What Do Guitar Amp Builders THINK Of Modelers?

so a few weeks ago I had a really cool opportunity a couple of days before winter nem 2020 I got to go to boutique amps distribution now if you don't know ba-dee it is a company that houses a couple of really great iconic amplifier brands namely Morgan Freedman Soldano and tone King now I was there as part of a pre name event that ba-dee was putting on with some other content creators here on YouTube and I had the opportunity to sit down with some of the best amp designers and builders in the game today Joe Morgan Dave Friedman Mike Soldano and Pete Aaron's from tone King now it's not every day you get the opportunity to pick these guys brains and I asked him a bunch of questions but there was one thing in particular I was curious about and that is what do they think about modelers what are these tube amp builders these icons of the analog amp world think of the shift towards modeling or the hybrid amps that are getting so popular now like the Rev g20 or the Sur PT 15 now you might think you already know what their answers would be but I was pretty surprised so this video we're gonna talk to four iconic ant builders about their thoughts on the digital amplification age Before we jump into it though if you're new here welcome to the channel I post new videos every week be sure to hit that subscribe button and click the bell icon down below to be notified when I'm posting new videos and going live here on the channel every Sunday night and if you dig what I'm doing here and you'd like to support the channel you can check out the links down below to get merch check out my live shows that are coming up and possibly sign up for the greenroom anyway so with all that out of the way let's jump in to the first interview with Joe Morgan on a gig and 15 minutes later you called me on my cell phone and was like hey alright let's figure this out because they're at or the next week so you overnighted me a new chassis it was like the greatest experience I've had with any kind of customer services so that's one - awesome got me on a good day yeah yeah it's normally financial it's like to get this number so all that to say I'm a fan of your work thanks mr. fan of what you do what how you see them the sort of landscape today with everything from full-on analogue to maps to the hybrid stuff where it's you know analog pria power amp but with IR s and di outs and then all the way into the modeling stuff where do you see guitar playing as a whole headed is it gonna be more towards the modelers you think people are gonna stay with the tube amps over the long term well I think you know you can't like that Allman Brothers thing you know taking a crap Marshall on 10 and putting a Les Paul on it there's something there's something about that makes you feel alive doesn't I mean it's like I've never felt that from a modeler right so that's I think they have their place you know and I think I know a lot of big stages where they're doing a lot of automated stuff and you know the guys aren't even switching their own amps or effects anymore it's all being programmed in on MIDI for the song you know they just have to make sure they hit their spots on stage yeah right dance moves and which just sounds ridiculous but it's more common than you would think yeah we live in that spot right where there's a need for that right there's a need for that but we also I use this analogy a lot where modelers are really the internet porn of guitar amps because you can have any flavor you want you just can't touch it right that's a creative allergy but when this is more like the wife or the girlfriend right you know that it's like there's more of a relationship that happens with your guitar and music what you can you know yeah very well thought out but it makes sense because it's like yeah you're right to me it's like this is an end look I I play everything I have gigs where it's like okay I'm just gonna take the helix yeah throw it on the floor because it's only get it's a festival to throw and go and I don't want to play this backline twin reverb and have all my yeah weirder right because the backline apathy think it should be good dude who worse things in the world man yeah it's but again it I always come back to the tube amp stuff long term because when I want to really feel what I'm playing and I want to interact with what I'm playing as yeah but if you need to get a job done yeah you know the the modeling stuff and the digital stuff is a tool yeah job it's come on it's come a really long way to yeah I mean from the early you like red bean days I mean yeah yeah you know there's stuff like the helix man it's I mean it sounds good it's really impressive yeah it really does it Joe well here's what I'm fine so so people are using you know aspects as camp for helix and there's guitar players growing up that have never played tube amps mmm which is interesting it's kind of a strange thing for me they're great tools they can be good a good tool and they can do a decent tone but generally speaking most people that I know that wind up plugging into the real thing versus that in the same room there is an impact that the real thing has that the modeler will never seemed well at least not jet does not quite have but more so than just the the impact or the feel sometimes this is the field yeah how it feels it might sound you might be able to record it might sound very similar but there's a feel factor yet and a muddler is complicated yeah so I'm just like you're on a thing and you just gotta you know it's not bright enough I need writer where to which pages it off yeah where's the presence right you know I mean and and a Kemper is a digital snapshot of your amp right but if you you can't move the EQ it superimposes an EQ on top of it and it doesn't sound anything like how the amp would react so it's not like a true you know one-to-one model rap and you know I find I find I find some people that have been using my lawyers for a while have been switching back to two bags I've noticed that like you know even if it's small and it doesn't mean you have to have a big setup yeah you could have a 112 cabinet in the small lamp or a small combo and it's still small yeah and the funny thing I always laugh at sometimes with the modelers and bands and stuff they wanted to building like a big rack filiz modelers and stuff but it's a big rack it's this pitch is it really weighs is that really smaller than the head and a cab right yeah I mean I guess if you're just using a little you know stomp or something you know I'm a hybrid player I go back and forth there's a growing I think number of players like me who are doing everything from small hundred cap clubs to you know big theatres and maybe occasionally like stadiums opening for you know whatever acted so the appeal of like a modeler from my perspective it's okay I've got a one-off fly date I'm going to Kansas I'm just gonna take this helix and throw in the backpack and I don't have to worry about a back line twin or what I totally understand that but it's the feel yeah that's the other thing I was gonna bring up so if you're on a modeler in in-ears with no cabinets there is zero interaction between the guitar and what would have been an amp yeah there's zero there's nothing there's no feedback there's no unless you get coming back through a model but you have to you have to you have to rig up something in order for you to do that right but there's no danger left yeah so I mean I understand the modeler you know up maybe a pop gig and it's something that's you know just cookie cutter pop or things like that doesn't really matter it's not a guitar centric band yeah but a guitar centric bang the interaction between the amp and the cabinet and the guitar and how it reacts and how it feeds back and how it or doesn't feedback or how how you control it with your volume knobs and the volume level mm-hmm is what makes music interesting yeah if you hadn't have heard you know whatever picking a song that had some feedback in it or something where your guitars feeding back for a second or something the danger would be gone it would be it wouldn't be it wouldn't be interesting yeah so so you're kind of sterilizing music I mean you're coming up with these nice parts and all but you're not getting any sort of interaction well not you could get into a wider discussion with that to the sterilization of music in terms of like lining up drum parts everything absolutely right now and sort of is that hearing auto-tune vocals and everything but you're right this is something that you put into words something that I haven't been able to yet which is the idea that when you're playing an electric guitar on stage with an amp this becomes part of the instrument it's not just amplifying the instrument this is a this is part of the guitar integral part of it yeah what became the prototype for the salon 100 watt super lead overdrive yeah and at that time I just built it on a identity lassie spray-painted white with masking tape on it for labels build a simple wooden box and a buddy of mine fondly named mr. science so mr. science became this 100 watt hit that I had do you still have that out I still have that out yeah do you see the tube amp fading in popularity do you see it's staying where it is or do you think the pendulum will swing back the other way to where people are kind of rejecting the digital stuff and going I'll tell you know that the digital stuff certainly has its place like I've got many friends of mine who are home recording guys that live in apartments and stuff where they want you know their their whole the amount of space that they have they can dedicate to their recording it's very small plus they've got neighbors all sides and they can't they can't crank up a 30 watt amp mic in front of the living room and go rocking out here you know yeah so I so I think I think the digital thing has become an incredibly great tool for those cats and the digital modeling has advanced so much from the earliest stages of it to now where they're doing some very accurate and very very complex and well-designed algorithms and stuff that actually now can really emulate the amp more than just kind of regurgitate an average and so I think there's a lot of good stuff happening there but I don't think that the tube amp will ever go away because there is still something very I don't know if the word would be immediate but when you're actually scanning from a real amp and you're playing it and there's this there's this kind of almost call and response between you the player and the amp this and it's so immediate and so dynamic that I don't think the digital sets there yet for that in other words when you tell it but you have like a real - a real high gain - that first example and you hit that note and it starts sustaining and a lot of its feedback induce the modeling amp is trying to model what feedback looks like whereas when you're doing this is actually a physical it's air moving the strings on the guitar and it's really happening right now in real time right even though maybe if you recorded both ways of doing it and listen those recordings that listening to him on playback they wouldn't sound any different yeah possibly yeah as a player standing there in the moment playing it it's gonna feel a lot different yep so I think that you know for that reason players will always gravitate towards that that about physical feeling they get from playing a tube amp and will always want that there will always be that sort that certain kind of almost imperfection that even comes from the most perfect tube amp but it can vary for any number of reasons that we will always cherish is having kind of the mojo and the soul of something right so I think I mean yes it's always it's going to be increasingly hard to manufacture tube amps because the costs will always say yeah certain things probably will be eating harder to get you know to manufacturing might get a little wonky at some point because of you know world politics or whatever so there will always be challenges in doing in doing tubes but I think tubes are going to be here for a very long time just because there is this physicality to them that you just aren't gonna get from even the best of the digital stuff what I'm personally really excited about it's like the the hybrid amp so traditional analog tube preamp analog tube power amp with a built in reactive load so you can basically run the app silently and use impulse responses to record silently or go from a house or whatever but as an amp manufacturer and designer builder where do you see kind of the landscape nowadays you know in terms of this big shift in popularity towards the digital age versus the old analog stuff so in that sense I don't see myself as an end designer I see myself more as an electronic designer for electric guitar stuff yeah I don't make those differences I'm just going to I have a certain approach and no matter how I get there - I want to get there that's the only thing so what it means is I told me embrace the chance of having motors in incorporating into to make higher loaders is such a such a big thing I think personally that's totally the future yeah so we have to make sure that we are designing Em's electronics whatever if it's an actual temp or just a Cree and whatever you want to name it you can with paddle just a basic pattern which ones at nine volts we have to make sure that these sounds feel and sound the way we're expecting it from a good end because that's what it's about we just want to have a good guitar tone yeah and in the end I don't I don't care if it's coming out of the tube amp or whatever kind of thing I mean I love to don't get me wrong but in the end that's that's not the goal the goal is to just have their tools for a job right and and the job is to inspire the player if you get inspired you know I have played digital stuff that inspires me and I almost every time I play one of my tube amps it inspires me because you know and I've mentioned this the other guys here as well it's like when you're playing a tube amp in a room going through speaker cabinet it becomes part of the instrument because it's interacting with the guitar there has never been a better time to be a guitar player I think we are in the Golden Age of guitar gear yeah awesome Pete thank you so much man thank you so I found that pretty enlightening it was awesome getting to talk to these guys and get their perspectives and it's interesting to see that of the four different builders there were four pretty different perspectives on the whole industry and where it's headed but there are also some commonalities everyone talked about how it feels not necessarily how it sounds and that is something that I've encountered as a player like I said in the interview I'm a hybrid player I use both real tube amps and modelers and I find a lot of value in both style of amplification it's hard to beat the convenience and ease of use of something like a helix or a Kemper or an ax of FEX especially for someone who's traveling and touring and playing out a lot they're really useful tools that being said there's something about a tube amp there's something about firing up tubes and transformers and pushing a lot of air through 212 or a 4-12 or even a 112 cabinet that gets me excited as a guitar player and that's why I always go back to tube amps so like I said in the interview of Pete personally I don't think there's ever been a better time to be a guitar player we live in the Golden Age of gear and in some ways the Golden Age of guitar music although that might be a controversial statement to some of you so what do you think about all this let me know in the comments section down below are you a tube amp player are you a modeler are you a hybrid player I want to know be sure to check out the links in the description also quick plug I've got some tour dates coming up with Noah Guthrie in good trouble if you're gonna be in Charlotte North Carolina or Greenville South Carolina February 14th or 15th we are coming to play in your town you can find links to tickets down below as well as the rest of my tour schedule for the upcoming year if you're watching this video sometime in the future also subscribe to my podcast the backstage journal podcast season 2 just launched you can find that link down below it goes up every single week Wednesday mornings at 6 a.m. I've got a lot of incredibly cool guests lined up for this season you can find it on Spotify Apple music stitcher on my website or on my second channel Rhett shell - which is also linked down below anyways that's all for today hope you enjoyed today's video my name is Rhett Shull and remember there is no plan B

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 188,276

Keywords: morgan amps, morgan amps ac20, morgan amps mvp23, friedman amp, friedman amp review, friedman amplification, soldano slo 100, soldano slo 30, soldano amp, tone king imperial mkii, tone king amp, tone king ironman ii, rhett shull, joe morgan, mike soldano, interview, dave friedman, modeling amp, real amp vs amp sim, real amp vs kemper, real amp vs axe fx, real amp vs helix, real amp vs fake amp, guitar amp, axe fx, kemper profiling amp, amp simulator, line 6

Id: Y_PoNC1FXZk

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 29 2020