Just the other day a co-worker of mine, who has recently taken up the electric guitar with great enthusiasm, stopped by to talk about guitar amps. He was expressing an interest in me building a tube amp for him. In his statement of the "wish list" for this amp, he said that he "eventually was going to put an amp modeler in front of it". Specifically he was referring to his desire to own something from the Line 6 Pod line.
Being a tube amp purist, hearing this made me cringe. Why would someone want to disrupt the glorious combination of an electric guitar going directly into a tube amp, overdriving the power tubes into blissful breakup, by inserting an amp modeler between the happy couple? It would be like holding hands with you sweetheart wearing a baseball mitt!
Today my friend returned to tell of his weekend guitar playing experiences. He has been borrowing a tube amp that he has been playing through, getting his feet wet in the work of analog electronics, as it pertains to the electric guitar. Over the weekend he was able to borrow a Line 6 Pod to try with it. This was his previously stated "ideal combination". He went on to tell of his disappointment of the tone generated with the modeler driving the tube amp, and how much better the natural overdrive of the tube amp sounded than the modeled overdrive generated by the Pod/amp combination. Now I will admit that amp modelers do have some usefulness in areas of recording, when you want to put down a pretty descent sounding track with very little setup overhead. But for live sound, there's no substitute for the simple recipe of an electric guitar into a simple, properly built tube amp. I am thankful that my friend has seen (or heard?) the light!
All the best,
-John
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