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Post by notneeson on Oct 5, 2018 7:58:32 GMT -6
An update on my Moorer GE200.. Pretty decent for the money. I picked up a used one for around 190$ and it's at least 80% as good as a Helix or Kemper. I used it a few weeks ago for monitoring for a guitarist. She usually plays an Orange rocker, but this time we were tracking bass and drums as well, so all stringed instruments went DI to be reamped later. In order for the guitarist to "hear" her amp, I dialed up the Orange amp and cab sims in the GE200 and tweaked for a 2x12 close mic'd with a 57 profile and according to her it sounded very, very close to her amp. I later reamped through my orange rocker and a 2x12 and it did indeed sound similar. The pedal was a little more strident on top, but it did nail the gritty overdrive sound pretty closely. Given some time, I'm sure I could match the pedal's settings to my real amp and cab through some A/B work. There's no digital harshness or aliasing noise the older modelling pedals used to have. A guitarist might still opt for the higher end stuff, but I feel like I got exactly what I needed out of this pedal. it's not going to replace my real amps as it still lacks a little nuance, but I'd put it in the mix in a pinch. So I had been practicing guitar at home with a pocket Pod. We have little kids and all my amps live at various studios. Add to which I’m playing drums in a band and feel like my guitar playing is falling off. Needed to get inspired to play on my own. The Pod was good enough, but I thought most of the amp sims were unusable, so a one trick pony for bedroom pickin’ only. Then I dropped it. Once. And it completely quit working. So, I saw this thread, bought a GE200 new on eBay and not only am I back in business but I’m having way more fun than I was having with the Pod. And, I could totally see using this thing in front of an amp, or direct for scratch tracks that could end up in a mix etc. Total bargain. One note: I plugged it in and started messing around and it was WAY bright and crispy. Took me a minute to realize the cab IR was somehow set to off!
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Post by swurveman on Oct 5, 2018 11:52:41 GMT -6
I typically work with bands who end up using tons of effects, so it would be better to have some kind of sim with tons of effects and such too. As someone else points out, I think the latency will kill me no matter what. I'm about to say a dirty word in the audio world: Line 6. I use my PodXT Live for stuff like you're describing. When they need to monitor all their stuff and need a sound that's close enough but I know I'm just going to reamp it - that's what I'm using. Similarly, I think this is why people like the Avid ElevenRack and all the Kemper/AxeFX stuff. Apparently the new Line 6 (gasp!) guitar amp thing (called "Helix") is pretty good and comes in a number of size/cost/usage formats. I just overdubbed a guy direct through his Pod and then reamped him through my tube amp and Marshall 4 x 12 and it came out quite nice. He then came in with his Line 6 head and cabinet for scratch guitar with the whole band and it was awful. Don't know if he just got the sound wrong or what, but afterwards he said he wanted to use his Pod again and reamp it with my amp/head.
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Post by svart on Oct 8, 2018 10:12:18 GMT -6
An update on my Moorer GE200.. Pretty decent for the money. I picked up a used one for around 190$ and it's at least 80% as good as a Helix or Kemper. I used it a few weeks ago for monitoring for a guitarist. She usually plays an Orange rocker, but this time we were tracking bass and drums as well, so all stringed instruments went DI to be reamped later. In order for the guitarist to "hear" her amp, I dialed up the Orange amp and cab sims in the GE200 and tweaked for a 2x12 close mic'd with a 57 profile and according to her it sounded very, very close to her amp. I later reamped through my orange rocker and a 2x12 and it did indeed sound similar. The pedal was a little more strident on top, but it did nail the gritty overdrive sound pretty closely. Given some time, I'm sure I could match the pedal's settings to my real amp and cab through some A/B work. There's no digital harshness or aliasing noise the older modelling pedals used to have. A guitarist might still opt for the higher end stuff, but I feel like I got exactly what I needed out of this pedal. it's not going to replace my real amps as it still lacks a little nuance, but I'd put it in the mix in a pinch. So I had been practicing guitar at home with a pocket Pod. We have little kids and all my amps live at various studios. Add to which I’m playing drums in a band and feel like my guitar playing is falling off. Needed to get inspired to play on my own. The Pod was good enough, but I thought most of the amp sims were unusable, so a one trick pony for bedroom pickin’ only. Then I dropped it. Once. And it completely quit working. So, I saw this thread, bought a GE200 new on eBay and not only am I back in business but I’m having way more fun than I was having with the Pod. And, I could totally see using this thing in front of an amp, or direct for scratch tracks that could end up in a mix etc. Total bargain. One note: I plugged it in and started messing around and it was WAY bright and crispy. Took me a minute to realize the cab IR was somehow set to off! Glad I could suggest it and you're happy with it. My cousin is a boutique pedal type of guy, he has hundreds of pedals of various kinds, some DIY, lots of expensive ones, etc. He's always ragging on me for being "cheap" and he REALLY didn't want me to get this pedal because it's a "cheap chinese" brand. he wanted me to get a Helix or something of that sort. I'm glad I didn't listen and got the GE200. it's been a great little pedal for what it is. Thinking of getting another so I can track two guitarists at once now.
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Post by johneppstein on Oct 8, 2018 12:53:55 GMT -6
I'm about to say a dirty word in the audio world: Line 6. I use my PodXT Live for stuff like you're describing. When they need to monitor all their stuff and need a sound that's close enough but I know I'm just going to reamp it - that's what I'm using. Similarly, I think this is why people like the Avid ElevenRack and all the Kemper/AxeFX stuff. Apparently the new Line 6 (gasp!) guitar amp thing (called "Helix") is pretty good and comes in a number of size/cost/usage formats. I just overdubbed a guy direct through his Pod and then reamped him through my tube amp and Marshall 4 x 12 and it came out quite nice. He then came in with his Line 6 head and cabinet for scratch guitar with the whole band and it was awful. Don't know if he just got the sound wrong or what, but afterwards he said he wanted to use his Pod again and reamp it with my amp/head. UInless something has happened since the Yamaha sale, Line 6 amps are universally awful. And given that I've never met a Yamaha guitar amp I've liked I'm not holding my breath.
Due to Don R's influence I'm suspending judgement on the Helix.
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Post by notneeson on Oct 9, 2018 7:42:58 GMT -6
So I had been practicing guitar at home with a pocket Pod. We have little kids and all my amps live at various studios. Add to which I’m playing drums in a band and feel like my guitar playing is falling off. Needed to get inspired to play on my own. The Pod was good enough, but I thought most of the amp sims were unusable, so a one trick pony for bedroom pickin’ only. Then I dropped it. Once. And it completely quit working. So, I saw this thread, bought a GE200 new on eBay and not only am I back in business but I’m having way more fun than I was having with the Pod. And, I could totally see using this thing in front of an amp, or direct for scratch tracks that could end up in a mix etc. Total bargain. One note: I plugged it in and started messing around and it was WAY bright and crispy. Took me a minute to realize the cab IR was somehow set to off! Glad I could suggest it and you're happy with it. My cousin is a boutique pedal type of guy, he has hundreds of pedals of various kinds, some DIY, lots of expensive ones, etc. He's always ragging on me for being "cheap" and he REALLY didn't want me to get this pedal because it's a "cheap chinese" brand. he wanted me to get a Helix or something of that sort. I'm glad I didn't listen and got the GE200. it's been a great little pedal for what it is. Thinking of getting another so I can track two guitarists at once now. I like it. I think the selection of effects could be better, but that’s icing on the cake, really. I’m finding I really like the Plexi as a starting point and I’m still having fun fooling around with the wacky presets. Kinda wishing I liked the AC30 better, but maybe it’s how it pairs w/ my ASAT. What I need to test though, is how it takes pedals. That’s where the pocket pod really fell apart fast. But because this is supposed to be grab and go when I want to play guitar at home, I’ve been too lazy to plug in anything more than a guitar. As for boutique pedals, I am more than happy to rock a Joyo if it sounds good. There are cool expensive pedals to be sure, but snobbing out over a couple transistors and caps in a box? Sorry, no.
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Post by svart on Oct 9, 2018 8:10:40 GMT -6
Glad I could suggest it and you're happy with it. My cousin is a boutique pedal type of guy, he has hundreds of pedals of various kinds, some DIY, lots of expensive ones, etc. He's always ragging on me for being "cheap" and he REALLY didn't want me to get this pedal because it's a "cheap chinese" brand. he wanted me to get a Helix or something of that sort. I'm glad I didn't listen and got the GE200. it's been a great little pedal for what it is. Thinking of getting another so I can track two guitarists at once now. I like it. I think the selection of effects could be better, but that’s icing on the cake, really. I’m finding I really like the Plexi as a starting point and I’m still having fun fooling around with the wacky presets. Kinda wishing I liked the AC30 better, but maybe it’s how it pairs w/ my ASAT. What I need to test though, is how it takes pedals. That’s where the pocket pod really fell apart fast. But because this is supposed to be grab and go when I want to play guitar at home, I’ve been too lazy to plug in anything more than a guitar. As for boutique pedals, I am more than happy to rock a Joyo if it sounds good. There are cool expensive pedals to be sure, but snobbing out over a couple transistors and caps in a box? Sorry, no. I found the AC30 settings were actually kinda close to the real AC15/30 sound. I put my real AC15 up and tweaked the pedal and the amp together with A/B'ing and it definitely gets the "tone" of the amp overall. The cab sim needed more tweaking to sound closer than the amp sim did I think. The pedal's cab sim is just a lot brighter overall, so I ended up moving the virtual 57 around until I got it close. I've had a harder time getting the real AC15 to sound good in general. It's such a one-trick pony type of sound that some guitars just don't work no matter what you do. I did start using a splitter cable to run the clean and distorted channels in parallel and I think it works better this way and takes some of the nasal peaking out. I love cheap pedals. Some sound great, some sound terrible. That's just part of the game I guess. I know guys who buy expensive stuff all the time and then end up losing money on reselling those pedals. As for "taking pedals" I haven't tried pedals before the GE200 yet. I've done some after and they sound OK. Next thing I'm going to experiment with is running pedals in the EXP2 loop, which is for a second expression pedal, but I think the loop uses the tip as a send and ring as a return, so it could work as a loop for effects if you had the right insert cable. What I want to experiment with is to see where in the effects chain it's actually looping. it would be great if it were a buffered loop right after the input, because then I could also use it as a direct out if need be, so I don't waste DI boxes on the signal going into the pedal if I can get a buffered version out from the pedal.
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Post by notneeson on Oct 9, 2018 21:01:28 GMT -6
Well, I know it’s not very scientific but, I can use a pedal DI through an API or whatever, and it sounds pretty good with Pod Farm.
With the pocket pod, admittedly a toy, the results were kind of baffling. It would suddenly need radical amounts of re-EQing.
So I’m kind of wondering how it will go with the Mooer.
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Post by donr on Oct 9, 2018 21:45:45 GMT -6
The Line6 POD was THE breakthrough in modeling tech. Most all players realized the limitations of the original POD and subsequent modeling tech, but much like DAW plugins, it's gotten pretty damm good as the years go on.
Perhaps you'll never truly compare an amp recorded in a good space with an emulation of said amp, by definition, but certainly the emulation can closely approach the real amp asymptotically. I think that's where we are now. We're close.
The Pocket POD is not recording worthy. Not pro quality at all. It was a convenience, I don't know if they've sold it in years.
Records WERE made with the POD and the PODxt. Can anyone tell me which tones on which records were POD? I couldn't. We just know a stellar guitar tone when we hear it on a record.
The Helix is pretty dense, it can use anyone's IR's for cabs etc. and it has all the capability and effects known to man [and all genders extant.] I have no personal experience with the Helix, but Richie Castellano uses it for just about everything he does now, and he uses it onstage with Blue Oyster Cult.
About the Kemper. I still think (although I'm not current on all tech in this realm) Kemper is unique in the 'modeling' space. Kemper doesn't model.
For a player, playing through a Kemper can't quite sound like playing through the source amp the Kemper profiled. Yet, I think it's not the Kemper's fault. It DOES sound like the source amp as "recorded" into the Kemper. The Kemper profile is in effect a _recording_ of the source amp and mic and any other processing. It's a recording that measures the dynamic input of the guitar signal to how the amp reacts, drive and eq, in real time, until the profiler is satisfied that there's no audible difference between the Kemper and the original. How good and how faithful that profile is depends on who did the profile and how rigorous the profiling process was.
The lightbulb for me was, playing the best profiles I had through two QSC K-10's at close to stage volume at home, and some local appearances. Yes, the experience is not quite like playing the amps, you can sense that you're playing a 'recording' of the amp, like a malevolent shape-shifting alien, but it was no less rewarding or less useful, to my ear, and in my experience, in tracks I do with the Kemper and send to other people. I've yet to use the Kemper live, I still like real amps and dials, and the difference in backline amp quality I get on fly dates. OTOH, I like the consistency of the Two-Notes Torpedo for cab and mic emulations. Go figure, as nobtwiddler says.
Would "real" gear always trump digital stuff? I suppose, if only for vintage cred and that incremental quality that only the truly talented among us can extract.. But the dinosaurs are going to die off.
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Post by schmalzy on Oct 10, 2018 10:31:39 GMT -6
The first time I heard a Kemper, I was pretty taken aback.
It was a "hometown guy went off to Nashville, had a quick moment of fame in the 80s and early 90s, and booked a show with his old bandmates when he came home to visit his family" kind of things. The guys showed up with Kemper unpowered heads and some hi-fi speakers and amps. I thought to myself "what sort of shenanigans is going on here?" Sure as hell, the guitars sounded great! They covered a wide range of sounds that night and - if I remember correctly - it all worked pretty smoothly. It really changed how I felt about modeling (ahem... "profiling") amps.
Now...the "Nashville Recording Artist" singer/songwriter/guitarist having to spread out lyric sheets on the floor so he could remember his own "quite famous" songs and a small pile of well-trodden covers was less than great. He refused to wear his glasses (because "they make me look old") so a quarter of the night was spent trying to figure out lyrics and the rest of the night he was singing to the floor. Not a lot of super happy people walked out of that surprisingly high-priced show.
No one complained about his guitar tone but people definitely murmured about his weird new head-down singing style.
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 12, 2018 22:44:44 GMT -6
If I am reamping, I use my Whirlwind DI into my Hardy M-2. That's as close as I can get to an unaffected sound going into my amp again from the DAW. Other on board DI's take the color from my preamp and I feel it loses something when reamping. If not reamping, most of my onboard stuff will be great. Phoenix DRS is great and cleanish, the CAPI stuff with the Whirlwind, the Sebatron Axis for warmer tones. I used to have a pair of A-Designs P1's and the DI was very sweet on those. If I had all the money, I'd have handful of those p1s again. They killed when they were appropriate.
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Post by stormymondays on Oct 3, 2019 15:31:28 GMT -6
One year later: success!!!
I just got around to reamping some tracks with the Little Labs DI. It works! And it sounds great into my Tweed Deluxe.
I had to bump up the gain of the DI track (in fact I normalized it) and did the convoluted Logic I/O setup, with two busses, to avoid latency/sync problems.
Once that was sorted... sweetness!
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