I’m a retired cinematographer, and I still believe that 35mm motion picture film shot through an anamorphic lens is still the best quality, but the digital camera world offers budget friendly convenience, and while it lacks the quality of film, it gets the job done and few people can tell the difference. And more importantly, it opens up a whole world of options to kids and adults with a lot less cash. So I look forward to the future despite my nostalgia for old movie cameras, big V8 muscle cars, and giant tube amps.
The thing about emulation is something has to first exist before you can emulate it, the trade off risk you end up running is getting sterile because you run out of things to emulate, same with the pedal argument, if you get rid of pedals you're constrained by the digital architecture you're working in, it might satisfy some but its not the pinnacle of creativity, which reminds me on the film point a lot of directors are now filming in digital for the flexibility then bouncing the footage down to film once they are happy editing and obviously it's a lot less expensive if you make a mistake, bottom line keep hold of your gear and keep it in good nick because it's only going to get more and more valuable over time.
@@123Andersonev Your assessment is only valid if you limit the digital realm to emulation. There are things with time based effects you can do digitally which no analog machine will ever be able to do. Synthesizers are another good example. We just have to get to a point where digital electronic craftings become desirable. I am thinking kind of of the Line 6 "Insane" sound. Of course, it sounds like crap, but by now has a somewhat iconic legacy attached to it. We need more of that, but high quality and more desirable. But this will be hard, because we already have plentiful amplifiers, and using circuit emulation you can get near 100 % exact copies. When using the STL Tones Josh Middleton Plugin, using the Multiwatt Rectifier, the mid and treble knobs behave exactly like the real deal. This tells me there is white box emulation (circuit emulation) whereas a lot of plugins just use a neural model of an amp and add a unique tonestack after the distortion. I could talk for hours on this, but you might already getting the point I am trying to convey here :-)
I like this comparison! Just like people see the value in working with older, more labor intensive filmmaking gear I think the same will be true for guitar gear. Maybe in 20 years time, kids will dust off their dad’s old Mesa Boogies and Marshalls and be inspired to make something cool with them! I think there will always be some magic with analog gear, whether it’s guitar amps or 35mm cameras.
I think smaller tube amps are going to be to hottest thing for years to come. Digital gear is great but I think people are finding they waste too much time learning the quircks and dialing them in. The appeal of the simplicity of an amp that you just plug in and it sounds fantastic is just to much to resist. I hate wasting practice time trying to get what I'm looking for and never being happy.
Couldn't agree more. I have a 4 knob orange lunchbox amp and it's impossible to get a bad sound. Whereas I have a hundred plugins that also sounds great but takes an endless amount of tweaking to dial them in.
That’s why software like neural dsp is so good. In case of the Tone King model, it’s as simple as the amp that it emulates. Just a few knobs and great sound without any of the problems that you mention. As for tube amps, I feel like it’s not such a bright future. Tubes are difficult to manufacture and not friendly to the environment. It’s unlikely that there will be new factories making tubes. I had a few valve amplifiers and I understand why you like them, but there is nothing wrong with the new stuff. Sounds great and it’s easy to use if you want it to be.
@@dalecooper3994 thats the great thing about music. There is room for everybody's opinion and everyone can make something amazing with gear they believe in.
I disagree, that was the case 5 years ago, now every new digital gear moddeler plugin you name it, tends to be super simple and user friendly while being very minimalist . Although they can be very detailed and "complicated" (only if you choose to). Tube amps will be there forever but no way they are gonna get more popularity than the constant evolving digital gear IMO
All that I have to say is, thank goodness for all of the great amps of the past three decades because without them, we wouldn’t have all of the fantastic amp sims of today.
I think you hit the nail on the head! I am somebody who only owns digital gear, mainly cuz it's what works best for my situation (financially and logistically). However, I know very well that the amps of decades past are what paved the way - everything digital is just a reproduction of the classic analog tube amps of yesterday.
Yes and no. With digital you can have weird setups that you just couldn’t do with amps and cabs. Also with modellers you can make a model that behaves differently to how a transistor or tube amp would. Weird transformer saturation, noise, different gain slopes, biases, etc.
@@cdavidlake2 All the real innovation, that people now try to copy with emulation, has happened with people using real amps. At least for me, i want the original thing, the source of that innovation. There is nothing better than the real thing. It's the difference of making love to a woman, or to your hand. Wanking is an emulation of a woman. Emulation only gets you so far.
I will always love Amps. The tactile nature of these beautiful versatile creators of tone will never be surpassed. The smell, the physical warmth they kick out, the glow of the tubes, the outright pleasure of plugging your guitar into the front of the Amp and disengaging the standby switch.
Respectfully, the tactile-natured tone is replaced and surpassed on recordings on a minutely basis. I understand that's an opinion, but if you poll people who don't play guitar you'll find the statement to be statistically accurate I think. As a producer and engineer, the days that me or my clients choose a real amp in a blind comparison are long gone. It's only the older players that are really holding onto them. Kinda like with cars that have pedal clutches and whatnot. Also there's something that a lot of guitar players don't get to experience a lot: playing anything that loud is really fun. Put your favorite modeler through a nice touring production rig and stand at FOH. Honestly that's like even a step above a tube amp. But to each their own for sure. Guitar players are the most superstitious bunch I know so do whatever you got to do to get it up and get in the mood lol :)
@user-ri3gh6yb5k I'd reccomend something like a hx stomp or dream 65. OR whatever. No idea what a "throw and go" gig is, but my assumption is its a festival type thing in which case- use the backline. Or i dunno, a church setup in a parking lot or something? In which case- hx stomp or whatever. I dunno if you're talking about like working or like fun jam with the homies. Play an amp if you want man I don't care lol. No one is blaming boomers for tube amps btw not sure the angle there. A 50lb+ amp that needs to be at 95db to get a neutral tone isn't really convenient ever unless there is no PA. But play a tube amp man live your best life. I'm a working musician my needs might be different than yours. My gigs usually have monitors.
I have a 5 Watt class A amp; I've found it sounds and feels best when given time to warm up. The quality of the valves can have an impact too. If you compared a digital simulation when you first turned it on there might not be much difference, but when it's warmed up, after about an hour, there's a vibrancy and warmth. The speaker interacting with the room is another thing. I'm all for digitally enhancing the sound, especially with reverbs. That's my experience; others may have a different experience.
I love your recent videos Rob. There will always be a place for old gear. What I like today is that people can get a great tone and experience for not a lot of money. No matter if you are poor or rich you can follow your dreams, it´s cool!
Playing a cranked tube amp is an experience. It moves me in a way digital platforms have not managed to quite recreate. I appreciate the accessibility and the tremendous advances that have been made in the digital realms - especially the clarity of recording and the vast array of tones and effects at our fingertips. But for me, nothing quite compares to the real thing. It’s like an extra magic that you can’t put into words. Interesting to think about where things will go tho.
Nothing in quality guitar tech seems to disappear. There is something about "vintage" and LowFi that will always be with us. The greats just keep going.
In ten years I have gone from 50w tube heads and pedals, to full digital modelling with FRFR, then back to a combination of a 20W tube head and using a modeller as my pedals and running real cabs and this is my favourite setup. There’s something about the feel of a tube amp and that lovely warm glow of the tubes.
I agree. I will use apps and modelers and IR's etc in certain recordings and they sound damn good in a mix...but live I want a real tube amp and 4x12 for that tone and feel that just interacts and responds in a way that I just can't get with anything digital...yet ;) 🤘🤘🤘
As a boutique amp and pedal builder I think there will always be a portion of players who will buy and play tube amps, just like there will always be people who love old muscle cars. The digital tech keeps getting better and better which is great. There’s room for new and old tech!
The big portion of still tube amp and pedals I see around me are mostly people over 50. There is still some "purist" in the youngish people (I would say between 35 and 50) but most people goes to what is easy and sound good anyway. There mighy be a point where the public for tube amp is soo limited that it does not make sence anymore to build some. Plus I can see on the venue where I play that the people running those place are less and less welcome to those big amps, some are even forbiding it, because they know that there is smaller and quieter solutions. That might be an accelerator for change.
i think youre wrong. in 20-30 years when the classic rock generation is dead i dont think new guitar players will care at all as long as their tone is good, and software is already the cheapest and easiest way to achieve that. boutique anything in audio is nearly always all snake oil and hifi grade bullshido. you dont hear amps or guitars, you hear speakers and thats what makes the biggest impact.
This was a very interesting video. I'm seeing more and more people using modellers live, and if that trend continues I doubt we'll see high wattage amps stay relevant. With that said real amps will always have a place, especially in studios. Personally I like both real amps and software for different reasons.
I sold my hand wired Morgan and hand wired Marshall amps, £4800 worth of boutique pedals and purchased a Fractal Audio FM9 and couldn’t be happier. Not only does it do all the sounds I ever want with all the amp types I could ever need, but it has touch and feel of a real valve amp. Plus the reverbs and effects are world class. My back is a lot happier to. I loved my valve amps but I could never really turn them up enough to get the best out of them. I am a digital guy from now on. 😊
I could never find a modeling or small size tube amp that actually gave me the feel and sound of a real tube amp but at home volumes. And finally the Quilter Super Block UK actually does it perfectly. I am happy for the first time in my life!!
Where modelers really shine over amps is consistency of tone. The typical guitar player dials in his amp so that it sounds good to him on stage. What comes out of the PA & what the other band members hear is entirely different. What comes out of my Helix to my monitor sounds exactly like FOH. Stage volumes are lower and my bandmates can hear as much of me that they want in their monitors.
I remember those heady days of carrying large cabs up and down dodgy fire escapes. These days I'm doing solo acoustic gigs with portable PAsor recording electric at home. My only amp now is a Fender Super Champ XD, which is actually fairly loud, but gives me my fix of air moving. I love the idea of the portability and variety of apps for live playing, but like with my acoustic PA & pedals, I need knobs and switches rather than fiddly menus.
Amps and Effects Pedals disappeared for me about 20 years ago when I started using Modelers, currently the HX Stomp. The Guitar is a particularly good "Interface" for creating and performing music. We still need an interface that we can control with our feet, so some form of Floor Buttons Unit, and Expression/Volume Pedal is likely to remain relevant. Physical Amps and Effects will become more niche items, and Modelers will take advantage of advances in DSP and Software that make them more versatile, affordable, portable, and powerful tools.
I started with the Original Chameleon... never looked back... done line 6 for about 20 years now... the PODGO, especially after the newest upgrade, is absolutely amazing...
This evolution is what brought me back to guitar playing after 20 years. I moved away from it because it was just too hard to recreate the sounds I wanted. Not anymore, and lo and behold, I bought 4 guitars in 3 years!
i also made the switch back to tubes, it is 100% better and anyone who disagress is not good enough to hear the nuances of guitar, or are lying to themselves to justify the convienience and price of their purchase. Digital is not even close, I am a young guy so it's not just cork-sniffing nostalgia. (Tried a Kemper for over a year and was never contempt)
It's about economics. Spending $1k-5k on a good valve amp that does "one" thing is just cost prohibitive for most people when you factor in the other $1k-2k just to get a quality pedal setup assembled. Now you spend $1200-$1600 and get all you'll ever need. The convenience is unparalleled too.
@@robschaller9061funny how most people can't tell a difference in a blind test. There will always be people who are greater human beings due to their superhuman hearing 🙄
@@robschaller9061 Sounds just as good though. Call me crazy but I prefer software now. My friend has a 5150 and it sounds nice when loud but lots of feedback and he doesn’t move the knobs. All that money for 1 setting 🤦🏻♂️ With my plugins no feedback at all even if max volume and you can’t tell guitar is on. Sounds great and the same on any volume. Have you seen how amazing some captures sound on NAM? I doubt you’ll be able to tell in a mix. Best of all saved so much space and no neighbors to complain. Off the bat can get amazing tones. Look how amazing these YT artists sound without a traditional amp. Obviously it’s the future. The presets they use sound like studio made recordings. Have you tried NAM (neural amp modeler)?
@@robschaller9061 I never said it sounded "the same." However, it sounds so good that no one in the audience will ever know (or care about) the difference, and the benefits far outweigh the downsides. Blind tests have shown that the differences are pretty much academic at this point.
I really feel for the kids and young adults who are never going to collaborate in a room with a bunch of folks with some volume going and it being probably too hot or too cold..lol. A huge part of music for a society is the collaborative, community nature of it. Trading files and video cloud sessions are just sad to me.
@@carsonelliot1147 I don’t find community in long distance, virtual communication. Community is face to face, sharing a space. Being there for someone beyond a thumbs up, we got you bro through a DM or live stream. Physical human interaction. We are sorely lacking in that in many aspects of life and it shows. The community of regular live performance, the community of an actual scene in a city or regional area. It’s fantasy to think any of that isn’t a shadow of what it used to be. Followers on social media or subscribers on a YT channel is not a meaningful community.
Rob has maintained his passion and enthusiasm, but has gained clarity, maturity, and humility. He seems so much more grounded and I appreciate that genuine shift.
Really enjoying these reflective videos of your journey, and how guitar has changed as a whole since you have been in the industry. Being a pioneer of the guitar TH-cam thing, I would love to hear your thoughts on how the guitar youtube scene has changed over the years to where we are today.
The Boss IR-2 seems like a must have for most guitarists. A real problem solver for very little money. My problem is that digital seems only there to replicate what has come before. I' not sure it is going to help any guitarist find their sound in the same way that buying an old school amp will. Limitations and flaws are where humans get creative and you end up finding YOUR unique solutions.
I agree. The new digital tools are all based on the ‘old’ stuff. The only thing that it has to be is easy. Everything is already there underneath a button. Mostly limitations are the fundament of all creative solutions.
A huge chunk of analogue gear also just replicates what has already come before. How many Klon clone pedals are there? How many tube screamer clone pedals are there? How many expensive boutique amps are really just a little twist on an old Fender/Vox/Marshall circuit? How many boutique guitar companies make copies of Strats and Teles? (G&L, Suhr, etc) Every year Fender and Gibson release reissues of their golden era guitars of the 50s and 60s. People pay 10 grand for a brand new Les Paul that's essentially a perfect copy of a 1959 model and is even pre-aged and beat up to make it seem like it's really a vintage guitar. PRS's 2 most popular models (the McCarty 594 and the Silver Sky) are copies of Les Pauls and Strats respectively, but with minor improvements. PRS has done a ton of innovations over the years and yet his most popular guitars are throwbacks to old Fender/Gibson designs. The sad reality is that a huge chunk of guitar players don't actually want gear that does something completely innovative and new. They want high quality throwbacks to old stuff. Point is: most analogue products don't actually innovate that much these days. Most of them are just perfect copies of old stuff or close copies of old stuff with minor improvements.
Almost half of the models in the IR-2 (the best ones IMHO) are "BOSS" models that you couldn't reproduce with a real amp. Many of the Neural DSP models are the same. They are not "captures" or emulations. Younger players that may not have a reference to vintage amps will use whatever sounds best to them.
As an electronics guy I find it very satisfying to know how to skew a few things about in an tube amp to change attack, compression and equlization. It's the hands on thing and it's got a certain satisfying feeling to it. But when I'm playing I don't give a damn where I've got the wonderful sound from, and on the recording no-one can tell. Have fun, play!
I’ve moved the same direction. I’m a guitarist in an 80’s alt rock cover band these days, and I made the switch to digital. I picked the Helix because it fit my budget and I liked the workflow, and I’ve set it up kind of like I would have a real amp; I have three different setups for different kinds of tones with the flexibility to turn on and off different dialed in stomps in the set, rather than making a bespoke tone for every song. And you know what? It’s freaking fantastic. I roll into a gig with two guitars and the Helix, and my load in is done. I love how easy it is to set up and how consistent everything is. Sound guys love just getting balanced outputs from me and keeping stage volume down. The audience has no idea that I’m digital, and you know what? They don’t care at all either. It’s really just a win/win for everybody at this point. Does it sound as good as my JCM900? Nah. Would I go back to lugging that thing up stairs, into dirty bars, and figuring out how to get it back into my car at the end of the night? Nope.
This. I also play in a cover band, and everything you wrote expressed perfectly why i love my amp simulator pedal. Carrying even a 5 watt tube amp and cab from venue to venue got old really fast.
My day job is Software development, I can already envisage where this going, from what I see and use in AI, you will have an interface not much bigger that a jack plug that will connect to your phone and be able to emulate the sound of any player's guitar rig, on any performance, from the AI listening to everything that player has ever recorded, the AI will listen to the acoustics of where you are playing and the signal from what guitar you are playing to make the adjustments. Dedicated hardware will be defunct, only hardware will be the speakers and amplification.
Both definitely have a place. The tech in the last even 5 years is just mind blowing but trends revert, recycle, and evolve plus people have nostalgia. Music is everything and done in amazing ways. Also can’t believe I’ve been watching your vids for near on 15years now 😂. Have a great Christmas.
As a professional luthier and guitar repair guy, I am not looking forward to having guitars in my shop with plugins issues that I can't tell where they are coming from or how to fix them. It's already the case with onboard circuit boards with micro soldering that are not designed for repairs. I hate saying to my customers : "sorry but I can't fix this". We are putting out on the market a lot of gear that nobody knows how to repair.
Great video Rob. Just discovered you! Instant fan. Great playing and super interesting summary of the situation we now face. I hope next we get shoes with inbuilt footswitches 🤣 👟
I have both ends of the spectrum: a Boss Katana and a Fender ‘57 Tweed Deluxe. If I was going to record something it’s easy to DI the Katana into the DAW. It has lots of colours that can be added to a palette. However, when I’m just playing for the sake of it, give me the tweed deluxe any day. Why? It “feels” amazing to play. The connection to the instrument/amp/speaker is immediate and provides a feedback loop that is inspiring. Each tool has its place…
I love tube amps. Or rather, the sound and response of tube amps. What I also love is not having to cart heavy gear on a dolly before a show - there's a reason it's called "load-in." When 99% percent of the audience is just enjoying the music, they're doing so because it sounds good and don't care what you're playing. Being able to walk in the front door of the venue with a guitar case and a small pedalboard and get all your sounds reliably and safely (a bandmate who is an electrician once measured the power at one popular venue at 128 volts!) without frying your gear is just amazing. That stated, the Rockerverb 100 through it's 4X12 is unmatched for what I like. There's room for both.
Every unit will have its own character whether digital or analog. I believe what will always distinguish dedicated guitar amp circuits with speakers is the intent and creativity with which they are crafted. I love my TONEX pedal but my little tube amp literally moves me or the air around me. It’s a visceral experience that will be impossible to replicate digitally. BUT you can get really really close…
Just got around to watching this. I'm a bass player, and some of what I do is very effects-heavy, and I'm very particular about my pedal sounds. I've flipped between real pedals and digital modelling units for 20+ years now. What I will say is that the small size and routing flexibility of modern modelling units is a major selling point for me, but I can still absolutely hear the difference with certain pedals. As such, my current pedalboard is a hybrid of modelling and analogue pedals. I feel like things are getting closer to being able to replace everything with a single box... it's just that different boxes do some things better than others. For some modellers, it takes too long to get a decent tone and I'd rather just spend time playing! When I'm shaping a new sound, I still prefer to play around with analogue pedals until I have a sound I'm happy with... and at that point, I'll see if I can recreate it on a modeller.
Rob, you are exactly right, I'm a designer and that's the natural progression of technology: miniaturization and integration. Everyday lighting is a good example, although no LED matches the magic glow of halogen. Great to have options, tube amps like vinyl will never die !
Great video as always :) personally I'm all for change as well, especially if those changes allow for new players and potential legends in guitar history to be born in the future. I simply hope guitar, amp and pedal companies will adapt and not refuse this change (though it seems like companies are pretty open to the idea) so that we can keep having the option of choosing "old" gear if we want to, or plug-ins, just as those revolutions happened in photography, cinema, and other creative businesses. Both types of products can easily cohabit in my opinion
Keep Making These Type Videos ,, i don't think pedals and amps will go away ... i think musicians love variety of all sorts for all types of music making and sound designs especially when it comes to recording original songs ... i am now 60 and remember watching you on Andertons channel many moons ago .. we musicians do evolve over time but nothing compares to the good old fashion old school Rock & Roll and how it was done back then ... "Jamming On High .. We Must Keep Going " 👍👉🎸 #StayThirsty #BeHappy
I lived and worked in China for several years, where the fundamental requirement of my guitar rig there was that it had to fit in the back of a taxi. I bought a Tiny Terror head and matching 1x12 cab and used to use that for about 90% of the gigs I played there. Used with a Blackstar HT-Metal pedal the sound was fantastic, and more than loud enough to gig with. If it needed extra volume I'd just mic it through the PA or plug into a bigger cab (most Chinese venues I played in provided at least some kind of backline gear). Back in the UK I'm using a Blackstar HT Stage 100 MkII through a Marshall 2x12 that's permanently set to the 10 Watts setting, as I just don't need anything louder, and in many respects I wish I'd just brought the Tiny Terror back with me. I also have some experience of using modellers, and while they're much better now than they used to be and they're brilliant for recording, they still don't completely capture the responsiveness of a decent amp and live I'd hate to be reliant on the PA and sound engineer to be able to hear myself onstage. If the monitors aren't up to the job you're screwed, so it's always beneficial to have some form of personal backline.
This worries me to no end. Im friends with young guys and gals, they all run plug ins and modeling amps. While they have come a long way, they cant replace a valve amp, no way. Maybe Im just old but nothing beats cranking an old Marshall, Vox, Boogie etc.
So basically guitars are going to become like Frank Zappa had his guitars in the late 1970s. He had different OD circuits, filter effects installed in his guitar. There is a clip of Zappa playing Black Napkins on the Mike Douglas show with that particular guitar. He plugged into a Pignose amp and had all the extra stuff he needed already installed inside the guitar.
Same here. I work in IT and computers were amazing when I was a kid. But they got completely demystified for me. Simple electric and mechanical devices such as analog cameras, tube amps, etc. still have some marvel surrounding it. And it's almost impossible to get a bad tone from a good amp. There's also always the "how much is this tone is my own achievement and how much is it the computer's?" question.
I think it’s great that computer programs are sounding so good these days and can be useful, but I will always prefer to send the signal into a tube Amplifier , because there is something just so special even in a one watt tube amp like my Black star HT-1 and my Vox AC-4 TV. Those apps and computer programs may sound great but there’s something about the raw sonics of valves that bring the lower and upper harmonics to another place even at low levels, so I prefer to even send great digital signals into tube amplification. whether through the effects loop or straight in ,.it always sounds better through tubes! Sending it through two low wattage amplifiers sounds like you’re in a stadium even at one watt settings at minimum volumes! The sonic power in the upper and lower harmonics just seems more enveloping to my ears.👂 Cheers Old Chap! And well done through the years!
I like to wrangle with an instrument, taking what I've got, getting acquainted with its idiosyncrasies, and trying to get the best out of it. Character comes from working with the quirks. I found the same with effects pedals. Experimenting with what works in the real world. I did try early multi fx boxes, but found that already there were far too many parameters with no real world restraints: this made looking for a personal tone a bit like trying to make sense of a lucky dip. I feel the same way about all the modern simulations. At least with effects pedals one has welcome limitations and something tangible which helps memorising one's preferred settings.
Did my first gig tonight without amps, cabs, or effects pedal board. Used an HX Stomp into Front of House with In Ear Monitors. It’s was awesome and there’s no reason for me to go back. 🤟🏻
IMHO any good audiophile can tell a sim from the real thing. The texture of the sound can't be achieved digitally. There's no replacement for displacement.
I'm in my mid 20's and want to move forward as one of the tube amp guys. People will forget and be reminded of how awesome they are once they truly forget
FoH mixer here. IEMs are the transitional gear right now with digital consoles and wifi and apps for smartphones/tablets, and I won’t be surprised when the boss pedals start showing up. It’s tough enough, however, with these to keep the batteries all charged that battery tech will have to step up in a big way for your everything guitar to succeed. Or maybe we finally will get wireless power…or everything charges like a cell phone with the induction coils…
My dad has a POD line 6 and although is kinda old, still sounds amazing for what it is. My favorite thing about it, is that is super convenient, especially when it's time to record. The same sound you modeled/created is what you hear in the recording! The real amp is really great to play at your house but it's a pain in the *ss when you have to set the mic to get a proper sound. Depending on where you put it, you may have a really different sound to the one you hear in the room. However, despite knowing all this. I still want a Marshall 100w with a big cabinet hahaha
I get the nostalgia; I own (and occasionally use) a turntable/record player, a mechanical type writer, a wind-up mechanical alarm clock (Junghans Trivox Silentic), and a fountain pen. Why? Because these things are reminiscent of an earlier era in which man and machine worked together to create. Yet, I would wholeheartedly agree, that we will someday soon be able to get wonderful tones from an electric guitar with integratted cab + amp simulaiton.
Loving these series of videos! You are one of my favorite youtubers and players Rob, and you have a true God given talent! Keep on rockin’ for Jesus, and God bless!
I sold 2 100-Watt Marshall heads, and 3 Orange amps on Reverb last week (along with about 30 pedals, I guess you could say I saw the writing on the wall) Believe me, I cherished this stuff…but the time has come, and as you know, the days of needing to provide your own stage volume are behind us. I’m getting old and the time has come last week, although I’m making my own 1x12 and 2x12 cabs still, and I still LOVE speaker cabinets, guitar, bass, car and home audio, I just love speakers. One of those amps was a micro dark, but I still have my orange terror stamp on my board, but I’m only using the FX return with a Boss Ir200… The tone I get lately is actually incredible, and I don’t regret minimizing my rig at all, but I will miss the days of being young and hauling massive tube heads around
I went to a metal festival earlier this year and it seemed to be split 50/50 on whether the guitarist was playing through an actual amplifier with cab or playing through a digital board going through the PA. I recently moved over to playing plug-ins and it’s so easy to use. There is also a plug-in for just about everyone. Metal probably has the most variety so far in terms of selection but the other genres of music are starting to hone in on this. Neural DSP has a very solid selection
Nothing will replace the simple concept of setting a couple of guitar/bass amps on either side of a set of drums and having a go. A PA and reinforced/ rerouted sound will always be SECONDARY to this, because simple is easier than complicated
I tend to think that digital is very convenient but has no soul like a tube. an it will really depends on the style one wants to produce and their personal connection to what puts a smile on ya dial.
Some serious nostalgia in this video chappers, I haven't watched a video of yours for maybe 5+years, since you moved to Brighton or shortly thereafter and the MLB didnt really work out and Dorje kinda disappeared, but prior to that, I'd watched you from the start near enough, you and Dmanlamius (sadly no longer active) taught me how to play Guitar and Bass, then you and Captain Lee taught me about gear and what to buy. I just wanted to say thank you man, I've met you, Rabea and Dave many times as a teenager, but now on the wrong side of 25 and my hair line becoming like yours, I love the nostalgia and warmness this video gave me
Great video, Rob! But…BUT… For those who think new tech is a savior, I have two words for you: planned obsolescence. In 50 or 100 years, many of the mid 20th century classic amps will still be chugging. These new devices will not.
I recently got a PRS Archon 50. It’s a great tube amp. It inspired new songs. I plan on recording them digitally. The future includes both. At least for a while.
The problem with all the plug-ins is that no one seems to have that signature sound any more, in my opinion. All the new generation of players just fire up a tone and roll with it. Back in the day, guys had to mess with the dials and switches on amps and pedals to get the sound they wanted. When you heard any of the great players from the 70s through to the 90s and early 2000s, you knew who you were listening to pretty easily. You listen to any of these newer guys, and it sounds amazing, but it could be any one of a thousand people. No one seems to have their own voice anymore.
@71 years old, I have come to the conclusion I need a Fractal FM9 and a Fender FR12. All I could ever want or need. And this is from one who has owned MANY tube amps 🤔
Twice I dived into modelling with Helix first and then Fractal adn twice I went back to valve amps. The modelers are a lot of fun and sound really good, and in the mix it's hard to tell the difference BUT the feel of playing your guitar through a real amp cannot be replicated by digital gear.
After celebrating my 65th bday with a gig, after which two bandmates had to help me pack up my fx board, TH-cam suggested a vid of a WIRELESS PEDAL and I bought that, MOOER P1 and F4. Literally went from dual Ampeg 1970's tube rigs, MXR RMC EH, to a fly rig w THE Amp and Neodynium speakers. And (after the learning curve) I never sounded better. Truly impressed, and so's my back
now this was a great vid which i appreciate. Starting out many moons ago with a 20watt Star Fire amp/guitar pack, various combos, various heads and 4x12s and now just pedals. I appreciate the journey. And this is a reminder to all where it came from.
I think it just means we can have the best bits of all of them. Modellers are so good now no one can really tell the difference without having a wild guess. I think it also shows that you dont need anything more than a 30 watt amp to gig with if its being miced up or has a DI out built in. The choices are endless now.
"End of an Era"...YES! "Worrying Conclusion"...NO! The concept of "All-In-One" is always attractive to some (and has been around for quite some time); but so far, it has never really proven itself for practical use, save for those that re-up with all-new gear on an annual basis. All MY tone is in my hands, guitar and pedal board...leaving only the need for some kind of external sound reinforcement (solid-state amp,/PA/mixing board + headphones). That's FREEDOM!
What is really interesting (or scary) to see in the future is if this will generate new sounds. So far, all modellers have - as the name suggests - tried to model existing amps as accurately as possible. But what if you tried to make an impossible amp that can only exist in algorithm? This could go two ways: completely new sounds which could result in weird sounds just because you can (like synths in the 80s or autotune in the late 90s/00s) OR amps that sound similar but behave differently in their response or even filter out unwanted tones.
Line 6 has multiple amps in helix that they've designed solely through modeling and have never been actually built. The ventoux is probably my favorite, and it certainly reacts differently from a standard bassman or something similar.
There’s a fascinating psychoacoustic rabbit hole to go down here and I think it’s really exciting - it opens up the possibility of guitar-based genres in the future we haven’t even dreamt of. And while we might not be buying tube amps, I think the scientific and technical know-how of today’s amp world will be shaping the future with those as-yet-unimagined sounds that take the unique characteristics of a human being playing a guitar and take them to another level, just like those vintage amps did when they were first conceived.
I've been playing 42 years and also lived the whole evolution. I still hurt from carrying a Mesa 100 watt head and 4x12 up and down the tight stairway of our practice space as a 18-20~somewthing. I went to an ISO cab with a 1x12 (but no fake wall of stacks) and that made life easier on my back. I even went through a rack period when your pre-amp, power-amp, delay, reverb, tuner, power conditioner, etc were all in a rolling rack unit. I went back to a combo - a nearly 100 Lbs Mesa 2x12 forever. I went back and forth from digital to analog several times - Line 6 HD500, back to a pedalboard & a tube amp. I've actually settled on a rig that seems to have cured my Gear Acquisition Syndrome (except for guitars), since 2018 I've used a Kemper (Now a Kemper Stage), but running the Left & Right line level outputs into the effects return of two 1x12 tube combos. I get the best of both worlds - the versatility of stepping on one button and having as many variables as I want change, to play a song by stepping through pre-programmed presets, then up a bank for the next song, plus the tube power amp warmth and real Celestion V-Type speakers. I think the number of amp manufacturers may shrink, but there will always be a place for the best of the best, well known and cutting edge brands. Even though I've settled on a system and kept it for 5 years, I will probably buy a Friedman or Morgan amp in the next couple of years. Or maybe an impulse buy on the Marshall Studio Vintage 20H. Nothing beats plugging into an amp and jamming, but the days of 100+watt heads are no longer needed when even guys like Iron Maiden are playing miked 1x12 iso cabs behind the stage decor. The one tech I'm surprised hasn't gotten more traction is the Synergy amplifiers. That's a really cool idea, a main head chassis with a power amp where you can exchange and switch between branded pre-amp modules from famous amp makers. I actually thought that would become more common, but I've yet to see one in the wild (in someone's rig).
Tough question. I grew up with real amps, and still own a few. Love them to bits. Same with analog pedals. Thát said, I've recorded through a Helix, and I just couldn't tell the difference with my trusty Marshall JVM head. *AND* a few virtual pedals thrown in. Where's all this going? To me it's depending on how many sounds you'll really need. As a gigging musician in various styles I can still use my real amp because per gig I rely on perhaps 4 or 5 sounds - not counting fx pedals - from my amp (Laney IRT Studio, 15W, and brilliant) using its 3 channels and built-in boost. This runs through a single 1x12" Marshall cabinet. So all's nice and reasonably portable. So, question is: How many sounds do you really need?? Yes, the new modellers are phenomenal, but I wouldn't like to spend many days figuring out the minute differences between thousands of amp/cab/mic combinations. I'd probably pick a handful of presets that sounds right to me, and delete the rest as I'll never use them anyway. And *NOW* when you compare the cost of gear, I'm actually better off with the real deal than with a very expensive Kemper - which incidentally will still need a power amp to play small gigs where in-ear systems simply won't be useful at all.... It's the musical equivalent of buying a state of the art kitchen with every known appliance installed, just to boil an egg.
I'm a pedal guy. That's what I'm known as down at my local music store. But they can be a pain to put together as a chain/board. I'm looking to get a Sonicake Matribox II just because I can build so many different pedal chains in one small unit that reflect all the different genres of music I enjoy.
I started playing guitar in the mid 2000s and modeling/multi-effects were part of my set up from practically day one. Stuck with a lot of the Vox Valvetronix pedals and combos for the early years of my playing before jumping into the Line 6 Dream rig and later Helix. For me, having a wide arsenal of sounds available in a compact setup was essential to my growth as a musician and finding my sound. Couldn’t splurge on a big collection of pedals or amps, so it was best that I could cover a lot of ground with a single amp and multieffect. Eventually once I got older and was at one time trying to pursue music as a career I got curious if I was missing anything and built a traditional stompbox/tube amp set. All it did was make me feel boxed into a smaller sound pallet and made me miss the flexibility my other rigs had afforded me. Granted, I was never a “Use 40 different amp patches and 50 different effects in a set” kind of player. I usually set up a fixed amp/pedalboard on a single patch to do 90% of a gig. But gig to gig it gave me tons of options for a tone that best served the situation. Not to mention how much more inconvenient it was to practice along with music (I’d always rather be able to throw headphones on and mix my guitar with the music in the box). Plus most of the bands I played in never got that loud. Blasting stage volume just made it harder for vocalists to hear themselves and unnecessarily pissed off FOH techs. I started wearing ear plugs and IEMs (when not at the mercy of sub par house tech) to try and preserve my hearing, and in headphones I can honestly never tell the difference between a modeled e609 on an AC15 or the “real” mic and amp. I truly don’t think I missed out on anything by learning this craft during the death of tube amps. I’m just too used to the sound of modelers (and how far they’ve come since my first one in 2006) and I’m not in a lifestyle/living situation where I can really use a tube amp any more. It’s sat in the basement for well over a year and a half now.
I have gone back and forth a few times between modelling and amps and with the recent acquisition of a TM Pro and FR12 I am now convinced I won't ever own or need an amp or pedalboard again. At 52 I have played it all and after COVOD and the tube shortage in Canada I really think we have jumped the shark.
As a bassist we've always had larger heavier amps, in the 1980s a 500w bass amp and a 2x15" cab could both cost and weigh the same as a small car. The dream was always to play the venues that had hired a sound engineer who wanted to DI the bass, not dragging our rigs around was a genuine luxury when we could get away with it. We've greatly benefitted from improvements in amp technology and my current class D amp is 700w, 1u high and weighs about the same as a loaf of bread. My current 2×12" has neodymium speakers and I can carry it upstairs one handed. Personally I will never be interested in IEMs, the feel of the power of sheer bass volume rumbling through the stage is too joyous for me to give up without a fight, but I'm glad I no longer need to be a weightlifter to feel it.
I'm always going to have a real amp or two around just for the power and the feel of it but the Boss IR-2 kinda blew me away. So much stuff crammed into the classic form factor with 9 volt battery power is amazing. I want one.
The only issue I have with modeling is that it is difficult to find models of the vintage amps I love. A Gibson EH-150. Or an Ampeg J-12R reverbojet. The presence those have in the room and the relationship those have with the guitar and player are incredible.
At the start of the 90’s for a few years I worked in a music shop in Great Yarmouth, I remember when Vai’s first Jem came out and a bunch of other cool guitars, I got my Ibanez at the same time and still have it. Still though, rocking a Les Paul on an old Marshall dual stack (was it JCM800? I can’t remember). I even had my old vintage two by twelve with the grey material checked out by Jim Marshall’s son check it out - I’ve still got a Christmas card from Jim Marshall. I got One of the first Marshall ‘valvestate’ power amp for my rack with the gold fronted JMP1 (I think it was called) pre-amp. Many days spent playing Vai, Satriani, AC/DC. Those were the days
For the most part, plugins/modellers/profilers still need a real amp to be based on. As long as amp companies are still doing new things and not just treading water, there’s always going to be a space for them IMO -Toby
I'm a Co-Owner of a boutique amplifier company- 3rd Power Amplification... I don't see tube amps going extinct as long as there are people who carry the torch. Digital vs Analog aside, there is so much to be said about finding your unique sound through throwing current through tubes & analog components.. At 3rd Power, we try to achieve a level of performance through tube amps that not only SOUNDS great, but also gives the player the ability to translate the emotions inside, to audible sound through the speakers. I, for one, have toured with pretty much every convenient solution & always wish I had my tube amplifier with me. All this to be said, 3rd Power will be around creating inspirational tube amplifiers for the market as long as I'm living- and I hope to pass that torch to the next generation- its a passion and love that I can not let die.
Having lugged around 50+ lb amps and cabinets for the better part of 40 something years, I really appreciate my Quilter SuperUK and that I can plug straight into the p/a. This being said, one must look for examples of what is old is new in that Vinyl LPs are now outselling CD's. I think that the smaller gear and plug in market will have it's day and carve out its niche, but there will always be a place for folks wanting traditional tube/solid state amps and the different styles of pedals at their fingertips. There is something real and special about playing through a good solid amp behind you. Great video, Rob!
Amps are great for recording and the feel on stage, but do agree portable rigs make life easier.... I caught the train to a gig the other month with just guitar and pedal board... makes life alot easier. I think pedals and pedal amps will always be needed though, having foot Control stops interruption of hands playing the melody.
I'd played through a Hot Rod Deluxe for many years with nothing but the channel switcher and found that I was ready for pretty much any gig. I felt like, with precious little effort, I could get "my tone" predictably and controlably. As I got older, the weight of the amp and its painful volume got the better of me, especially when gigging. And so, I've spent the last five years or so with a small class D amp and a slew of dirt pedals trying my best to recapture the simplicity and purity of the HRD. The $39 Joyo American Sound pedal gets really close, for me. And I'm sure there's an ampless IR solution in my future. But, I can't escape the fear that - one day - I'll just be an old man in a nursing home, sitting on the floor, playing an A chord over and over, and twiddling a knob and getting "oh so very close" to what I'm listening for.
I love all the new tech. It's truly amazing but I'm sticking with a couple of old-ish guitars and my home made low wattage Dumble clone. Because it's the right thing for me and I love it to bits. One thing that hasn't changed through the years is it's about finding what you love and having the self-confidence to stick with it for as long as it feels right and ignore anyone who tries to tell you to love something else instead.
I've seen a few too many cases of friends getting even older 20W (non switchable) amps and big cabs and not being able to play them at home. So I do believe that the convenience of modellers, the Sparks etc will be the common thing for most players. Tube amps and cabs will still be aspirational, but many won't ever make that step. Same somewhat with pedals - where you can get a whole set via an app, cheaper than a single boutique pedal. But the rise of budget, mini pedals is fighting against that to some extent. I do have a modelling amp with access to a bunch of built in effects and patches and a footswitch controller, but I've actually started to build a budget pedalboard and my brain seems to work better with the "stomp on this to get that" rather than remembering a patch. By the way - anyone else get Eric Clapton during the Derek and the Dominoes days with young Chappers and the Orange amp demo phase?
My mom used to say, " Old people don't like change"! How true, I'm 68, time for me to get out of the way! Go ahead and progress, I will always love loud tube amps and PAF buckers!
That old stuff is going to the vintage gear market. That's it. As for the companies, they're becoming boutique products, which means some shrinkage, but I think they can survive. It's going to be some time before we guitarists take that one foot out of the past -- if we ever do.
Great video as always rob. Big fan of your content always have been . But love 8.16 in to this video. The Holstein pils beer crate stack. That’s literally me and my mates 😂
As someone who has played with live amps professionally for over 30 years but also sometimes uses amp simulators when recording, I have to say that there is no modern p.a. speaker that will ever take the place of guitar speakers. You can use all the simulation plug ins you want and it will never ever move air in the same way real guitar speakers do. PA speakers are way too efficient, not tuned for guitar and respond much too quickly for dynamic touch. Every live show I have ever been to or played on that does not use real guitar cabinets sounds like crap to me. I think there are generations of concert goers who unfortunately do not know the difference. There never will be anything that could take the place of my Fender vibroking unless it's another great amp with great speakers.
Still it goes round in circles....... Or is there another twist in this tale? Say, dedicated laptop, power amp (with IR loader), holographic guitar links via neuro-pathic into this.
As a happy Variax owner and Helix user for all of my gigging needs, I think Line 6 are in a prime position to run with your line of thought, Helix inside a Variax would be a natural evolution of their product line!
I’m a retired cinematographer, and I still believe that 35mm motion picture film shot through an anamorphic lens is still the best quality, but the digital camera world offers budget friendly convenience, and while it lacks the quality of film, it gets the job done and few people can tell the difference. And more importantly, it opens up a whole world of options to kids and adults with a lot less cash. So I look forward to the future despite my nostalgia for old movie cameras, big V8 muscle cars, and giant tube amps.
Super interesting analogy because I started filming videos 18 years ago on little tape cameras
This is exactly the same, well done.
The thing about emulation is something has to first exist before you can emulate it, the trade off risk you end up running is getting sterile because you run out of things to emulate, same with the pedal argument, if you get rid of pedals you're constrained by the digital architecture you're working in, it might satisfy some but its not the pinnacle of creativity, which reminds me on the film point a lot of directors are now filming in digital for the flexibility then bouncing the footage down to film once they are happy editing and obviously it's a lot less expensive if you make a mistake, bottom line keep hold of your gear and keep it in good nick because it's only going to get more and more valuable over time.
@@123Andersonev Your assessment is only valid if you limit the digital realm to emulation. There are things with time based effects you can do digitally which no analog machine will ever be able to do. Synthesizers are another good example. We just have to get to a point where digital electronic craftings become desirable.
I am thinking kind of of the Line 6 "Insane" sound. Of course, it sounds like crap, but by now has a somewhat iconic legacy attached to it. We need more of that, but high quality and more desirable. But this will be hard, because we already have plentiful amplifiers, and using circuit emulation you can get near 100 % exact copies.
When using the STL Tones Josh Middleton Plugin, using the Multiwatt Rectifier, the mid and treble knobs behave exactly like the real deal. This tells me there is white box emulation (circuit emulation) whereas a lot of plugins just use a neural model of an amp and add a unique tonestack after the distortion.
I could talk for hours on this, but you might already getting the point I am trying to convey here :-)
I like this comparison! Just like people see the value in working with older, more labor intensive filmmaking gear I think the same will be true for guitar gear.
Maybe in 20 years time, kids will dust off their dad’s old Mesa Boogies and Marshalls and be inspired to make something cool with them!
I think there will always be some magic with analog gear, whether it’s guitar amps or 35mm cameras.
I think smaller tube amps are going to be to hottest thing for years to come. Digital gear is great but I think people are finding they waste too much time learning the quircks and dialing them in. The appeal of the simplicity of an amp that you just plug in and it sounds fantastic is just to much to resist. I hate wasting practice time trying to get what I'm looking for and never being happy.
Couldn't agree more. I have a 4 knob orange lunchbox amp and it's impossible to get a bad sound. Whereas I have a hundred plugins that also sounds great but takes an endless amount of tweaking to dial them in.
100% I find I spend most of the time scrolling through folders and not playing
That’s why software like neural dsp is so good. In case of the Tone King model, it’s as simple as the amp that it emulates. Just a few knobs and great sound without any of the problems that you mention. As for tube amps, I feel like it’s not such a bright future. Tubes are difficult to manufacture and not friendly to the environment. It’s unlikely that there will be new factories making tubes. I had a few valve amplifiers and I understand why you like them, but there is nothing wrong with the new stuff. Sounds great and it’s easy to use if you want it to be.
@@dalecooper3994 thats the great thing about music. There is room for everybody's opinion and everyone can make something amazing with gear they believe in.
I disagree, that was the case 5 years ago, now every new digital gear moddeler plugin you name it, tends to be super simple and user friendly while being very minimalist . Although they can be very detailed and "complicated" (only if you choose to).
Tube amps will be there forever but no way they are gonna get more popularity than the constant evolving digital gear IMO
All that I have to say is, thank goodness for all of the great amps of the past three decades because without them, we wouldn’t have all of the fantastic amp sims of today.
I think you hit the nail on the head! I am somebody who only owns digital gear, mainly cuz it's what works best for my situation (financially and logistically). However, I know very well that the amps of decades past are what paved the way - everything digital is just a reproduction of the classic analog tube amps of yesterday.
Great point: The future is emulation, not innovation.
Yes and no. With digital you can have weird setups that you just couldn’t do with amps and cabs. Also with modellers you can make a model that behaves differently to how a transistor or tube amp would. Weird transformer saturation, noise, different gain slopes, biases, etc.
@@cdavidlake2 All the real innovation, that people now try to copy with emulation, has happened with people using real amps. At least for me, i want the original thing, the source of that innovation. There is nothing better than the real thing.
It's the difference of making love to a woman, or to your hand. Wanking is an emulation of a woman. Emulation only gets you so far.
I will always love Amps. The tactile nature of these beautiful versatile creators of tone will never be surpassed. The smell, the physical warmth they kick out, the glow of the tubes, the outright pleasure of plugging your guitar into the front of the Amp and disengaging the standby switch.
Agreed!
Respectfully, the tactile-natured tone is replaced and surpassed on recordings on a minutely basis. I understand that's an opinion, but if you poll people who don't play guitar you'll find the statement to be statistically accurate I think. As a producer and engineer, the days that me or my clients choose a real amp in a blind comparison are long gone. It's only the older players that are really holding onto them. Kinda like with cars that have pedal clutches and whatnot. Also there's something that a lot of guitar players don't get to experience a lot: playing anything that loud is really fun. Put your favorite modeler through a nice touring production rig and stand at FOH. Honestly that's like even a step above a tube amp. But to each their own for sure. Guitar players are the most superstitious bunch I know so do whatever you got to do to get it up and get in the mood lol :)
@user-ri3gh6yb5k I'd reccomend something like a hx stomp or dream 65. OR whatever. No idea what a "throw and go" gig is, but my assumption is its a festival type thing in which case- use the backline. Or i dunno, a church setup in a parking lot or something? In which case- hx stomp or whatever. I dunno if you're talking about like working or like fun jam with the homies. Play an amp if you want man I don't care lol. No one is blaming boomers for tube amps btw not sure the angle there. A 50lb+ amp that needs to be at 95db to get a neutral tone isn't really convenient ever unless there is no PA. But play a tube amp man live your best life. I'm a working musician my needs might be different than yours. My gigs usually have monitors.
I have a 5 Watt class A amp; I've found it sounds and feels best when given time to warm up. The quality of the valves can have an impact too. If you compared a digital simulation when you first turned it on there might not be much difference, but when it's warmed up, after about an hour, there's a vibrancy and warmth. The speaker interacting with the room is another thing. I'm all for digitally enhancing the sound, especially with reverbs. That's my experience; others may have a different experience.
@NolanVoid-dr1ch You are right. Real amps are not for weaklings.
I love your recent videos Rob. There will always be a place for old gear. What I like today is that people can get a great tone and experience for not a lot of money. No matter if you are poor or rich you can follow your dreams, it´s cool!
The vast improvement in PA systems is really what is causing a lot of pros to ditch amps.
Playing a cranked tube amp is an experience. It moves me in a way digital platforms have not managed to quite recreate. I appreciate the accessibility and the tremendous advances that have been made in the digital realms - especially the clarity of recording and the vast array of tones and effects at our fingertips. But for me, nothing quite compares to the real thing. It’s like an extra magic that you can’t put into words. Interesting to think about where things will go tho.
Nothing in quality guitar tech seems to disappear. There is something about "vintage" and LowFi that will always be with us. The greats just keep going.
In ten years I have gone from 50w tube heads and pedals, to full digital modelling with FRFR, then back to a combination of a 20W tube head and using a modeller as my pedals and running real cabs and this is my favourite setup. There’s something about the feel of a tube amp and that lovely warm glow of the tubes.
I totally agree 👍. And there will still be a market for tube amps in the future for us, and others.
I agree. I will use apps and modelers and IR's etc in certain recordings and they sound damn good in a mix...but live I want a real tube amp and 4x12 for that tone and feel that just interacts and responds in a way that I just can't get with anything digital...yet ;) 🤘🤘🤘
As a boutique amp and pedal builder I think there will always be a portion of players who will buy and play tube amps, just like there will always be people who love old muscle cars. The digital tech keeps getting better and better which is great. There’s room for new and old tech!
The big portion of still tube amp and pedals I see around me are mostly people over 50. There is still some "purist" in the youngish people (I would say between 35 and 50) but most people goes to what is easy and sound good anyway. There mighy be a point where the public for tube amp is soo limited that it does not make sence anymore to build some. Plus I can see on the venue where I play that the people running those place are less and less welcome to those big amps, some are even forbiding it, because they know that there is smaller and quieter solutions. That might be an accelerator for change.
i think youre wrong. in 20-30 years when the classic rock generation is dead i dont think new guitar players will care at all as long as their tone is good, and software is already the cheapest and easiest way to achieve that. boutique anything in audio is nearly always all snake oil and hifi grade bullshido. you dont hear amps or guitars, you hear speakers and thats what makes the biggest impact.
What is a boutique amp and pedal builder…
@@MitsosChavelesa low volume manufacturer.
This was a very interesting video. I'm seeing more and more people using modellers live, and if that trend continues I doubt we'll see high wattage amps stay relevant.
With that said real amps will always have a place, especially in studios.
Personally I like both real amps and software for different reasons.
Don’t you shit on this guy every 5 minutes?
I sold my hand wired Morgan and hand wired Marshall amps, £4800 worth of boutique pedals and purchased a Fractal Audio FM9 and couldn’t be happier. Not only does it do all the sounds I ever want with all the amp types I could ever need, but it has touch and feel of a real valve amp. Plus the reverbs and effects are world class. My back is a lot happier to. I loved my valve amps but I could never really turn them up enough to get the best out of them. I am a digital guy from now on. 😊
I could never find a modeling or small size tube amp that actually gave me the feel and sound of a real tube amp but at home volumes. And finally the Quilter Super Block UK actually does it perfectly. I am happy for the first time in my life!!
It can power any speaker cabs, but I love it into a small tube amp the most.
Where modelers really shine over amps is consistency of tone. The typical guitar player dials in his amp so that it sounds good to him on stage. What comes out of the PA & what the other band members hear is entirely different. What comes out of my Helix to my monitor sounds exactly like FOH. Stage volumes are lower and my bandmates can hear as much of me that they want in their monitors.
I remember those heady days of carrying large cabs up and down dodgy fire escapes. These days I'm doing solo acoustic gigs with portable PAsor recording electric at home. My only amp now is a Fender Super Champ XD, which is actually fairly loud, but gives me my fix of air moving. I love the idea of the portability and variety of apps for live playing, but like with my acoustic PA & pedals, I need knobs and switches rather than fiddly menus.
Amps and Effects Pedals disappeared for me about 20 years ago when I started using Modelers, currently the HX Stomp. The Guitar is a particularly good "Interface" for creating and performing music. We still need an interface that we can control with our feet, so some form of Floor Buttons Unit, and Expression/Volume Pedal is likely to remain relevant. Physical Amps and Effects will become more niche items, and Modelers will take advantage of advances in DSP and Software that make them more versatile, affordable, portable, and powerful tools.
I started with the Original Chameleon... never looked back... done line 6 for about 20 years now... the PODGO, especially after the newest upgrade, is absolutely amazing...
This evolution is what brought me back to guitar playing after 20 years. I moved away from it because it was just too hard to recreate the sounds I wanted. Not anymore, and lo and behold, I bought 4 guitars in 3 years!
After going digital I’m swinging back to tubes. Even bought a two channel tube driven compressor last month-what a difference!
i also made the switch back to tubes, it is 100% better and anyone who disagress is not good enough to hear the nuances of guitar, or are lying to themselves to justify the convienience and price of their purchase. Digital is not even close, I am a young guy so it's not just cork-sniffing nostalgia. (Tried a Kemper for over a year and was never contempt)
Tubes won't disappear just like vinyl hasn't, it will probably continue to decrease though. Most things don't die, just shift in usage proportions.
It's about economics. Spending $1k-5k on a good valve amp that does "one" thing is just cost prohibitive for most people when you factor in the other $1k-2k just to get a quality pedal setup assembled. Now you spend $1200-$1600 and get all you'll ever need. The convenience is unparalleled too.
Does NOT sound the same PERIOD
@@robschaller9061funny how most people can't tell a difference in a blind test. There will always be people who are greater human beings due to their superhuman hearing 🙄
@@robschaller9061 Sounds just as good though. Call me crazy but I prefer software now. My friend has a 5150 and it sounds nice when loud but lots of feedback and he doesn’t move the knobs. All that money for 1 setting 🤦🏻♂️ With my plugins no feedback at all even if max volume and you can’t tell guitar is on. Sounds great and the same on any volume. Have you seen how amazing some captures sound on NAM? I doubt you’ll be able to tell in a mix. Best of all saved so much space and no neighbors to complain. Off the bat can get amazing tones. Look how amazing these YT artists sound without a traditional amp. Obviously it’s the future. The presets they use sound like studio made recordings. Have you tried NAM (neural amp modeler)?
@@robschaller9061 I never said it sounded "the same." However, it sounds so good that no one in the audience will ever know (or care about) the difference, and the benefits far outweigh the downsides. Blind tests have shown that the differences are pretty much academic at this point.
I really feel for the kids and young adults who are never going to collaborate in a room with a bunch of folks with some volume going and it being probably too hot or too cold..lol. A huge part of music for a society is the collaborative, community nature of it. Trading files and video cloud sessions are just sad to me.
I completely agree - it’s the biggest rush ever!!
so there’s Community in the modern day and that makes you sad?
@@carsonelliot1147 I don’t find community in long distance, virtual communication. Community is face to face, sharing a space. Being there for someone beyond a thumbs up, we got you bro through a DM or live stream. Physical human interaction. We are sorely lacking in that in many aspects of life and it shows. The community of regular live performance, the community of an actual scene in a city or regional area. It’s fantasy to think any of that isn’t a shadow of what it used to be. Followers on social media or subscribers on a YT channel is not a meaningful community.
@@carsonelliot1147file sharing is not community.
Bro what😂 people still jam together
Rob has maintained his passion and enthusiasm, but has gained clarity, maturity, and humility. He seems so much more grounded and I appreciate that genuine shift.
Really enjoying these reflective videos of your journey, and how guitar has changed as a whole since you have been in the industry. Being a pioneer of the guitar TH-cam thing, I would love to hear your thoughts on how the guitar youtube scene has changed over the years to where we are today.
The Boss IR-2 seems like a must have for most guitarists. A real problem solver for very little money. My problem is that digital seems only there to replicate what has come before. I' not sure it is going to help any guitarist find their sound in the same way that buying an old school amp will. Limitations and flaws are where humans get creative and you end up finding YOUR unique solutions.
I agree. The new digital tools are all based on the ‘old’ stuff. The only thing that it has to be is easy. Everything is already there underneath a button. Mostly limitations are the fundament of all creative solutions.
A huge chunk of analogue gear also just replicates what has already come before. How many Klon clone pedals are there? How many tube screamer clone pedals are there? How many expensive boutique amps are really just a little twist on an old Fender/Vox/Marshall circuit? How many boutique guitar companies make copies of Strats and Teles? (G&L, Suhr, etc)
Every year Fender and Gibson release reissues of their golden era guitars of the 50s and 60s. People pay 10 grand for a brand new Les Paul that's essentially a perfect copy of a 1959 model and is even pre-aged and beat up to make it seem like it's really a vintage guitar. PRS's 2 most popular models (the McCarty 594 and the Silver Sky) are copies of Les Pauls and Strats respectively, but with minor improvements. PRS has done a ton of innovations over the years and yet his most popular guitars are throwbacks to old Fender/Gibson designs. The sad reality is that a huge chunk of guitar players don't actually want gear that does something completely innovative and new. They want high quality throwbacks to old stuff.
Point is: most analogue products don't actually innovate that much these days. Most of them are just perfect copies of old stuff or close copies of old stuff with minor improvements.
Almost half of the models in the IR-2 (the best ones IMHO) are "BOSS" models that you couldn't reproduce with a real amp. Many of the Neural DSP models are the same. They are not "captures" or emulations. Younger players that may not have a reference to vintage amps will use whatever sounds best to them.
As an electronics guy I find it very satisfying to know how to skew a few things about in an tube amp to change attack, compression and equlization. It's the hands on thing and it's got a certain satisfying feeling to it. But when I'm playing I don't give a damn where I've got the wonderful sound from, and on the recording no-one can tell. Have fun, play!
I’ve moved the same direction. I’m a guitarist in an 80’s alt rock cover band these days, and I made the switch to digital. I picked the Helix because it fit my budget and I liked the workflow, and I’ve set it up kind of like I would have a real amp; I have three different setups for different kinds of tones with the flexibility to turn on and off different dialed in stomps in the set, rather than making a bespoke tone for every song.
And you know what? It’s freaking fantastic. I roll into a gig with two guitars and the Helix, and my load in is done. I love how easy it is to set up and how consistent everything is. Sound guys love just getting balanced outputs from me and keeping stage volume down.
The audience has no idea that I’m digital, and you know what? They don’t care at all either.
It’s really just a win/win for everybody at this point.
Does it sound as good as my JCM900? Nah. Would I go back to lugging that thing up stairs, into dirty bars, and figuring out how to get it back into my car at the end of the night? Nope.
Do you run FRFR or in ears on your gigs ?
This. I also play in a cover band, and everything you wrote expressed perfectly why i love my amp simulator pedal. Carrying even a 5 watt tube amp and cab from venue to venue got old really fast.
My day job is Software development, I can already envisage where this going, from what I see and use in AI, you will have an interface not much bigger that a jack plug that will connect to your phone and be able to emulate the sound of any player's guitar rig, on any performance, from the AI listening to everything that player has ever recorded, the AI will listen to the acoustics of where you are playing and the signal from what guitar you are playing to make the adjustments. Dedicated hardware will be defunct, only hardware will be the speakers and amplification.
Both definitely have a place. The tech in the last even 5 years is just mind blowing but trends revert, recycle, and evolve plus people have nostalgia. Music is everything and done in amazing ways. Also can’t believe I’ve been watching your vids for near on 15years now 😂. Have a great Christmas.
As a professional luthier and guitar repair guy, I am not looking forward to having guitars in my shop with plugins issues that I can't tell where they are coming from or how to fix them. It's already the case with onboard circuit boards with micro soldering that are not designed for repairs. I hate saying to my customers : "sorry but I can't fix this". We are putting out on the market a lot of gear that nobody knows how to repair.
Great video Rob. Just discovered you! Instant fan. Great playing and super interesting summary of the situation we now face. I hope next we get shoes with inbuilt footswitches 🤣 👟
I have both ends of the spectrum: a Boss Katana and a Fender ‘57 Tweed Deluxe. If I was going to record something it’s easy to DI the Katana into the DAW. It has lots of colours that can be added to a palette. However, when I’m just playing for the sake of it, give me the tweed deluxe any day. Why? It “feels” amazing to play. The connection to the instrument/amp/speaker is immediate and provides a feedback loop that is inspiring.
Each tool has its place…
I love tube amps. Or rather, the sound and response of tube amps. What I also love is not having to cart heavy gear on a dolly before a show - there's a reason it's called "load-in." When 99% percent of the audience is just enjoying the music, they're doing so because it sounds good and don't care what you're playing. Being able to walk in the front door of the venue with a guitar case and a small pedalboard and get all your sounds reliably and safely (a bandmate who is an electrician once measured the power at one popular venue at 128 volts!) without frying your gear is just amazing. That stated, the Rockerverb 100 through it's 4X12 is unmatched for what I like. There's room for both.
Every unit will have its own character whether digital or analog. I believe what will always distinguish dedicated guitar amp circuits with speakers is the intent and creativity with which they are crafted. I love my TONEX pedal but my little tube amp literally moves me or the air around me. It’s a visceral experience that will be impossible to replicate digitally. BUT you can get really really close…
Just got around to watching this. I'm a bass player, and some of what I do is very effects-heavy, and I'm very particular about my pedal sounds. I've flipped between real pedals and digital modelling units for 20+ years now. What I will say is that the small size and routing flexibility of modern modelling units is a major selling point for me, but I can still absolutely hear the difference with certain pedals. As such, my current pedalboard is a hybrid of modelling and analogue pedals.
I feel like things are getting closer to being able to replace everything with a single box... it's just that different boxes do some things better than others. For some modellers, it takes too long to get a decent tone and I'd rather just spend time playing!
When I'm shaping a new sound, I still prefer to play around with analogue pedals until I have a sound I'm happy with... and at that point, I'll see if I can recreate it on a modeller.
Rob, you are exactly right, I'm a designer and that's the natural progression of technology: miniaturization and integration. Everyday lighting is a good example, although no LED matches the magic glow of halogen. Great to have options, tube amps like vinyl will never die !
Great video as always :) personally I'm all for change as well, especially if those changes allow for new players and potential legends in guitar history to be born in the future. I simply hope guitar, amp and pedal companies will adapt and not refuse this change (though it seems like companies are pretty open to the idea) so that we can keep having the option of choosing "old" gear if we want to, or plug-ins, just as those revolutions happened in photography, cinema, and other creative businesses. Both types of products can easily cohabit in my opinion
Keep Making These Type Videos ,, i don't think pedals and amps will go away ... i think musicians love variety of all sorts for all types of music making and sound designs especially when it comes to recording original songs ... i am now 60 and remember watching you on Andertons channel many moons ago .. we musicians do evolve over time but nothing compares to the good old fashion old school Rock & Roll and how it was done back then ... "Jamming On High .. We Must Keep Going " 👍👉🎸 #StayThirsty #BeHappy
I lived and worked in China for several years, where the fundamental requirement of my guitar rig there was that it had to fit in the back of a taxi. I bought a Tiny Terror head and matching 1x12 cab and used to use that for about 90% of the gigs I played there. Used with a Blackstar HT-Metal pedal the sound was fantastic, and more than loud enough to gig with. If it needed extra volume I'd just mic it through the PA or plug into a bigger cab (most Chinese venues I played in provided at least some kind of backline gear). Back in the UK I'm using a Blackstar HT Stage 100 MkII through a Marshall 2x12 that's permanently set to the 10 Watts setting, as I just don't need anything louder, and in many respects I wish I'd just brought the Tiny Terror back with me. I also have some experience of using modellers, and while they're much better now than they used to be and they're brilliant for recording, they still don't completely capture the responsiveness of a decent amp and live I'd hate to be reliant on the PA and sound engineer to be able to hear myself onstage. If the monitors aren't up to the job you're screwed, so it's always beneficial to have some form of personal backline.
This worries me to no end. Im friends with young guys and gals, they all run plug ins and modeling amps. While they have come a long way, they cant replace a valve amp, no way. Maybe Im just old but nothing beats cranking an old Marshall, Vox, Boogie etc.
So basically guitars are going to become like Frank Zappa had his guitars in the late 1970s. He had different OD circuits, filter effects installed in his guitar. There is a clip of Zappa playing Black Napkins on the Mike Douglas show with that particular guitar. He plugged into a Pignose amp and had all the extra stuff he needed already installed inside the guitar.
His whole life was one fantastic experiment.
The Mooer GTRS guitars
I've always embraced technology, but as I've gotten older I've realised that simplicity is the key.
Same here. I work in IT and computers were amazing when I was a kid. But they got completely demystified for me. Simple electric and mechanical devices such as analog cameras, tube amps, etc. still have some marvel surrounding it. And it's almost impossible to get a bad tone from a good amp. There's also always the "how much is this tone is my own achievement and how much is it the computer's?" question.
I think it’s great that computer programs are sounding so good these days and can be useful, but I will always prefer to send the signal into a tube Amplifier , because there is something just so special even in a one watt tube amp like my Black star HT-1 and my Vox AC-4 TV. Those apps and computer programs may sound great but there’s something about the raw sonics of valves that bring the lower and upper harmonics to another place even at low levels, so I prefer to even send great digital signals into tube amplification. whether through the effects loop or straight in ,.it always sounds better through tubes! Sending it through two low wattage amplifiers sounds like you’re in a stadium even at one watt settings at minimum volumes!
The sonic power in the upper and lower harmonics just seems more enveloping to my ears.👂 Cheers Old Chap! And well done through the years!
I like to wrangle with an instrument, taking what I've got, getting acquainted with its idiosyncrasies, and trying to get the best out of it. Character comes from working with the quirks.
I found the same with effects pedals. Experimenting with what works in the real world. I did try early multi fx boxes, but found that already there were far too many parameters with no real world restraints: this made looking for a personal tone a bit like trying to make sense of a lucky dip. I feel the same way about all the modern simulations. At least with effects pedals one has welcome limitations and something tangible which helps memorising one's preferred settings.
Did my first gig tonight without amps, cabs, or effects pedal board. Used an HX Stomp into Front of House with In Ear Monitors. It’s was awesome and there’s no reason for me to go back. 🤟🏻
IMHO any good audiophile can tell a sim from the real thing. The texture of the sound can't be achieved digitally. There's no replacement for displacement.
I'm in my mid 20's and want to move forward as one of the tube amp guys. People will forget and be reminded of how awesome they are once they truly forget
FoH mixer here.
IEMs are the transitional gear right now with digital consoles and wifi and apps for smartphones/tablets, and I won’t be surprised when the boss pedals start showing up.
It’s tough enough, however, with these to keep the batteries all charged that battery tech will have to step up in a big way for your everything guitar to succeed. Or maybe we finally will get wireless power…or everything charges like a cell phone with the induction coils…
Really enjoying these recent videos Chappers! Great to see you back on the 'tube 😁
Glad you like them bro 🤘🏽
My dad has a POD line 6 and although is kinda old, still sounds amazing for what it is. My favorite thing about it, is that is super convenient, especially when it's time to record. The same sound you modeled/created is what you hear in the recording! The real amp is really great to play at your house but it's a pain in the *ss when you have to set the mic to get a proper sound. Depending on where you put it, you may have a really different sound to the one you hear in the room.
However, despite knowing all this. I still want a Marshall 100w with a big cabinet hahaha
I get the nostalgia; I own (and occasionally use) a turntable/record player, a mechanical type writer, a wind-up mechanical alarm clock (Junghans Trivox Silentic), and a fountain pen. Why? Because these things are reminiscent of an earlier era in which man and machine worked together to create. Yet, I would wholeheartedly agree, that we will someday soon be able to get wonderful tones from an electric guitar with integratted cab + amp simulaiton.
They'll have to pry my Edison cylinders from my cold, dead fingers!
Loving these series of videos! You are one of my favorite youtubers and players Rob, and you have a true God given talent! Keep on rockin’ for Jesus, and God bless!
Thank you very much Mr Hedgehog ❤️
I sold 2 100-Watt Marshall heads, and 3 Orange amps on Reverb last week (along with about 30 pedals, I guess you could say I saw the writing on the wall)
Believe me, I cherished this stuff…but the time has come, and as you know, the days of needing to provide your own stage volume are behind us.
I’m getting old and the time has come last week, although I’m making my own 1x12 and 2x12 cabs still, and I still LOVE speaker cabinets, guitar, bass, car and home audio, I just love speakers. One of those amps was a micro dark, but I still have my orange terror stamp on my board, but I’m only using the FX return with a Boss Ir200…
The tone I get lately is actually incredible, and I don’t regret minimizing my rig at all, but I will miss the days of being young and hauling massive tube heads around
I went to a metal festival earlier this year and it seemed to be split 50/50 on whether the guitarist was playing through an actual amplifier with cab or playing through a digital board going through the PA. I recently moved over to playing plug-ins and it’s so easy to use. There is also a plug-in for just about everyone. Metal probably has the most variety so far in terms of selection but the other genres of music are starting to hone in on this. Neural DSP has a very solid selection
Ambient the most amazing for me. Digital does stuff just not possible with all but the most advanced pedals.
Nothing will replace the simple concept of setting a couple of guitar/bass amps on either side of a set of drums and having a go. A PA and reinforced/ rerouted sound will always be SECONDARY to this, because simple is easier than complicated
I tend to think that digital is very convenient but has no soul like a tube. an it will really depends on the style one wants to produce and their personal connection to what puts a smile on ya dial.
Nice trip down memory lane there Rob. Lovely seeing the Obsidian Burst ML3 Pro Modern Semi-hollow again!
Yeah, been watching you since the beginning. Been a while. Great video, man. Merry christmas!
Merry Xmas dude, thanks for your support over the years ❤️🤘🏽
The sound and feel of the guitar can't be reproduced by bits & bytes... ... Yet. Nice video! Cheers from Rio!
Some serious nostalgia in this video chappers, I haven't watched a video of yours for maybe 5+years, since you moved to Brighton or shortly thereafter and the MLB didnt really work out and Dorje kinda disappeared, but prior to that, I'd watched you from the start near enough, you and Dmanlamius (sadly no longer active) taught me how to play Guitar and Bass, then you and Captain Lee taught me about gear and what to buy. I just wanted to say thank you man, I've met you, Rabea and Dave many times as a teenager, but now on the wrong side of 25 and my hair line becoming like yours, I love the nostalgia and warmness this video gave me
Great video, Rob! But…BUT…
For those who think new tech is a savior, I have two words for you: planned obsolescence. In 50 or 100 years, many of the mid 20th century classic amps will still be chugging. These new devices will not.
I recently got a PRS Archon 50. It’s a great tube amp. It inspired new songs. I plan on recording them digitally. The future includes both. At least for a while.
My 13 year old nephew is getting his first guitar this year. It will fun to watch his journey unfold. Guitars are magical tools that transform lives.
I know this might nit rate super high, but this is the content I want. Real experiences through the history feelings of gear. Thanks Rob
The problem with all the plug-ins is that no one seems to have that signature sound any more, in my opinion. All the new generation of players just fire up a tone and roll with it. Back in the day, guys had to mess with the dials and switches on amps and pedals to get the sound they wanted. When you heard any of the great players from the 70s through to the 90s and early 2000s, you knew who you were listening to pretty easily. You listen to any of these newer guys, and it sounds amazing, but it could be any one of a thousand people. No one seems to have their own voice anymore.
What about Neural DSP Archetypes?
oh man such a nostalgic feeling, i saw that tiny terror video back in the day, good times, good memories!
@71 years old, I have come to the conclusion I need a Fractal FM9 and a Fender FR12. All I could ever want or need. And this is from one who has owned MANY tube amps 🤔
Twice I dived into modelling with Helix first and then Fractal adn twice I went back to valve amps. The modelers are a lot of fun and sound really good, and in the mix it's hard to tell the difference BUT the feel of playing your guitar through a real amp cannot be replicated by digital gear.
After celebrating my 65th bday with a gig, after which two bandmates had to help me pack up my fx board, TH-cam suggested a vid of a WIRELESS PEDAL and I bought that, MOOER P1 and F4. Literally went from dual Ampeg 1970's tube rigs, MXR RMC EH, to a fly rig w THE Amp and Neodynium speakers. And (after the learning curve) I never sounded better. Truly impressed, and so's my back
now this was a great vid which i appreciate. Starting out many moons ago with a 20watt Star Fire amp/guitar pack, various combos, various heads and 4x12s and now just pedals. I appreciate the journey. And this is a reminder to all where it came from.
I think it just means we can have the best bits of all of them. Modellers are so good now no one can really tell the difference without having a wild guess. I think it also shows that you dont need anything more than a 30 watt amp to gig with if its being miced up or has a DI out built in. The choices are endless now.
Great vid🤘🏻 Killer playing as usual, thanks Rob.
"End of an Era"...YES! "Worrying Conclusion"...NO! The concept of "All-In-One" is always attractive to some (and has been around for quite some time); but so far, it has never really proven itself for practical use, save for those that re-up with all-new gear on an annual basis. All MY tone is in my hands, guitar and pedal board...leaving only the need for some kind of external sound reinforcement (solid-state amp,/PA/mixing board + headphones). That's FREEDOM!
What is really interesting (or scary) to see in the future is if this will generate new sounds. So far, all modellers have - as the name suggests - tried to model existing amps as accurately as possible. But what if you tried to make an impossible amp that can only exist in algorithm? This could go two ways: completely new sounds which could result in weird sounds just because you can (like synths in the 80s or autotune in the late 90s/00s) OR amps that sound similar but behave differently in their response or even filter out unwanted tones.
there's tons of that going on in the axefx world.
Line 6 has multiple amps in helix that they've designed solely through modeling and have never been actually built. The ventoux is probably my favorite, and it certainly reacts differently from a standard bassman or something similar.
@@TrashM0nk95 Years back I was telling L6 to turn Ben Adrian loose, his original amps always are a cut above.
There’s a fascinating psychoacoustic rabbit hole to go down here and I think it’s really exciting - it opens up the possibility of guitar-based genres in the future we haven’t even dreamt of. And while we might not be buying tube amps, I think the scientific and technical know-how of today’s amp world will be shaping the future with those as-yet-unimagined sounds that take the unique characteristics of a human being playing a guitar and take them to another level, just like those vintage amps did when they were first conceived.
I've been playing 42 years and also lived the whole evolution. I still hurt from carrying a Mesa 100 watt head and 4x12 up and down the tight stairway of our practice space as a 18-20~somewthing. I went to an ISO cab with a 1x12 (but no fake wall of stacks) and that made life easier on my back. I even went through a rack period when your pre-amp, power-amp, delay, reverb, tuner, power conditioner, etc were all in a rolling rack unit. I went back to a combo - a nearly 100 Lbs Mesa 2x12 forever.
I went back and forth from digital to analog several times - Line 6 HD500, back to a pedalboard & a tube amp. I've actually settled on a rig that seems to have cured my Gear Acquisition Syndrome (except for guitars), since 2018 I've used a Kemper (Now a Kemper Stage), but running the Left & Right line level outputs into the effects return of two 1x12 tube combos. I get the best of both worlds - the versatility of stepping on one button and having as many variables as I want change, to play a song by stepping through pre-programmed presets, then up a bank for the next song, plus the tube power amp warmth and real Celestion V-Type speakers.
I think the number of amp manufacturers may shrink, but there will always be a place for the best of the best, well known and cutting edge brands. Even though I've settled on a system and kept it for 5 years, I will probably buy a Friedman or Morgan amp in the next couple of years. Or maybe an impulse buy on the Marshall Studio Vintage 20H. Nothing beats plugging into an amp and jamming, but the days of 100+watt heads are no longer needed when even guys like Iron Maiden are playing miked 1x12 iso cabs behind the stage decor.
The one tech I'm surprised hasn't gotten more traction is the Synergy amplifiers. That's a really cool idea, a main head chassis with a power amp where you can exchange and switch between branded pre-amp modules from famous amp makers. I actually thought that would become more common, but I've yet to see one in the wild (in someone's rig).
Those videos are some major nostalgia for me! Been watching you since I was 12 and watched those rockerverb videos multiple times 😂
Tough question.
I grew up with real amps, and still own a few. Love them to bits.
Same with analog pedals.
Thát said, I've recorded through a Helix, and I just couldn't tell the difference with my trusty Marshall JVM head. *AND* a few virtual pedals thrown in.
Where's all this going?
To me it's depending on how many sounds you'll really need.
As a gigging musician in various styles I can still use my real amp because per gig I rely on perhaps 4 or 5 sounds - not counting fx pedals - from my amp (Laney IRT Studio, 15W, and brilliant) using its 3 channels and built-in boost. This runs through a single 1x12" Marshall cabinet. So all's nice and reasonably portable.
So, question is:
How many sounds do you really need??
Yes, the new modellers are phenomenal, but I wouldn't like to spend many days figuring out the minute differences between thousands of amp/cab/mic combinations.
I'd probably pick a handful of presets that sounds right to me, and delete the rest as I'll never use them anyway.
And *NOW* when you compare the cost of gear, I'm actually better off with the real deal than with a very expensive Kemper - which incidentally will still need a power amp to play small gigs where in-ear systems simply won't be useful at all....
It's the musical equivalent of buying a state of the art kitchen with every known appliance installed, just to boil an egg.
I love the classic Chappers flashbacks! I guess this is our greatest Hits album.
I'm a pedal guy. That's what I'm known as down at my local music store. But they can be a pain to put together as a chain/board.
I'm looking to get a Sonicake Matribox II just because I can build so many different pedal chains in one small unit that reflect all the different genres of music I enjoy.
very good- thank you for trying all this new tech out. I'm not worried about the future but I can't predict anything at all.
I started playing guitar in the mid 2000s and modeling/multi-effects were part of my set up from practically day one. Stuck with a lot of the Vox Valvetronix pedals and combos for the early years of my playing before jumping into the Line 6 Dream rig and later Helix.
For me, having a wide arsenal of sounds available in a compact setup was essential to my growth as a musician and finding my sound. Couldn’t splurge on a big collection of pedals or amps, so it was best that I could cover a lot of ground with a single amp and multieffect.
Eventually once I got older and was at one time trying to pursue music as a career I got curious if I was missing anything and built a traditional stompbox/tube amp set. All it did was make me feel boxed into a smaller sound pallet and made me miss the flexibility my other rigs had afforded me. Granted, I was never a “Use 40 different amp patches and 50 different effects in a set” kind of player. I usually set up a fixed amp/pedalboard on a single patch to do 90% of a gig. But gig to gig it gave me tons of options for a tone that best served the situation.
Not to mention how much more inconvenient it was to practice along with music (I’d always rather be able to throw headphones on and mix my guitar with the music in the box). Plus most of the bands I played in never got that loud. Blasting stage volume just made it harder for vocalists to hear themselves and unnecessarily pissed off FOH techs. I started wearing ear plugs and IEMs (when not at the mercy of sub par house tech) to try and preserve my hearing, and in headphones I can honestly never tell the difference between a modeled e609 on an AC15 or the “real” mic and amp.
I truly don’t think I missed out on anything by learning this craft during the death of tube amps. I’m just too used to the sound of modelers (and how far they’ve come since my first one in 2006) and I’m not in a lifestyle/living situation where I can really use a tube amp any more. It’s sat in the basement for well over a year and a half now.
I have gone back and forth a few times between modelling and amps and with the recent acquisition of a TM Pro and FR12 I am now convinced I won't ever own or need an amp or pedalboard again. At 52 I have played it all and after COVOD and the tube shortage in Canada I really think we have jumped the shark.
As a bassist we've always had larger heavier amps, in the 1980s a 500w bass amp and a 2x15" cab could both cost and weigh the same as a small car. The dream was always to play the venues that had hired a sound engineer who wanted to DI the bass, not dragging our rigs around was a genuine luxury when we could get away with it.
We've greatly benefitted from improvements in amp technology and my current class D amp is 700w, 1u high and weighs about the same as a loaf of bread. My current 2×12" has neodymium speakers and I can carry it upstairs one handed.
Personally I will never be interested in IEMs, the feel of the power of sheer bass volume rumbling through the stage is too joyous for me to give up without a fight, but I'm glad I no longer need to be a weightlifter to feel it.
I'm always going to have a real amp or two around just for the power and the feel of it but the Boss IR-2 kinda blew me away. So much stuff crammed into the classic form factor with 9 volt battery power is amazing. I want one.
The only issue I have with modeling is that it is difficult to find models of the vintage amps I love. A Gibson EH-150. Or an Ampeg J-12R reverbojet. The presence those have in the room and the relationship those have with the guitar and player are incredible.
You haven’t tried kemper then. There’s a profile for pretty much any amp out there. $50k overdrive specials etc…
At the start of the 90’s for a few years I worked in a music shop in Great Yarmouth, I remember when Vai’s first Jem came out and a bunch of other cool guitars, I got my Ibanez at the same time and still have it.
Still though, rocking a Les Paul on an old Marshall dual stack (was it JCM800? I can’t remember). I even had my old vintage two by twelve with the grey material checked out by Jim Marshall’s son check it out - I’ve still got a Christmas card from Jim Marshall.
I got One of the first Marshall ‘valvestate’ power amp for my rack with the gold fronted JMP1 (I think it was called) pre-amp.
Many days spent playing Vai, Satriani, AC/DC. Those were the days
For the most part, plugins/modellers/profilers still need a real amp to be based on. As long as amp companies are still doing new things and not just treading water, there’s always going to be a space for them IMO
-Toby
After many years doing pub gigs with analogue pedals and big amps, my back is very grateful to have a Line 6 Stomp that does it all.
I'm a Co-Owner of a boutique amplifier company- 3rd Power Amplification... I don't see tube amps going extinct as long as there are people who carry the torch. Digital vs Analog aside, there is so much to be said about finding your unique sound through throwing current through tubes & analog components.. At 3rd Power, we try to achieve a level of performance through tube amps that not only SOUNDS great, but also gives the player the ability to translate the emotions inside, to audible sound through the speakers. I, for one, have toured with pretty much every convenient solution & always wish I had my tube amplifier with me.
All this to be said, 3rd Power will be around creating inspirational tube amplifiers for the market as long as I'm living- and I hope to pass that torch to the next generation- its a passion and love that I can not let die.
I think the market has space to share for Valves and Digital rigs. It's all so wonderful.
Having lugged around 50+ lb amps and cabinets for the better part of 40 something years, I really appreciate my Quilter SuperUK and that I can plug straight into the p/a. This being said, one must look for examples of what is old is new in that Vinyl LPs are now outselling CD's. I think that the smaller gear and plug in market will have it's day and carve out its niche, but there will always be a place for folks wanting traditional tube/solid state amps and the different styles of pedals at their fingertips. There is something real and special about playing through a good solid amp behind you. Great video, Rob!
Amps are great for recording and the feel on stage, but do agree portable rigs make life easier.... I caught the train to a gig the other month with just guitar and pedal board... makes life alot easier.
I think pedals and pedal amps will always be needed though, having foot Control stops interruption of hands playing the melody.
I'd played through a Hot Rod Deluxe for many years with nothing but the channel switcher and found that I was ready for pretty much any gig. I felt like, with precious little effort, I could get "my tone" predictably and controlably. As I got older, the weight of the amp and its painful volume got the better of me, especially when gigging. And so, I've spent the last five years or so with a small class D amp and a slew of dirt pedals trying my best to recapture the simplicity and purity of the HRD. The $39 Joyo American Sound pedal gets really close, for me. And I'm sure there's an ampless IR solution in my future. But, I can't escape the fear that - one day - I'll just be an old man in a nursing home, sitting on the floor, playing an A chord over and over, and twiddling a knob and getting "oh so very close" to what I'm listening for.
I love all the new tech. It's truly amazing but I'm sticking with a couple of old-ish guitars and my home made low wattage Dumble clone. Because it's the right thing for me and I love it to bits.
One thing that hasn't changed through the years is it's about finding what you love and having the self-confidence to stick with it for as long as it feels right and ignore anyone who tries to tell you to love something else instead.
I've seen a few too many cases of friends getting even older 20W (non switchable) amps and big cabs and not being able to play them at home.
So I do believe that the convenience of modellers, the Sparks etc will be the common thing for most players.
Tube amps and cabs will still be aspirational, but many won't ever make that step.
Same somewhat with pedals - where you can get a whole set via an app, cheaper than a single boutique pedal. But the rise of budget, mini pedals is fighting against that to some extent. I do have a modelling amp with access to a bunch of built in effects and patches and a footswitch controller, but I've actually started to build a budget pedalboard and my brain seems to work better with the "stomp on this to get that" rather than remembering a patch.
By the way - anyone else get Eric Clapton during the Derek and the Dominoes days with young Chappers and the Orange amp demo phase?
My mom used to say, " Old people don't like change"! How true, I'm 68, time for me to get out of the way! Go ahead and progress, I will always love loud tube amps and PAF buckers!
That old stuff is going to the vintage gear market. That's it. As for the companies, they're becoming boutique products, which means some shrinkage, but I think they can survive. It's going to be some time before we guitarists take that one foot out of the past -- if we ever do.
Great video as always rob. Big fan of your content always have been . But love 8.16 in to this video. The Holstein pils beer crate stack. That’s literally me and my mates 😂
As someone who has played with live amps professionally for over 30 years but also sometimes uses amp simulators when recording, I have to say that there is no modern p.a. speaker that will ever take the place of guitar speakers. You can use all the simulation plug ins you want and it will never ever move air in the same way real guitar speakers do. PA speakers are way too efficient, not tuned for guitar and respond much too quickly for dynamic touch. Every live show I have ever been to or played on that does not use real guitar cabinets sounds like crap to me. I think there are generations of concert goers who unfortunately do not know the difference. There never will be anything that could take the place of my Fender vibroking unless it's another great amp with great speakers.
Still it goes round in circles....... Or is there another twist in this tale? Say, dedicated laptop, power amp (with IR loader), holographic guitar links via neuro-pathic into this.
As a happy Variax owner and Helix user for all of my gigging needs, I think Line 6 are in a prime position to run with your line of thought, Helix inside a Variax would be a natural evolution of their product line!