bad idea to add to any tube amplifier marketed at metal and hard rock guitar players.
I like my older gear that people hated in the day, ie DOD pedals, no name guitar with no name upgrades and Peavey Bandit Red Stripe 212. I'm even using 30 year old cable. They make the sounds I like. Can't we go back to arguing over which is better, tubes or solid-state?
Really good thoughts. I think people may generally be listening to more processed music overall. Even at live shows, I’m not sure that at most rock/metal concerts we’re hearing a lot of cranked amps so much as plugins and processed guitar sounds. And then it’s more pronounced with the incredibly polished sound that most recorded music has been doing for the last few decades. It’ll be interesting when the pendulum swings again and what the sound of heavy music in another 20 years will be.
One big reason I love my JCM900 SL-X is that not many people use them so you can get a bit of a different sounding flavor from that, even when boosting/gain stacking with pedals.
Slx are real nice amp. I owned a 50w for a few years. They sound pretty nice and do not lack gainat all. I love how they distort, the distortion texture. You can make them to sound somewhat more vintage, or more modern with the 2 gain knobs. They are not that easy to dial in because of what the 2 gain knobs do and interact together. But they lack a bit of bottom end punch in my opinion. May be the 100w is better I have not tried it. I believe it is better to thighten an amp that has maybe too much punch in the lows than trying to add to something that is not there in the amp. This gives a fuller sound.
@@jean-philippemorin1176 I have the 100w with EL34s and you can end up getting decent bass response with some tweaking. I don't typically go for a lot of bass, so when I'm dialing that gain sensitivity and pre-amp volume, I have to be considerate of it sounding "bloated" if I push either too far. But as you said, you can go vintage or modern sound, scooping mids is super easy on it, and there's no lack of gain. I use a Metal Zone style clone to boost without any dirt (like the Metal Zone style for additional EQ tweaking) and a DS-2 distortion for just the slightest add of flavor. Nothing else needed to get a good metal sound (though I choose to have Reverb and a 10 band EQ in the FX loop).
@@ERiCtheBuLL yes I see what you mean, on mine preamp was around 4 to 5, the gain sensitivity was around 6 and the presence was quite high around 8 or 9 on mine. this is where I lived most of the time one the amp settings on mine. More and it was too much distortion and it get mushy. There was still room for a boost od in front, but I used the od in front mostly for the eq flavor. I tried the eq in the loop too. The 2 gain knobs is fun and give you access to different gain sound. I have switched to a jcm800 50w, which has a more direct punch feel. The amp react a bit faster and punch harder in the speakers if that makes sense. In comparison on the jcm800 I need to cut the bass almost at 0 and it needs to be boosted to get where I was gain wise with the slx, to get a metal sound. The slx has more than half the gain the jcm800 can give. I would have been happy keeping my slx but needed the money to buy the 800, and I don't need 2 marshalls. It had the old shughuang tubes in the pre, I should have kept these when I sold the amp. I tried a couple tubes in it and these where the best sounding one. Not a big change but they added a bit more clarirty without getting anemic. Good luck finding these tubes elsewhere now...
I use four gain stages to change how tight, loose, ballsy, or plasticy I want my sound to be for any given sound. Give me an amp, and let me mold it….even on the digital side. Grew up playing stacks, and now use Stomp due to volume, space, etc. great vid!
Ryan, I feel like I am in the middle of this situation. I use a Walrus Distortion pedal going to the front end of a QUILTER 200 watt solid state amp that is in Plexi clean-ish mode and I tighten the Warus pedal with a Gup Tech Le Chiou overdrive pedal that has a TIGHT knob to control the low frequencies to taste... So there ya go. I am loud as a 100 watt tube amp without the need of tubes and I am tight and focused on my high gain rhythm as I wanna be.
My 5150iii & 5150 Iconic sound plenty tight with just a boss noise suppressor in front, no overdrive. Never used plugins until this year, don’t much care for them, but they can sound pretty good.
It's part of this process of "perfectification" of everything. As a tube amp guy, and a digital turnist I see how having my RoadKing and my guitar ipertight it's just a time saver when I record for clients. When it's ipertight it's just easier to record harder stuff in less time, and plus it's what everybody wants. it's just a tendency. It will probably continues to a certain point and then find a balance.
"Ipertight?" I think you mean HYPER-tight, because I got to thinking, is "ipertight" even a word? Also, "perfectification???" Put down the bong and learn to spell.
Just buy a triaxis and one hipster will shed its wings! No boost needed with a Mesa Triaxis or Mesa Mark III ! The recto I use a Maxon 808 with, but I never thought of it more just tightening up the low end because I wanted exactly what your describing here. But I hated the mid boost that a overdrive box creates, and how much low frequency loss you gain when using one.
as with everything, it really just depends on the use case. I love how real, high gain tube driven amps sound when playing, but it has to be in an environment that's loud enough to utilize that potential. I also like playing in ridiculously low tunings, like drop E, and I've found that plugins just process those signals better and give tighter tones. The beauty is that every setup and rig has so many variables, and every person experiences music and sound so differently, that there is really no such thing as objectivity at all. If it sounds good, it is good.
I'm a mid-age millennial, so maybe I'm behind the curve but I'm used to older style amps. You can always tighten up a flubby amp sound but you can't add thump and warmth to an amp that is too 'tight'. What I do appreciate of late is the addition of more options to add; built in boosts, more flexible eq options, noise gates, IR loaders, post effects, power scaling etc. Plus, learning to play on real amps in a live setting makes you be more disciplined and tight in technique and the way you play.
I wanted to get that modern Djent sound pre Neural DSP, so I got new pickups, a boutique amp, a great cab, still not quite there. Boost, boom. Once reaching one hell of a tight tone, the thing I always wanted, I got bored super quickly with it. It's good for certain songs and bands, but I prefer the meat and oomph. After selling my amps and cabs, using digital for years, I've got back to pedals and tube amps again. There's just something about it I missed, I discovered. And you don't sound like another song on a Spotify Metal Playlist. The Bloom in the Lows-low mids that makes heavy guitars so mighty. It's back. Love it
Some amps and plugins lets you control the overall tightness, the new Bogner Uberschall has that. Also the rhythm amp on the Bea plugin. Its a learning experience for novice players, as they get better over time they will realize that maybe stupid tight wasn't always the answer. Kinda like how beginner guitariest dial in too much gain and thinking they have great tone.
As many other commentators have said here I too, as a fan of metal don’t like much modern metal because the guitars are too tight. There’s not even a hint of a little sag, which to me is what gives a guitar tone, any guitar tone personality. Hell to this very day as someone who has 35 years of playing guitar under my belt, my all-time favorite guitar tone is still Neil Young with that collapsing fender deluxe sound he gets. It’s so gooey and chewy and you can actually hear the sag in the notes. That tone is nothing but personality!
That one special beat-up old Deluxe of his-the most fuzzed-out, about to catch on fire, collapsing in on itself, pissed-off Deluxe that has just that much more derangement on tap than just about any other example-pretty much literally invented grunge. And yet it sounds killer clean(ish) or edge-of-breakup. I’d probably trade my car for a junkyard jalopy and remortgage my house if I could buy an amp that sounded like that, but also had all the modern bells and whistles like midi-controlled presets for the knobs so I wouldn’t have to try and get someone to build a clone of the Whizzer to change tones quickly.
Palette is exactly right, you want a platform that will support the sounds you'll need to create for the musical situations one might oneself in over time.
I do agree with many of your observations here... One way that amplifier manufacturers could gain some ground is to build a switchable "boost" or "OD" that is basically a SD-1 TYPE circuit in between the input and pre-amp. That could also be beneficial to the player who just wants a little extra grit on a clean or overdrive section. Just a thought. 🤷🏻♂️
I like that I can use different boosts on different channels. I have Fortin 33 for rhythm sounds with Rectifier channel 3 and Maxon 808 on lead sounds on channel 2
I prefer my dual rec multi watt without an overdrive I just crank the output knob and run channel 2 and 3 in bold mode running 6l6s get the eq right and it sounds amazing.
Two thoughts. Every piece of gear doesn't have to be for every person. If someone wants a super tight out of the box amp, while that may not be the right amp for me, I think that should be available to them. What I think can get lost is the fact that guitar sounds are these conglomerations of different parts. Your pickups, strings, cables, pedals, amp, and speakers come together to make the sound in the room, and that doesn't even touch how important mics or IR's become the second you want to record anything. Changing one piece of the puzzle is going to call for changing other pieces of the puzzle. A high gain, ultra modern amp may not need a boost, so running on into it wouldn't make sense. Heck, even using it might not make sense. A JCM 800 might be a better option for some, or some stacked OD's in a clean amp. It's al about realizing how when you change one thing, your changing how all the other pieces interact with it. Second, I think some of this is a function of digital tech crossing the event horizon of sorts to the point where those highly processed sounds are what people prefer, but they don't even know that what they want is the sound of a plug-in, not the sounds of an amp.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Exactly. No amp ever made will come close to the sonic sounds of the Line 6 big bottom amp, so why even try?
Badonk for life!
Badonking Line 6 for the Helix@@Bigjunk9999
hello from the fractal forums
That's "Insane" Bro. LOL.
Same for Insane.
Nothing can top it.
I wanted to make my loosest completely unfiltered Dual as a plugin to really show what that uncontrollable low end on the loosest Cali amps sounds like. The end results was comments suggesting that my amp has to be broken.😄 But yes when you're put into a blindfold comparison between a real amp vs a modelled amp 100% always vote that the tighter one is the modeller. It has a little bit to do with modelling/resolution/saving CPU but overall that's one of the most difficult things to model well and accurately. Even the top of the line AI capture platforms we have nowadays start showing flaws in that low end area. That's the tell-tell sign.
Just a word of praise here for your efforts: your plugins are the most realistic and amp-like of any I've bought yet. Outstanding work!
Great points. I would if AI will be able to close the gap in the future somehow
I actually loved the looseness and big low end of ML Dual. It felt like something else because every ampsim out there sounds tight. ML Dual felt different, and this different tool in my toolbox inspired very different riffs - big and explosive instead of tight and percussive, if that makes sense.
Legit. I use my FM3 a lot with the JP2C models and I love it, but when I run into my real 2C the bottom end comes alive completely differently.
@@dougappel5924 Aww thank you Doug!
A tight sound can also be achieved by reducing gain a bit and not scooping all mids into oblivion. I have played rectos, 6505, and Mesa mark series amps for the last 25 years, and always felt that boosting and excessive gain took away dynamics, tightness and touch sensitivity; all qualities that make tube amps desirable in the first place.
Dynamics? I’m playing Metal.
It's not the same. Metal players want razor tight precision for staccato riffing. Those amps will never give you that without cutting some bass at the input with an OD pedal. Turning the gain down doesn't give the same effect.
@@justsomerandomguyman put modern on the orange channel of a Rectifier gives the bass control the better taper when it's turned down. You can in fact turn it down until there's no more rumble.
@@SonovaBish We're not talking about the overall amount of bass. It's not a matter of how much bass there is in totality. It's how much bass is coming into the input and being distorted through the preamp circuit. Think of how many people split bass guitar signals into a clean sub low track and a distorted high mid/treble track. It's for the same reason. A lot of low information content getting distorted = loose, flubby, mushy, warm, etc.... This can be great for leads if you want a liquidy sound, but it's often the exact opposite of what you want for modern metal. You can always add bass back through the amp's controls. The input signal stays clean and sharp, but you can bring the "rumble" back on the amp without affecting the character of the attack and making the tone mushy.
This kind of tracks, listen to Kowloon Walled City. Lower gain pickups and amp gain but they sound super tight and heavy.
Thats why my 100W ENGL Mille Petrozza Extreme Aggression is getting more priceless each day
Ryan, thanks for this video. I'm 53 and after a 20 year hiatus into Bluegrass and classic country, I've recently got back into hard rock and metal. In the last couple of years I've bought (and returned) several high gain amps because I've expected them to have that tight Metallica/Mergadeth crunch and they consistently, by themselves, do not. This video seemed to break down a wall for me and I purchased a TS 9 Turbo and am running a TC Elec. Sentry in front of it and a Horizon Dervices Precision Drive after, running into a Marshall DSL 20, and Ohhh Myyy Goooodness. I've finally got that tone I've been chasing for 5 or 6 years now. God bless you, man. Keep up the good work.
“That mentality is wrong.” Preach my recto brother. The best sounds in the world are looser amps tightened up with an OD. Plus it gives all of us a chance to sculpt our own sound with whatever overdrive, compressor, boost, or whatever works for each of us.
Amp modellers for recording at home - real amps and speakers for playing live. Just my way of doing things. I'm old and have been playing rock and roll, metal, indie, weird shit since my early teens and always had real amps until a few years ago. My favourite amp ever? My old 1978 Marshall Backbreaker... sorry Bluesbreaker (if you've carried one, you'll know what I mean). Loud and proud and impossible to get a bad sound out of it. Just use pedals for OD and everything you want to add, like getting the pizza base and sauce perfect and then adding the toppings. But now I mainly record stuff at home, I find the modellers I use - a Tonex and a Headrush MX5 - are perfectly brilliant for what I need to do with recording along with some favourite pedals. I agree, amps shouldn't sound like plugins or modellers for that matter. But both have their uses in this great age of affordable gear.
I`m 40yo, love amps, love digital, but digital is a tool amps for me is a case of love. there´s nothing that can beat flaming tubes and a loud 4x12.
Oh wow I wasn’t expecting this haha! Doing that video was a lot of fun and definitely not what I expected back when we did it.
The hyper-tight sound is, frankly, boring and overdone. Everyone practically sounds the same.
Yeah call me crazy but I like a bit of squishy gain. SLO, Diezel Herbert type stuff.
"It's gotta be super tight or else my Dropped X-tuned Architects ripoff riffs won't sound good!" 🙄
Sounds like a bunch of metallica/Megadeth/death metal "rip off" artists yelling at clouds.
Everything sounds similar to something, tonewise and writing wise. We just like what we like.
@@PariahVSGear I agree. It's just an example of how every 10-15 years, people get bored with what's current and want to go back to the previous trend. It's cyclical. There's gonna be a movement towards flubby "organic" tube amp sounds for about a generation. Then, people will want their tight, compressed sound back. Just new wave boomers complaining about shit lol.
It just depends what you are going for. If you want modern metal…tight is good. If you want rock/nu-Metal sound…make sure it’s a little more flubby and scooped. We all have to understand that it’s about what we are going for.
Great video, great points. Tech has changed how we think about amps. Being in my 50s now having had a lot of different amps over the years like Mesas, Marshalls, Friedmans, etc. high gain amps I always expect to boost in front with a TS/OD, and I don't think I've ever NOT done that, especially a recto, to tighten up an amp...To your point, maybe a little aside, is what I've noticed after years on the Axe FX is two things: 1) I've gotten used to the "in the mix" sound on demand which is incredibly tight. 2) even worse is I'm addicted to stereo now and it's almost impossible for me to enjoy mono through 1 amp without all of those cool, bouncy modulation effects going L/R for huge sauce. Even if I run 4CM through arguably one of the best amps money can buy in a Friedman BE Dlx, I go back to the modeler for anything not purely chugga-lugga or boomer-bendy.
Great (and easy) stereo really is the achilles heel of analog and the reason I don't play my Rectifier much anymore
Plug-in user and Quad Cortex owner here. Recently I purchased a new Mesa Boogie Recto cab from a local shop. Got to try it out with a Soldano SLO-100. Sounded phenomenal. The low end was all there, and I could really feel the "cabinet thump". It was such a joy to feel the full frequency range of the Soldano being pushed through the cab.
I brought the cab home and hooked up my Quad Cortex with a power amp... I wasn't getting the "thump" that I knew the cab was capable of. My custom presets were dialed in to the point of "mix-readiness" by taking out much of the low end. After changing around some EQ and amp settings, I was able to get back to a "real" amp-in-the-room feel. I'm grateful that the QC has the flexibility to do both!
I think a lot of this might also stem from the fact that a lot of plugins come with some amount of noise gate already engaged [e.g. all the Neural plugins seem to run a noise gate in basically all their presets]. So you have (i) no noise from the amp/guitar because of the digital signal path (and often active pups) + (ii) a noise gate + (iii) more purpose-driven amp sims + (iv) listening on desk or in ear monitors with less bass response from the get-go = you sound like a way cleaner player than you actually are. there's nowhere to hide if you have a 5150 in a big room
When my Mesa Mark IV came out in the 90’s, plug-ins didn’t exist. It didn’t need a boost then and it doesn’t need a boost now. So it’s not necessarily a new thing to be a tight metal amp on its own. You could argue the eq and pre gain are boosts but this is a really old design.
I was going to say my Mark has never needed a boost
@@Saxby8sixboosts aren’t about need. You can draw alot of detail in black and white. Doesnt make color bad
Same here with my Mark V
Boosts can be fun and allow you to create interesting sounds, but it's probably clear to see that there might be a problem if you own more boost pedals than any other type of pedal which is often the case with metal guitarists. Not surprising when the alternative trend to just wanting tight amps out of the box is youtuber-producer-types shilling all sorts of boutique tubescreamer variants and claiming certain rectifier revisions have some sort of legendary unmatched tone. Pedal sales and inflated Rev G prices ensue. It's not just Fluff either, and it's a trend way more common than what Fluff is describing in this video. Loose amps and boost pedals aren't going anywhere as evident by the entire generation of boosted recto metal players in the comments here and the massive amount of hyper specific educational content on the topic here on youtube.@@Ottophil
The mark series kind of works like other amps with an OD though. You have a pre EQ which allows you to greatly shape the type of drive you want, and then you have the post EQ in the 5 band, which allows you to set that tone. It may be an older design, but the signal chain is very much the same as an OD in the front of other amps. Especially as the first EQ section is pre gain. Id almost go as far as to argue that a lot of people were using OD pedals to mimic what the mark series was already doing since the mid 80s with the Mark 2. The difference between the Mark series and modern "tight" amps is that if you want more flub, or a darker tone, the mark series is absolutely capable of that too.
I guess it's kind of personal taste. I have a Peavey 5150 and a Friedman BE100 and I don't use a boost or OD with either one so I don't know how to gauge when a boost is "needed". I would argue that many hi gain amps are tight enough without adding a pedal. Turn the gain down and the volume up!
I have always been wandering myself. Since for that modern metal sound we almost always use an overdrive, how come no amp designer (with probably very few exceptions that I am lacking knowledge of) hasn't included the "boost" in the amp?
They have. The Peavey Invective is a good example of this. However, that leaves you with only one option.
The Randall Satan and Peavey Invective have an OD boost built in.
Marshall JCM2000.
it was very common in the 90s and 00s but got shittalked so much by tube purists. putting a pcb with overdrive circutry in, that is. most famously was the jcm 900 which was despised for that by most marshall purists. I got a engl thunder, one of the least "metal" Engl amps, which also has a boost that basically serves the same purpose: overdriving the input stage of the preamp and thereby shaving off some bass. the laney gh series had boosts as well, serving the same purpose. However, they always were seen as just a 0.5 channel, lesser than an actual further channel with a different voicing, and so the real high end amps established different channels (besides a clean and a gain channel) with different voicings.
Marshals thingy is not the same I reckon. It doesn't feel the same. Awesome amp though I love it!@@216trixie
I totally agree. Some of the best sounds I’ve gotten have come from boosting an amp. Orange Rockerverb, for example, is a killer metal amp with slightly more unique tone when boosted.
Oranges higher gain amps sounds awesome, my favorite amp sound imo. Orange as a sound all its own, not a Fender or Marshall clone like sooooo many other companies try to do.
@@Naughtforeye I totally agree. I think part of the 'Orange sound' is a different midrange emphasis that I absolutely love.
I love my RV100 MKIII. It’s a monster when boosted. But even without a boost it’s such a juicy, thick sound. Brings a smile to my face each time
You're not agreeing with him here. He's simply advocating that amps shouldn't have boosted circuits within them. Which is dumb.
If the amp is too tight, it has less tonal variety. That's why I love my Marshalls. Saggy and old school, but with a Boss SD-1, they turn into tight metal machines.
Well, any overdrive is a (transistor) amplifier that drives the input of the Amp harder than the already built-in input driver. You could take the same circuit and just solder it into the amp. The question is do you want variety by switching the circuits in the form of pedals, or do you want variety in the amp with switches. One drive circuit is required anyway.
Sag and Tightness are not mutually exclusive. Some of the tightest tones I've ever played were from Marshall amps with the power section saturated as hell. There's a balance.
@@RX120D Sag can help with saturation but they're not the same thing; but I don't think the issue is whether you can get a tight sound out of a Marshall, everyone knows you can do that. The issue is that with some modern amps, that's the ONLY sound you can get out of them, but with a Marshall tuned properly and some smart things in your chain, you can get whatever sound you want, including a tight sound.
Yeah anal variety is lessened when pussy gets too tight. Then again, depends on if the throat goat level is set right or not.
That need to create your sound in one of the actual amplifiers is part of the fun. People want that certain sound because another guitarist decided that they needed more out of their Mesa, Engl, Bogner, Marshall, Soldano, etc. Have some fun with your favorite gear, make new tones
Regarding boosts, when it comes to TS style overdrives, not only do people like the mids it adds, but they also like how it tightens up the low end. However, I would argue that one of the main things players seem to like about boosting the amps is the compression these types of pedals add. I recommend trying a compressor as a boost, nearly the same affect as the TS in terms of cleaning up the sound and tightening the low end, but far more controllable and no mid-hump.
Heck, an eq pedal can be pretty effective as a boost
@@jasondorsey7110 That is true, look at how many people do this with the boss GE-7
Only thing I want added to high gain modern amp is a noise gate.
People want instant gratification nowadays and have a short attention span (thanks social media). Modelers and VST plugins get you ultra tight/polished sounds for recording and practicing, at the cost of everyone having similar tone. Using a real amp and pairing the right overdrive is part of the tone quest. As is picking unique speaker choices, pickups that work for you, and even the technique you work on. Sometimes my best and most unique tones come from a combination I was not expecting. I can't tell the difference in most modern recorded tones anyways because the mixes are so dense and everyone uses the same Neural DSP cabinet modeling...
> at the cost of everyone having similar tone. Using a real amp and pairing the right overdrive is part of the tone quest. As is picking unique speaker choices, pickups that work for you, and even the technique you work on.
But why? There's nothing stopping you from mixing and matching OD pedal emulations in the box, changing IRs (or making your own IRs), using your own compression/saturation/EQ techniques, etc. to achieve something unique completely with plugins. It's a matter of knowledge, experimentation, and technical skill with mixing and music production. All the experimentation you can do with real amps and hardware gear, you can also do completely in the box. You just need to understand what you're doing and be willing to experiment.
@@justsomerandomguyman you're not wrong. There is plenty to mess with in the box. I am a huge fan of blending plugin tones with miked up cabs/amps. I'm also a fan of happy accidents: safe mismatch with a tube amp and cabinet, using a "non-industry" standard microphone to mic the cab, blending real room sounds that are completely unique (stairwell in apt for example). I think my point was that younger recording artists and guitarists in general use presets from there favorite repository and most of the "modern" tones I am hearing nowadays are uninspiring.
@@libertoproductions I find I get way better results with plugins with custom impulse responses, and I often mix and match OD drives from different plugins. Sometimes, I will even run more than one OD in series at the same time.
@@justsomerandomguyman what kind of impulse responses do you use? Do you make your own? That's a good idea with different OD's. I use a Boss SD-1 stacked into vst OD's once or twice.
The GOAT metal tone still is Dimarzio SD-equipped guitar in D-standard tuning, ran trough a José-modded Marshall JCM800 with a greenback-loaded 1960A 4x12 and boosted with a Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer
So many metal players now would load their cab with vintage 30s...and end up with the same predictable tone that is making metal boring
I’d change that JCM 800 to a JMP50.I’m old enough to remember when the JCM800 was the newest Marshall, and all I could think was, “why is it so Fizzy sounding ?” The JMP series is far less popular but way better sounding IMHO. Clearer, bigger sounding, less distorted….but add a GE-7 with the mids and gain boosted and you get supreme crunch.
That’s just me tho’….
@@jasondorsey7110 most common doesn't mean best. Angus Young, Eddie Van Halen and Slash all recorded great guitar tones with Greenbacks, as did Iron Maiden. Granted, their tones are far from modern metal, but IMO that's a good thing.
@@MaxBoogieOverdrive the biggest tonal difference comes not from the amp, but from the speakers. A JMP50 is a great amp, but maybe not quite as well suited as a JCM800
@@wilhelmtheconquerer6214 I wholeheartedly disagree….
JCM800’s are fizzboxes.
That is a great insight. I am fine with real amps, plug ins, toasters or anything. Everyone forgets they should learn to play the guitar first.
To my tastes a great tube sound has to be not tight at all, also i think 1x12 openback cabinets are the best to achieve more of a rich nuanced 3d tube sound, they lack bass responce, but that is the tone i prefer, but that is just my taste and what suits more my playing
Offtopic: you know what's tight! The color grading and the recent addition of beautifully placed J-cuts in your videos ❤️
Asking for an Amp to be tighter is like feeding the cow nothing but A1 steak sauce and hoping the steak will come out tasting like A1 and wont need the added steak sauce......very dumb
If you want a tight high gain amp out the box it might be time to look into solid state imo
Ground Zero Ampworks Hellion 100
Amen dude!!! IMO nothing beats a tube amp. I have zero care what anyone tells me, I loooove my tube amps AND my modelers/plugins but tube amps just have more character IMO. Like you said, whatever makes you create is awesome
Agreed.
But no one needs the 76345th high hain amp that just sounds and behaves pretty much exactly like the 5150 for example either.
So I would perfectly understand if amp makers would build amplifiers that have the *option* built in.
Let's say you can have the classical unboosted tube amp but you can also activate a built in boost section and a noise gate.
That would make perfect sense - especially in amplifiers that are aimed towards a scene where everyone tries to sound pretty much the same anyway. 🤐🤐
But that's another topic... 😄
I feel like there's a massive trend towards the 'perfect' high gain tone, without really thinking about the texture of what different pedals and amps can give you - I think I've only learned that recently as well. From my first steps with tube amps, using your ML plugin, with my old line 6 pod go and my old kemper - it's nearly taken me about 10/12 years of playing to realise what overdrives, fuzzes and distortions do in terms of texture - Now I've got my dream amp, I'm using different overdrives, fuzzes and distortions to create different textures rather than desperately hunting for the "perfect" high gain tone. It's genuinely the most inspired and happiest I've ever been as a guitarist!
I 100% have been one of those people who have said I wouldn’t want to use a boost to find my “favorite amp” or it shouldn’t need one. But I must admit I have been wrong. I feel like this video is sort of the icing on the cake to that. I always want the flexibility for the base sound. But now as someone who has an always on pedal going into cleaner amps. It’s all just eq stages. Or spices on the recipe. I feel like thats such a great analogy. Wonderful video and thank you for taking the time to educate us all. Keep throwing down these hot takes.
Martin Kidd the designer of Victory amp was asked in an interview if he could build an ultra tight sounding amp. He answered that he could build one but people would still immediately plug in an TS after seconds of playing it. I think what most people don't get is that they are actually looking for a amp+pedal distortion sound and not necessarily an ultra tight amp sound.
And even if amp builders would include a boost, people would start complaining about it and still end up using their own prefered pedal instead.
I'm really digging these thought experiment uploads you've been doing lately.
I’m coming at this from a different perspective but a comparable one. I’m a once classical musician turned recording and mixing nut and one of the things I’ve always struggled with when it comes to some of my clients is real instruments played by musicians over samples or physically modeled stuff, specifically horns. I’m a saxophonist by trade and whenever I’m talking with someone, whether it’s a producer or a composer who never went the route of academia, and they tell me they found this incredible new saxophone library I listen to it and just can’t ever think of a time where I’d want to use that over a real musician due to the incredible amounts of nuance and harmonic complexity you’ll get from a real saxophone. Now there’s a place for that synthesized “fake” sounding instrument but I still think that having the real thing will always do more good than bad. I think the same with amps.
I personally hate having the bazillions of options we do as far as amp sims go. I run Amplitube 5 so I have every option for amplifiers under the sun it feels like to get the sound I want for every guitar and bass related thing that comes my way but I use all the same stuff. Cleans either the Dr. Z Maz18 Jr or a fender deluxe/fender twin with maybe a JC120 here and there and I don’t really do a lot of work in heavier genres so I haven’t played around with that much but I’d usually gravitate towards a Marshall or Mesa. For bass I almost never use anything other than an Ampeg SVT CL or a Sansamp so I leave those on my template as stock. I just had a H&K TriAmp mk2 fall into my lap and after a few little repairs I think I’ll be able to stop using Amplitube altogether in favor of the TriAmp and IR’s and that makes me so excited. I don’t have to worry about the bajillion options in the box and I’ll have something that sounds uniquely mine. I am ALL for that. This bug’s also making me want to buy a bass amp for the same reason. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with modelers but i also don’t think physical amps are going to go extinct because no amount of circuit modeling will ever truly be able to replace the individuality of different tubes, different caps, resistors and then individual speakers in individual cabinets. I think there only way it’ll ever truly get there will be when the plugins have a slightly different model of all these components to a very individual level based off of your individual serial number but that’d just be a hassle.
"If I paid $200 for a stake it should not need a $2 pepper to be tasty" it's a better analogy, I think. You're right, and that's why I don't like amps with solid state/diodes to boost or drive more, because I want to add (or not) my own drive preference. That's a common argument that say: "You don't want diodes in your amp, but you add a pedal with diodes". Yes, I want to add my own, and when I boost it with the Drive=0 and Level=Full I don't add the clipping diodes and I don't need an internal boost circuit either, because I use an SD-1 or a TS-9 and I get different results that suit different playing and songs.
I have a Diezel VH4 6L6 head and a VHX head. I boosted them both with a centavo, precision drive in a simple boss, SD-1. why? Simple… It’s fun and the amplifiers have a little too much bottom and sometime so I really enjoy tweaking with overdrive pedals.
1000%. When an amp is naturally too tight its extremely limiting
exactly!!!
From a producer lens, makes sense to have amps that allow for maximal sculpting/creating tones. However, if we’ve progressed to the point where an overdrive to tighten up a high gain amp is as standard for modern metal tones as needing a fork to eat, makes sense to at least bake in a switchable OD/tight circuit IMO.
I would love to have a switchable built in OD of some sort
I definitely learned about this the hard way when I went from a Marshall VS102R to a DSL100. Could not for the life of me figure out why such an expensive amp didn't sound as heavy as my old one and kept going back to the Valvestate. In fact, I could never get a sound out of it that I liked. Growing up I thought OD pedals were a joke because I had only ever put one in front of a solid-state amp and seen it make no difference or sound worse. I miss both of those amps. I'd give a lot to have them back.
I use my vs100 to this day. And have no interest in another amp
I'm so glad you made the new bridge pickup analogy. It's exactly what I think when people moan about overdrives.
I agree completely, overdrive is a spice to place on top of an amp like a rectifier. I turn the gain down a little on my rectifiers when I feel like using an overdrive, that way I can get the flavor of the overdrive and the rectifier and not have too much noise and still have great tone..
I don’t think super tight amps are either a new thing or a new want in the guitar community.
My first "real" amp was a 99 Rev G dual rec. I needed an eq in the loop and boost in front to get it to remotely do what I wanted. I was always tweaking my rig. Then I aquired a VHT/FRYETTE Pittbull Ultra-lead and literally within 5 seconds knew THAT was the response I wanted. Shortly after, I aquired a Mesa mk4 and same thing....LOVED how tight and punchy it was. This was all before the RUclips, social media or modern bands playing in drop G.
The first amp I ever bought myself when I got a real job was a VHT Deliverance 120. It was ultra tight and dry, I literally shaped my playing around that amp. Later I got a Mesa Mark V and it also scratched that itch. Everything else I've played it feels like there is some burier between my playing and the sound I get. Most modelers aren't even as tight and percussive as an UL or Mark series amp IMO.
Getting your sound is like making gumbo, no two bowls will be the same. Flavor to taste. Bravo Fluff.
Here's another take.
I play with transistor only amps. For one big reason : I use 3 amps on stage, 2 guitar, 1 bass. I'm not bragging just giving context.
Of course, I need an ABC, but also I need to send overdrive/distorsion/younameit pedals before the amp, because I tend to prefer using clean amps and pedals before. I'm not saying I AM RIGHT, but this works fine for me, and I have some feedback from the audience about how "huge" and "original" my sound is.
Still, I had several times some gearheads telling me that "if you wanna have a better disto, use a tube amp". Yeah, sure, maybe it will sound better. But I don't wanna for these reasons :
- It's more expensive
- it's heavier and takes more volume
- I crafted my sound with these pedals, honestly I could just use eq pedals and DI boxes.
If you want a "already tone worthy amp", you might miss the point
This is the most important topic in the world of tone that’s not being talked about right now. Thank you for starting the conversation.
Yes on the annoyance about needing a boost in front of supposedly high gain amp to make it sound right. Some reviews don't even bother showing amp being unboosted, it's just a given it will be boosted and they show you and compare what boosts they are using.
Staying on the cooking analogy I think a lot if guitar players follow pre-made recipes and never check with their own taste buds. I use the evh 6l6 stealth on red channel with no boost for death metal, there is no need to tighten up that channel, but people will put a tube scremer in front of it to "tighten it up" cuz that's what the recipe calls for.
I respectfully disagree 🙏
I'm probably older than you and spent decades trying find a tube amp that would deliver a focused (you call it "tight") distorted sound. I'm not a metal player but I love to hear(experience) a very immediate attack when I am playing especially on the low E and A strings. Most of the guitar sounds on most rock records have a fairly focused tone especially when it comes to any kind of palm muting riffs. From 38 Special and the Cars to Metallica and beyond, many classic rock (and of course metal) songs utilize palm muting in some way shape or form. TO MY EARS, the distortion on all of these riffs sound very focused (tight). Also, most non palm muted parts have excellent string definition. I bought many amps over the years trying to find the type of distortion that I had been hearing on records for years.
When I see $3000 + head being demonstrated and some one needs to use $99 pedal to make the amp do what it's supposed to be doing in the first place, I just have to asl why? Is it really that hard to design an amp that breaks up in a way that will give you a focused tone with excellent string definition?
One of the best pieces of guitar sound advice I ever picked up was a review for the Peavey 5150 in which the editor said the amp was surprisingly moderate in the bottom end but that's what you have bassists for. It's all in the mix...
Anyway, if you're familiar with guitar electronics you know that a certain degree of low-cut is built into every single dirt pedal via the input cap. So if you run your guitar straight into an amp which (presumably) has the EQ after the gain stages (like the Fender Bassman, unlike the Twin Reverb - check yourself what amps are based on which) and turn up the gain it doesn't surprise me you lose tightness.
And remember folks: Tony Iommi used a treble booster and that didn't make him less heavy :p
I'm not really a metal guy anymore but when that was more what I played, I always did the TS9 into 6505 thing when I wanted it to be super tight. Except I didn't always want that. I think it's one thing if people are building a boosts into their amps, but if that's the default state, you sacrifice a whole lot of flexibility just to save yourself $99 or whatever a tubescreamer costs these days.
All people want is to have the boost/overdrive/low cut built in somehow. It can be switchable, that's fine. It would make sense for it to be that way, since by rule, tube gain is pretty much *not* tight. It's absolutely silly to rail against this. It's just purist bullshit.
I like how the John Petrucci plugin literally has a "tight" knob on the amp. Neural DSP knows it's audience.
I really appreciate you coming out and making this statement. I mix demos for a large retailer and run into this paradox often. What high gain amps actually sound like vs. what the public believes they sound like. People have become accustomed to hearing heavily processed signals or signals that have been reinforced with samples. You're almost destined to attract negativity due to everyone having a different perception of what the middle ground is. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using samples or plugins to mix heavy music. But, it's problematic for retailers, manufacturers, and professional reviewers as our job is to represent a product accurately. It's akin to professional athletes doping in a sense. A standard has been set and unfortunately, that standard isn't rooted in reality.
> A standard has been set and unfortunately, that standard isn't rooted in reality.
Yeah, it is. It's just that most people have no clue about mixing and music production. They don't understand how to properly mix albums, the importance of specific speakers and mic placement, the important of using an OD pedal as a boost and how to adjust the amp's EQ settings when doing so, etc.
This stuff was always kind of a dark art that only great producers like Andy Sneap and Colin Richardson understood, and only a tiny subset of the population really understood this and studied how they achieved these sounds. Most guitarists have no idea how to go about recreating these sounds in an accurate way.
Interesting take.
Kind of scares me considering I've never owned a real tube amp. Part of the generation who started playing with digital or solid state, but I love tube amps. I've only ever played them either at a music store or someone else's. It's just a bummer that as someone who's not well established in my life yet, I am possibly experiencing the dying of a very enjoyable era of music gear. Mostly because I don't have a lot of money but also because it's becoming more of a luxury day by day.
I mean, I think tube amps will probably never go away, they will just become more niche, like vinyls. And after a while there will be a resurgence when the next generation gets inspired to play the real thing (instead of the plugin versions).
That's one of the many things I like about the invective. It's RIDICULOUSLY gainy, it's brash and bassy and huge.... But they have a tight switch right on the front. They have a boost switch right on the front. They have a (very strong) noise gate right on the front.
And they have the ability to turn all of that off with a footswitch... Or the buttons: Right on the front.
So I can use the boost on the amp and have an all in one solution. Or I can have a ts808 or a metalzone or a ds-1 or whatever else.
Yes, amps shouldn't sound like computers, but it's so freaking awesome when they have the option.
Good points man. I grew up in a time when distortion effects were limited, and all the sounds were from your amp and pedals. No syms. Never had big high gain rigs, but I did have sound guys tell me to turn down. Even now, after 25 odd years using digital recording software, I'm only recently starting to use plug ins. I've always preferred using pedals and committing to the sound at the start as color rather than pissing around later with multiple hues and not really nailing down one to keep. Recording on 4 tracks in the early 80s, we learned quickly to work out the sound, work out the song, learn your parts good, and play.
I love the sound of a driven OR120, with the FAC control set as deep as possible. That floods the following stages of the Amp with so much low end its got this slow mushy chunk to it. Can you get tight? Yeah, if you back off the bass and boost with an overdrive... sure.
Super tight and sterile? Don't drive the tubes at all and run high gain pedals into the amp. EQ is still essential to getting the right tone and gain staging.
With my Pod go w/noisegates, OD etc i now LOVE my blue voodoo tone/responsiveness.
I have this old crate tube TDP preamp. The sound on that thing is scary tight and it gets tighter the higher you turn up the gain. Over drive pedals do nothing and it doesn’t need a gate. I don’t know how they built that thing but it’s something that needs to be replicated.
I needed this video. Over the last weeks I was contemplating buying my dream amp from about 10 years ago and was a bit discouraged because it might not be as tight as amp x or y.
Now I realized that all the reviews are talking out of the box without a boost since boosts were as common as today around 2010.
I have a bunch of boost flavors at my disposal and have boosted pretty much everything since discovering the magic of the 808 on my muddy and loose triple rec.
This has nudged me towards buying the amp and just enjoying it(and boosting it if I want some toight riffage)
I got bored pretty quick with tightening up my amp and that’s what I always strived for growing up.
I’ve been turning down my gain more and more these days and blending my pedals. It’s just fun and I can see why people spend theirs lives looking for “the sound”.
Would you even want to?
Thank you. I don't want my amps to be super tight out of the box. If you can pay €$2-3,000 for an amp, you can pay €$50-200 for an overdrive to boost it/tighten it up. I love my 5150, my Victory Super Kraken and my Rockerverb, and I boost the shit out of them, but I don't want that sound ALL. THE. TIME. If people can swap out EMGs for Fishmans or boutique passive pickups and buy super high grade organically grown, free range cables for their signal path, they can buy a nice overdrive as well. Fight me!
I usually agree with you but on this I gotta.. When I was coming up back in the early 90s I couldn't afford a Marshall which pushed me in the direction of Crate and Ampeg solid state amps like the VH 140. Crushing gain without needing a overdrive. Just couldn't wrap my head around "high gain" amps that weren't crunchy on their own. I bought a couple tube heads in the last few years that just don't crunch and finally went back to solid state.. Some of us want a amp that can do it on its own.. great video man, got me thinking
Dude hit the nail on the head here. I've been playing for about 12 years now growing up with Peavy solid state and the POD so my ears we're very used to the digital realm of things, but when my gear head homie sat me down in front of a Rivera KR100 with a TS9 in front of it I could not pick my jaw up of the ground. I would never in a million years wanna replace that altogether with the "perfection" of the digital tones regardless of how identical they can get to the real thing. It completely takes the personality out of the guitar players tone and when you go to local metal shows one of the more exciting things about it(at least for me) is seeing what gear the shredder is workin with. If everyone had the same tones all night it would be a snore fest regardless of how tasty the breakdown would be. I think stuff like the Boss Katana MKII is perfect for practicing at home and recoding music with but for live shows you gotta have them tubes, 4X12, overdrive, gate.
I like how real amps can be dark and flubby and sometimes seem like they don't really want to give you all that gain. Once you boost them, they have that grind that's satisfying. On the question of plugins, I think we should rant about how they almost always have a latency that drives me nuts. No thanks.
Get a better interface and latency won't be a problem for you. You want 1. A computer with a powerful CPU and 2. Something like an RME interface which has great drivers and lets you keep the sample buffer rate low. The powerful CPU is so that you can run more processing in real time without raising the buffer sample rate so that you can use compression, reverb, delay, eq, etc. while tracking.
@@justsomerandomguyman No thanks. Not spending a couple grand to marginally reduce latency.
Stay ignorant and keep complaining about latency then. lol. Why complain about something that professional gear solves if you aren't willing to use it?
@@justsomerandomguyman I bought a new Mac mini and I own a 3rd gen Scarlett 18i20. Should I spend even more to reduce latency? Even compared to the Strymon iridium, the latency is very noticeable. Between that and real amps, I can avoid latency. I’m not ignorant-I’ve compared them and I prefer real amps and even the Strymon. Why would I spend thousands on “pro gear” to fix a problem I don’t have with other options? This is my opinion. Keep fanboying on plugins though.
@@TheRodge2112 I'm not fanboying on plugins, I own a ton of real amps and cabs, but plugins are also useful, and latency simply isn't an issue in real life for people who know what they are doing. You don't need to spend a fortune. An RME Babyface Pro FS costs $1000 new and can be had for as little as $600 used and has very low latency (48 samples). Many people who love real amps track DIs with plugins and custom impulse responses nowadays and reamp later with real gear simply because the plugins are good enough, and it's much more convenient for tracking DIs. All you need is something that feels good and sounds close to capture the performance.
This is precisely why I believe in owning a couple “tight” amps ( KSR, Omega) and a couple loose old school style amps ( Rectifier, Uberschall). I love plugging in my maxon od 808 into my rectifier and just feeling the organicness of a amp
I'm perfectly happy with going straight into my Peavey Rock Master and A/DA MP-1 for "high gain", the Peavey is "tight" enough for me. I only use boosts/overdrives with vintage gain single channel amps.
I love the subtle differences in coloration between different ODs & distortions/boosts in front of various tube amps of differing tightness. That spectrum is a pretty important feature of real gear vs modeled gear.
And it's more fun :)
That is no longer the case with newer amp modelers.
@@scamp808 I'm pretty happy with my MX5 and Tonex for recording. Haven't tried them live yet but don't gig these days so not an issue. Have a nice small tube amp and some pedals for jamming and noodling at home so best of both worlds now. I agree the new amp modelers are awesome :)
@scamp808 I have amps that haven't been modeled yet. My Peters Pro Series 50w, for example. Admittedly, models are getting better by the day (I own a ton of plugins and several modelers), but there will always be room for tube amps and OD pedals in my studio.
You can do the same thing with plugins and profiles (Tonex, NAM, Tonocracy, etc.) though. There's nothing stopping you from experimenting completely in the box by mixing and matching different ODs from various plugins with amps from others or from inserting pre and post EQ to further tailor the sound. In fact, I think this is the best way to use plugins. It lets you come up with something unique and really dial in the sound to bring out exactly what you want, just like you would in real life by experimenting with different gear.
As someone who uses both tube amps and the Quad Cortex I will say that modeling has came a long way. However as good as the QC is there are sounds it just can’t do. If you play modern metal and your rig is a 5150 w/od it nails that easily, but if you are playing fuzzed out doom it doesn’t fully capture that the same as a tube amp. The way I treat modeling is I think of it as its own thing. I don’t think of it as a Marshall, but more of a Marshall type amp if that makes sense. I use mine for fly ins and venues that don’t have space and it gets me almost to my sound, but if I have the option I’ll always go with my 2 amp rig.
as someone who loves physical gear, i think all this digital stuff is pretty great. i'm glad that rock music is so accessible to nearly any budget. but i do worry that modern rock music will have the same issues that modern country music production has where everything just sounds super "tight" and clean. something like a tube amp recorded with a sm57 just add this natural space to mix. still, these plugins get more and more impressive.
@zachsabbath1 honestly... can't disagree. at least for the mainstream. everything sounds like it's at the front of the mix all the time, overly compressed, and all the guitar just sounds so DI. quite unfortunate.
I agreed with this completely, and what wasn’t mentioned as well is that volume affects your thickness also as analog, digital is always there. Why I mention this? You get harsh speakers at low/practice volumes analog and if you’re super tight to start you can’t have a similar tone quieter and it’s just overly bright.
Mesa boogie marks are great because you can make them looser or super tight with the bass knob. To me it’s weird that the manual always warns you against running the bass anywhere noon or higher. It sounds better with the bass run higher in my opinion. I wasn’t really satisfied with my amp until I decided to disregard the manual and run the bass near noon. Sometimes even above.
I’m right there with you. I like being able to tailor my sound to what I want. I have a handful of different drives and I look at them like condiments. I’ve also owned a bunch of super high end amps that sound incredibly tight and polished. Those ones usually only last a little while in my collection before I move on.
I have no problem with using a pedal to adjust the signal amplitude and frequency going into the amp, as long as it does not add too much noise or unwanted harmonics. I did buy my Mesa Mark V so that I could have many sounds, one of which was a tight high gain without boost.
Very interesting video... One things peoples tend to forget is ; when we use amplifier, we most of the time play connect to a cabinet... So, what make it DIFFICULT (probably impossible) to replicate that tightness is probably the feeling of AIR MOVMENT from this cabinet. Simply, because the amps DAMPING Factor... THIS IS what make ears and feel the tight sound. For peoples who doesn' t know, the damping are in resume what is controlling the speaker movment in the cabinet... Some peoples said it' s about ""pushing"" the speaker ( so the air...) BUT in fact they retained the mspeaker movment ( controll it...), so : they make it THIGHT. My 2 cents.
The secret to making an Amp sound like a digital modeler. Od into noise gate into the front eq in the loop. Dial down the lows a lot and the high mids slightly. Boost the mids Hella hard. Dial in the high to taste. Do this with the over drive set to with no gain Max level and tone. Noise gait set high enough that it's kinda on the edge of too much but not too much. Leave the Amp gain and eq settings at noon. Use a 2x12 cab. It'll sound more like a digital modeler than any other analog rig I've ever put together.
modelers sound like a mic'd amp. Guitar amps have a sort of trumpet effect, where unless you hear it in real life, you are not getting the full effect of the sound. That feeling of air being moved at you and through you just gets lost through everything in the recording and playback process. Parts of this are intentional, like how you have to constrain the guitars a lot via EQ, because if you don't they're a massive wall of sound that takes up everything from mid-bass to treble, but a lot of it is also the physics of mics and the limitations in recording gear that don't quite capture everything.
As a seasoned guitar player who loves the sound of a real tube amp, I can say maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for some of these amp makers to add in some type of "boost" that mimics a tube screamer, as well as a good noise gate, to help those type of players who come from the digital world, get the sound that they are looking for. I mean why not? Especially if that's what some players might be looking for. Recently I did sell my tube amplifier head for a digital rig. But that was more of a necessity vs a want. Just makes traveling with my rig easier. But when I did have my tube amp (I owned a Bugera Infinium 333xl, which sounded amazing by the way) I only had to put an Exciter pedal (which came from my Zoom effects pedal) in front of it to sound tight and heavy. The Bugera already had a very decent distortion lead channel so there wasn't much more I had to do to make it sound good. Anyhow, yeah an added boost to mimic a tube screamer or other overdrive wouldn't be a bad idea to add to any tube amplifier marketed at metal and hard rock guitar players.
The sag is the best part of the recto! Get a Mark IV if you want ultra-tight…but the bass has to be 1 or below 😅
Is there an episode on those sound diffusers in your studio? Purchased? DIY? How well do they work? Etc.
I like my older gear that people hated in the day, ie DOD pedals, no name guitar with no name upgrades and Peavey Bandit Red Stripe 212. I'm even using 30 year old cable. They make the sounds I like.
Can't we go back to arguing over which is better, tubes or solid-state?
Really good thoughts. I think people may generally be listening to more processed music overall. Even at live shows, I’m not sure that at most rock/metal concerts we’re hearing a lot of cranked amps so much as plugins and processed guitar sounds. And then it’s more pronounced with the incredibly polished sound that most recorded music has been doing for the last few decades. It’ll be interesting when the pendulum swings again and what the sound of heavy music in another 20 years will be.
One big reason I love my JCM900 SL-X is that not many people use them so you can get a bit of a different sounding flavor from that, even when boosting/gain stacking with pedals.
Slx are real nice amp. I owned a 50w for a few years. They sound pretty nice and do not lack gainat all. I love how they distort, the distortion texture. You can make them to sound somewhat more vintage, or more modern with the 2 gain knobs. They are not that easy to dial in because of what the 2 gain knobs do and interact together. But they lack a bit of bottom end punch in my opinion. May be the 100w is better I have not tried it.
I believe it is better to thighten an amp that has maybe too much punch in the lows than trying to add to something that is not there in the amp. This gives a fuller sound.
@@jean-philippemorin1176 I have the 100w with EL34s and you can end up getting decent bass response with some tweaking. I don't typically go for a lot of bass, so when I'm dialing that gain sensitivity and pre-amp volume, I have to be considerate of it sounding "bloated" if I push either too far. But as you said, you can go vintage or modern sound, scooping mids is super easy on it, and there's no lack of gain. I use a Metal Zone style clone to boost without any dirt (like the Metal Zone style for additional EQ tweaking) and a DS-2 distortion for just the slightest add of flavor. Nothing else needed to get a good metal sound (though I choose to have Reverb and a 10 band EQ in the FX loop).
@@ERiCtheBuLL yes I see what you mean, on mine preamp was around 4 to 5, the gain sensitivity was around 6 and the presence was quite high around 8 or 9 on mine. this is where I lived most of the time one the amp settings on mine. More and it was too much distortion and it get mushy. There was still room for a boost od in front, but I used the od in front mostly for the eq flavor. I tried the eq in the loop too. The 2 gain knobs is fun and give you access to different gain sound.
I have switched to a jcm800 50w, which has a more direct punch feel. The amp react a bit faster and punch harder in the speakers if that makes sense. In comparison on the jcm800 I need to cut the bass almost at 0 and it needs to be boosted to get where I was gain wise with the slx, to get a metal sound. The slx has more than half the gain the jcm800 can give.
I would have been happy keeping my slx but needed the money to buy the 800, and I don't need 2 marshalls. It had the old shughuang tubes in the pre, I should have kept these when I sold the amp. I tried a couple tubes in it and these where the best sounding one. Not a big change but they added a bit more clarirty without getting anemic. Good luck finding these tubes elsewhere now...
I use four gain stages to change how tight, loose, ballsy, or plasticy I want my sound to be for any given sound. Give me an amp, and let me mold it….even on the digital side. Grew up playing stacks, and now use Stomp due to volume, space, etc. great vid!
Ryan, I feel like I am in the middle of this situation. I use a Walrus Distortion pedal going to the front end of a QUILTER 200 watt solid state amp that is in Plexi clean-ish mode and I tighten the Warus pedal with a Gup Tech Le Chiou overdrive pedal that has a TIGHT knob to control the low frequencies to taste... So there ya go. I am loud as a 100 watt tube amp without the need of tubes and I am tight and focused on my high gain rhythm as I wanna be.
My 5150iii & 5150 Iconic sound plenty tight with just a boss noise suppressor in front, no overdrive. Never used plugins until this year, don’t much care for them, but they can sound pretty good.
EQ pedal in the send and return makes it even tighter.
It's part of this process of "perfectification" of everything. As a tube amp guy, and a digital turnist I see how having my RoadKing and my guitar ipertight it's just a time saver when I record for clients. When it's ipertight it's just easier to record harder stuff in less time, and plus it's what everybody wants. it's just a tendency. It will probably continues to a certain point and then find a balance.
"Ipertight?"
I think you mean HYPER-tight, because I got to thinking, is "ipertight" even a word?
Also, "perfectification???"
Put down the bong and learn to spell.
Just buy a triaxis and one hipster will shed its wings!
No boost needed with a Mesa Triaxis or Mesa Mark III ! The recto I use a Maxon 808 with, but I never thought of it more just tightening up the low end because I wanted exactly what your describing here.
But I hated the mid boost that a overdrive box creates, and how much low frequency loss you gain when using one.
as with everything, it really just depends on the use case. I love how real, high gain tube driven amps sound when playing, but it has to be in an environment that's loud enough to utilize that potential. I also like playing in ridiculously low tunings, like drop E, and I've found that plugins just process those signals better and give tighter tones. The beauty is that every setup and rig has so many variables, and every person experiences music and sound so differently, that there is really no such thing as objectivity at all. If it sounds good, it is good.
drop E 😆🤣😭🤮 uh...wait...drop E? isn't that uptuning?
oh wait, you're a BASSSS player.
I'm a mid-age millennial, so maybe I'm behind the curve but I'm used to older style amps. You can always tighten up a flubby amp sound but you can't add thump and warmth to an amp that is too 'tight'.
What I do appreciate of late is the addition of more options to add; built in boosts, more flexible eq options, noise gates, IR loaders, post effects, power scaling etc.
Plus, learning to play on real amps in a live setting makes you be more disciplined and tight in technique and the way you play.
Best tone I ever had was a 5150 signature model. Green channel cranked. No over drive pedals or nothing
I wanted to get that modern Djent sound pre Neural DSP, so I got new pickups, a boutique amp, a great cab, still not quite there. Boost, boom.
Once reaching one hell of a tight tone, the thing I always wanted, I got bored super quickly with it.
It's good for certain songs and bands, but I prefer the meat and oomph.
After selling my amps and cabs, using digital for years, I've got back to pedals and tube amps again.
There's just something about it I missed, I discovered. And you don't sound like another song on a Spotify Metal Playlist.
The Bloom in the Lows-low mids that makes heavy guitars so mighty.
It's back. Love it
Some amps and plugins lets you control the overall tightness, the new Bogner Uberschall has that. Also the rhythm amp on the Bea plugin. Its a learning experience for novice players, as they get better over time they will realize that maybe stupid tight wasn't always the answer. Kinda like how beginner guitariest dial in too much gain and thinking they have great tone.
As many other commentators have said here I too, as a fan of metal don’t like much modern metal because the guitars are too tight. There’s not even a hint of a little sag, which to me is what gives a guitar tone, any guitar tone personality. Hell to this very day as someone who has 35 years of playing guitar under my belt, my all-time favorite guitar tone is still Neil Young with that collapsing fender deluxe sound he gets. It’s so gooey and chewy and you can actually hear the sag in the notes. That tone is nothing but personality!
That one special beat-up old Deluxe of his-the most fuzzed-out, about to catch on fire, collapsing in on itself, pissed-off Deluxe that has just that much more derangement on tap than just about any other example-pretty much literally invented grunge. And yet it sounds killer clean(ish) or edge-of-breakup. I’d probably trade my car for a junkyard jalopy and remortgage my house if I could buy an amp that sounded like that, but also had all the modern bells and whistles like midi-controlled presets for the knobs so I wouldn’t have to try and get someone to build a clone of the Whizzer to change tones quickly.
Palette is exactly right, you want a platform that will support the sounds you'll need to create for the musical situations one might oneself in over time.
I do agree with many of your observations here... One way that amplifier manufacturers could gain some ground is to build a switchable "boost" or "OD" that is basically a SD-1 TYPE circuit in between the input and pre-amp. That could also be beneficial to the player who just wants a little extra grit on a clean or overdrive section. Just a thought. 🤷🏻♂️
I like that I can use different boosts on different channels. I have Fortin 33 for rhythm sounds with Rectifier channel 3 and Maxon 808 on lead sounds on channel 2
I prefer my dual rec multi watt without an overdrive I just crank the output knob and run channel 2 and 3 in bold mode running 6l6s get the eq right and it sounds amazing.
Two thoughts.
Every piece of gear doesn't have to be for every person. If someone wants a super tight out of the box amp, while that may not be the right amp for me, I think that should be available to them. What I think can get lost is the fact that guitar sounds are these conglomerations of different parts. Your pickups, strings, cables, pedals, amp, and speakers come together to make the sound in the room, and that doesn't even touch how important mics or IR's become the second you want to record anything. Changing one piece of the puzzle is going to call for changing other pieces of the puzzle. A high gain, ultra modern amp may not need a boost, so running on into it wouldn't make sense. Heck, even using it might not make sense. A JCM 800 might be a better option for some, or some stacked OD's in a clean amp. It's al about realizing how when you change one thing, your changing how all the other pieces interact with it.
Second, I think some of this is a function of digital tech crossing the event horizon of sorts to the point where those highly processed sounds are what people prefer, but they don't even know that what they want is the sound of a plug-in, not the sounds of an amp.