Amp sim or real amp? Before you flame please read :x

[koalamo]

Hey guys, Im trying to throw a studio together and for the most part I'm focusing on drums until I get those down and then moving onto guitars but, until my computer comes I have alot of time to do research and I'm getting alittle ahead of myself.

I have a Marshall 1960 lead cab that I had bought awhile back for my band ( I don't play guitar) but for now I'm stuck recording and doing all my mixing in a single room that's about 20 feet by 18 feet. </3

My first question is, would it be more practical for me to actual buy a decent head (I was thinking maybe a bugera or trying to score a dual recto on ebay for cheap) and try micing the cab or would I be better off buying a good amp Sim like pod farm platinum or Revalver?

Also if I take the sim route, should I go pod farm platinum or revalver? I've searched all around the forums for comparisons of the two but most of threads are old and the links to the sound clips are dead. What I've generally been able to take away is that revalver is better for heavier rhtyms
but pod farm is better on leads/clean stuff/and also can do bass. If anyone could post some more comparisons or at least point me in the direction of more recent threads that would really be appreciated as well.


I also feel I should mention that Joey Sturgis is definitelty one of my biggest influences. I think his mixing skills and the tones he achieves are pretty baller and I know he uses pod but alot of people seem to think revalver is great as well so I just wanted to get some opinions?

Sorry for the long post,
Thanks in advance dudes!!

 

[guitarguru777]

Honestly a real tube amp wins out 99.9% of the time.

To be totally honest I have BOTH, and have used BOTH at different times. I think you really cant go wrong picking up a few amps and something like Pod Farm.

Look at it this way:

A used 5150 (which is really the sounde of 90% of the bands out there today) goes for about $500 used. You can pick up a used Bugera 333XL for about $350 - $400 POD Farm Platinum would run you $149 and includes a free upgrade to Platinum 2.

All in all for $1000 you can get some killer gear with some great versatility. Of course you dont have to buy them all at once, but over the course of a few months or a year it should be easy even with a part time job on a students budget.

EDIT: DONT FORGET MICS! ....lol

SM57 - $99
Audix i5 - $110
e609 - $149

Also whats your monitor situation like? YOU NEED MONITORS, dont be a n00b and mix on PC speakers its not going to work!

You got an Interface? If so how may channels? Enough to record a full kit?

 

[JakeAC5253]

+1 to everything he said. I think Audix i5's are the same price as SM57's though, at least on sweetwater.

I think you need to come to terms with if you want to do it cheaply or if you want to do it correctly. Cheap isn't good and good isn't cheap. My 2¢

 

[Trevoire520]

Acoustic Treatment & Monitors should be your first priority. if you cant hear properly then it wont matter what gear you have.

If I were you once I had my acoustics and monitoring sorted I'd grab.

1. Mic - SM57

2. Valve Amp - Take your pick, doesn't necessarily have to be expensive:
Peavey Windsor
Orange TH30
Bugera 6260/6262/333/333xl

3. Pod Farm Platinum

So now you can:
Mic up a valve amp
Record direct using Pod Farm
Go hybrid, and run Pod Farm (with no cabinet/mic simulation) into the fx return of your valve amp, and mic up the cab. So you have the versatility of all the different preamp models in PF, while still getting valves and moving air from your cab involved. Best of both worlds.

Also, if you're on Windows there are quite a few VERY good amp sims out there. Have a look in the sticky and you'll find links to them.

 

[koalamo]

haha Guitarguru i love you dude you always post on my shit with mad good advice.

To be totally honest I have BOTH, and have used BOTH at different times. I think you really cant go wrong picking up a few amps and something like Pod Farm.

Yeah I was thinking the same exact thing, but I just dont know if I should go podfarm first or save up and buy the tube amp first.

And yeah dude I got a pair of krk's which I think are pretty nice. As far as interface I just ordered and adk pro computer bundled with cubase 5 and a saffire pro 40 and I'm looking into getting the ada 8000 for recording triggers so I think I have enough stuff to cover it.

Gotta grab an sm57 though, still haven't done that.

And haha I love how you guys are totally just blowing off revalver and telling me to go for pf, I'm assuming by that fact alone I have my answer to that question.

 

[TheUnknown]

Not to jack...but I think its relevant.

1. I Know real amp + micing is superior to everything, end of discussion.

Given my current situation this method is impossible, and kind of unnecessary.

Ive been using Sims... Lepou, TSX, etc with impules with satisfactory results for awhile now.

What Ive been contemplating lately is..real amp / dummy load / impulses

Will this yield Noticeably better results than sim + impulses?

Keep in mind this is just for personal stuff that Im not looking for the "absolute mind blowing results". But other than producing a dummy load, which Ive seen a Very easy schematic for here on the forum, would be an Easy thing for me to do to improve my guitar sounds?

 

[AdamWathan]

Not to jack...but I think its relevant.

1. I Know real amp + micing is superior to everything, end of discussion.

Given my current situation this method is impossible, and kind of unnecessary.

Ive been using Sims... Lepou, TSX, etc with impules with satisfactory results for awhile now.

What Ive been contemplating lately is..real amp / dummy load / impulses

Will this yield Noticeably better results than sim + impulses?

Keep in mind this is just for personal stuff that Im not looking for the "absolute mind blowing results". But other than producing a dummy load, which Ive seen a Very easy schematic for here on the forum, would be an Easy thing for me to do to improve my guitar sounds?

No not really, the preamp modelling out there right now is pretty good. It's always the cab+mic simulation where everything falls short, so a real amp into an impulse isn't going to sound much better than an amp sim into an impulse. An amp sim into a real cab+mic is a much bigger improvement.

 

[koalamo]

Oh and just on a side note, would micing a cab be conducive to my current situation? Wouldn't I have to crank the volume on the amp to get a good tone which would be a problem monitoring in the same room

 

[TheDriller]

If you're going to go with an amp-sim, my advice is to skip the Line-6 stuff entirely and get Amplitube 3 instead,
It's simply much, much better.

people only keep recommending PodFarm out of familiarity, it's been eclipsed in terms of quality by other products for quite a while now.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

I'd go a step beyond: If you are short on money, just save all the money and use the free ampsims around that in my opinion sound much better than any current commercial plugins. I own POD Farm 2 and it's really good for the price, but LeCto beats it in rythm guitars being free...

If you have the money and the place to record real amps, then go for it... A second hand recto would be on another league.

 

[gabriel g.]

a good head is just 33% of a good sound.
you also need a good cab and a good player for the 100%

just sayin.

it is one of the biggest mistake.
people buying extremly good heads and then wonder why they sound like shit because they play them through some shitty cab.

 

[koalamo]

a good head is just 33% of a good sound.
you also need a good cab and a good player for the 100%

just sayin.

it is one of the biggest mistake.
people buying extremly good heads and then wonder why they sound like shit because they play them through some shitty cab.

Well I have a Marshall 1960a with celestion G12T75's so as far as I know its not that shitty.

I just don't know how I'm going to be able to mic a cab without tracking everything through headphones with my current setup

And @Thedriller what about revalver? Better than pod farm or not so much??


edit: Just listened to some stuff with amplitube and its pretty awesome, now I have one more plugin to consider any other opinions on amplitube??

 

[BrettT]

And @Thedriller what about revalver? Better than pod farm or not so much??

I'll chime in and say that Revalver is wayyy better than Pod Farm for realistic amp sounds. Download the demo and give it a try....

 

[guitarguru777]

koalamo - Thanks man I try

As far as what to go with I tend to look at it from a "What do the pros" use stand point. I look to the Majority not minority when it comes to this. Of course you have guys like Joey Sturgis who get AMAZING tones out of a Pod / Pod Farm, but 99.9% of the Pros are using real tube amps. As for "volume" you dont necessarily have to crank the cab up to ungodly volumes. I record 98% of my re-amps at normal room volume and they turn out fine. Luckily enough all of my amps except the 5150 have a master volume so that I can attenuate the volume to a decent level.

I honestly feel that you could easily get away with just a 5150 used for at least a few months till you can work your way up to something more.

I highly reccomend looking into these if you are serious about recording and getting a variety of tones for very little money (relatively speaking)

Used 5150
Used Bugera 333XL
Krank Rev Jr
Jet City 333 20w
Egnater Tweaker
Orange Tiny Terror
Marshall Class 5

All of those amps except for the Orange are under $500. So for it it was easy, buy one every 5 months till I have them all. Currently I have the 5150, Krank Rev JR and a Bugera 333XL. Between those 3 I can get a very wide range of tones. I really recommend the Bugera for nice "Marshally" tones cause the crunch channel just screams Marshall goodness. The swappable tubes from 6L6 to EL34's is a nice feature.

Honestly even if you just bought the 333XL first and bought a couple sets of tubes you would be able to get quite a variety of tones.

 

[guitarguru777]

I'll chime in and say that Revalver is wayyy better than Pod Farm for realistic amp sounds. Download the demo and give it a try....

I couldnt disagree more. The only model thats better in Revalver is the 5150. Other then that the Pod Farm Rectos and Marshalls are MUCH better.

Oh and Amplitube blows for high gain tones

 

[Matt-Steele]

Seriously, just use LePou's Recto. It's free and is by far the best recto sim I've heard. I'll go as far as to say it's the best amp sim I've heard period! It's ridiculous to me that the free stuff is becoming better than the retail stuff!

 

[koalamo]

Honestly even if you just bought the 333XL first and bought a couple sets of tubes you would be able to get quite a variety of tones.

I was thinking of getting the Bugera honestly, I'm just afraid to get a used because everyone on the forums seems to think they break rather easily? My biggest concern about micing up my cab right now is that my room is untreated and I'm mixing in the same room. Which is why I'm a bit aprehensive about spending mad money on heads first because If I can't get a good tone I'm screwed. Eventually I'm going to sound treat my room but I gotta save up, which tbh is the only reason I'm even considering amp sims. Will an untreated room still get decent quality guitar recordings?

 

[koalamo]

Seriously, just use LePou's Recto. It's free and is by far the best recto sim I've heard. I'll go as far as to say it's the best amp sim I've heard period! It's ridiculous to me that the free stuff is becoming better than the retail stuff!

I've tried it and I think it is pretty awesome but pod farm has a variety of amps to choose from and can do bass, which is pretty legit not to mention joey uses it and god knows I love the sound he gets from it.

 

[nialldoran]

My biggest concern about micing up my cab right now is that my room is untreated and I'm mixing in the same room. Which is why I'm a bit aprehensive about spending mad money on heads first because If I can't get a good tone I'm screwed. Eventually I'm going to sound treat my room but I gotta save up, which tbh is the only reason I'm even considering amp sims. Will an untreated room still get decent quality guitar recordings?

i know alot of people on here dont have treated rooms and do just fine, but i also know alot of people have treated their room, if your currently scraping cash and cant afford to plaster your room in auralex foam, build your own traps, i did it recently and the differance in my room is unreal, its also relatively easy to do, there are loads of tutorials on how to do it, and it will save you bundles, and is a good temporary solution, then if you want to upgrade to professional acoustic foams and treatments ,you can when you have the money, as a tempory solution ive currently got 4 inch thick fibreglassy type stuff in my room but its safe shit that wont kill my lungs, made frames wrapped twice in fabric, sure its not the best treated room in the world nor was it the best i couldve done for my poor room, but it works on the temp side to save money now, so i can spend it later

 

[guitarguru777]

I mix in an untreated room with the amps and everything right next to my monitors. LITERALLY. I think I get good mixes. Not as great some guys like Jeff, Erms, Jarkko or Lasse, but good enough for being as new as I am to this genre of music.

You are overthinking things. Just get what you need to get and start recording. You need to learn to crawl before you walk. So taking baby steps into this is the best way to go. Get as good a mix as you can with an untreated room. Then once you treat you room your job will be easier.

Here is photo proof of my setup:

Mesa 2x12 and a Marshall on the bottom right. Those are RIGHT next to my monitors, and I still get mixes that sound like:
www.jasoncohenitservices.com/Grotesque_Test.mp3

Now of course thats not an AMAZING mix. But the guitar tone is just a single 57 on the 5150 with the marshall cab. I did it using headphones with the amps volume on 2