Post by Joey GoldsteinAgain....
I've been a professional guitar player and teacher for over 40 years.
What do you do, poser?
This'll be good...mind if I respond to this post, even though
you've addressed it to Defiant? And why call him a poser...
he might know a few things you don't, eh? As might I.
Post by Joey GoldsteinI can hear the difference.
AH! The truth has outened...
Did anyone say you had to?
Post by Joey GoldsteinIt's close enough now and in many ways now it's actually better.
The Axe-FX does EVERYTHING I need and want in a guitar rig in a way that
a tube rig never could.
Hey - different strokes, eh?
It's interesting that an entire industry has sprung from
the desire to make three-legged fuses (that's an inside
baseball joke that any electronics nerd will get) sound
like tubes. And good things have come of that, there is
no doubt about it. But most of the sandcasters (that's
what SS amp designers are called by those who follow the
True Religion - some might call them Cathode Followers...)
simply fail to understand that the best (and easiest)
way to make something sound like a tube amp (after all...
is that not what they are trying to achieve?) is to use
tubes, which already sound fabulous and don't need software
updates. As an added bonus, they don't croak from static
discharge in the winter (or in extremely dry climates)
when you walk across a rug and plug your guitar in. (Yes,
this happens; the fact that it may not have happened to
you is due to any number of different factors, including
luck. I'm in Denver, I've seen a lot of chips fried this
way, only not lately - I quit servicing SS/digital stuff
more than ten years ago.) BONUS: If a nuke goes off in
low-earth orbit (dedicated EMP attack) or on a nearby
city (collateral EMP) anything with a transistor or an
integrated circuit in it is never going to work again.
Tubes are immune to EMP, so - assuming you can rig a
source of AC power somehow, or the gubbermint manages
to get the grid back up - dudes with tube amps gonna jam
while you digital boys gonna sit on your asses and listen.
Post by Joey GoldsteinAnd it all fits in a 4-space shallow rack.
I see the attraction. I see a lot of whining about "heavy
gear" by guitar players who've never had to wrestle with
over half a ton of gear at every gig. Like I did for decades.
Post by Joey GoldsteinTubes were NEVER all that.
You might want to listen to some of those iconic
recordings from the 40s-50s-60s-70s...not only
were the players using tube amps, the recordings
were made on analog gear with tubes in it. That's
just a fact - like it or not. And what're the hottest-
selling plug-ins for Pro Tools and other digital recording
suites? Tube gear, of course...analog tape saturation
emulation, tube guitar amp emulation, analog tube compressor
simulators, tape-echo simulation... this is a near
endless list. What's the first thing a new digital
studio owner does? Try to make his state-of-the-art
digital recording rig sound like what was being used
70 years ago. Tubes! Yes, you can come close, and
they get closer all the time...but if you go to a
high-end pro studio, the first (OK, second, in many
cases) thing they show you is their amp collection.
Damn near always all tube amps. And then they show
you their vintage outboard processors...tube, of
course. There's a reason. I just find it kind of ironic
that the major thrust of the whole "modeling" industry
is BACKWARDS: not "Hey, look what we can do that's NEW,"
but "Hey, look how close we can get to what people were
doing 70 years ago."
Post by Joey GoldsteinAnd they're an expensive drag to maintain.
Not if you take care of them. Did you know that there are
amplifiers in the early transatlantic telephone cables
that have been running for decades - and are still running,
although they are used for low-bandwidth applications
now - without a tube change? Underneath the fuckin' OCEAN!
Post by Joey GoldsteinI'd need two Fender Twins with effects loops and EV speakers, plus a
five-space rack, to do what I do with my Axe-FX rig.
Wheeee! We're all sure you love it. It's light, it's
versatile, it takes up less room in your Volvo. And most
important of all, it's what YOU like. That's the way it
should be. But don't tell us any fairy tales about how
it sounds like a tube amp - you've already admitted you
can hear the difference but you just don't care. Good! Let's have a look at a '65 blackface Fender Super Reverb. On paper,
it's a piece of shit - noisy, non-linear, plenty of distortion.
But in the real world, where music is made, it's a seriously
gorgeous-sounding amp. Yes, it's a one-trick pony, but it does
that trick better than any other pony on Earth - period.
Post by Joey GoldsteinSolid state never caught on because it was never warm enough and musical
enough, and it's ugly when it distorts.
Damn - you *did* manage to learn *something*.
Post by Joey GoldsteinWhen the POD first came out and was widely adopted I thought people just
didn't care because it DID sound like crap as do all of Line 6's offerings.
So that's a brand you don't like? <shrug>
Post by Joey GoldsteinBut the Axe-FX is different.
Digital guitar amplification HAS come of age.
You're free to like (and use) what you wish. I've
never said any differently. It's what I do, too.
But I didn't say anything like "What's really true
is that the old guys like you two who can't accept
modellers have *your* heads and *your* ears up your
asses."
Well, of course...it's always necessary to attack
another musician's ears if there is a disagreement
about how something sounds. In fact, back in the old
days dudes who worked as salesmen/demonstrators in
audio stores - even low- and mid-end ones - were
trained to sell "magic cables" (think 'Dinosaur Wires')
by impugning the hearing of the customers... they'd
hook two cables into an A/B comparator box and flick
the switch a couple of times and then say, "can't you
hear the difference?" And of course, most of the time
the poor schlub who's looking for a wire says HELL
yes, gimme the expensive one. Because he's not gonna
admit he "can't hear the difference." And musicians -
and my experience here comes from running a pro repair
shop/music store for 40+ years - are even worse than the
audiophools in that respect.
Post by Joey GoldsteinGet used to it and move on.
I'm used to it. No need for me to move on. I live to
see that look on guitar players' faces when they test-
drive one of my hand-built tube amps. OLD technology,
see? Just like top luthiers use when building jazz boxes...
And if they need some whiz-bang whirlygig FX shit to
make certain tones an amp can't make by itself, there
is always a pedalboard, or however many pedals they
need. Because when all that shit is bypassed and there's
nothing between the guitar and the amp but a decent guitar
cord, the Tone Monster comes out to play. And he can eat
a whole truckload of digital shit *alive*. No reason not to
have a low-powered tube amp (15-40W class) as the ultimate
link in your chain; you can put all the digi-shit in front
of it you'd like.
Just make sure you have a hardwired bypass box right before
it, so that when you need The Real Thing, it's one foot-stomp
away.
Lord Valve, ThD
Expert (fuck you)
