Re: RME Firewire 800 and Guitar Amp Sim - Preamps

[Luca Formentini <luca@unguitar.com>]

Krispen Hartung wrote:

> I will likely wait until I get the FW400 before I rush into anything 
> for much of the same reason you explain below. Jeff Kaiser keeps 
> telling me to just wait and see what my guitar sounds like when I plug 
> directly into the high qaulity inserts and preamps of the FW400. He 
> thinks I will be pleasantly surprised, and I may well be.  The less 
> gear I can get away with using to get my ideal sound, the better.

I agree with Jeff here !

> Just for reference, I like a very dark, warm, and "semi" clean jazz tone.

Try a Summit B2a-b ( check the name, I don't remember well).
It was too dark for me but it was great in terms of tube response.

> I can typically never get this sound when I plug into a mixer board, 
> because the mixer is just re-producing what it gets, which is not what 
> I want. In general, unless we are talking about full bodied jazz 
> hollow body guitara and acoustics, I dislike the sound of the electric 
> guitar direct into a board....it sounds dry, lifeless, and sterile to 
> me, for obvious reasons since the sound source is basically a piece of 
> solid wood with a magnetic pickup. 

Well... it's a singing string which reacts to a good amount of wood, the 
neck being one of the most important.
Many el. guitars are considered even too resonant ( and I like them...)
Pickups are also a veeery important instrument in the instrument. 

> "Guitar is very, very tricky. A lot of people don't understand that 
> the electric guitar and guitar amp (especially the tube amp) evolved 
> together. The electric guitar by itself is basically a piece of wood 
> with a pickup and strings on it....sounds like total crap when you run 
> it through a regular line input or mixer board, etc.  So with the 
> guitar, it is a fallacy to focus on fidelity of caputuring the sound 
> of the sound source, unless we are talking about the tube amp as the 
> source, because the electric guitar as a original sound source is 
> pathetic. And this is unlike the acoustic, which is a different animal"

this is one route, certainly playing through a good amp at high volume 
can give the feeling of one perfect instrument, I also get a lot of fun 
when I do it.
But I don't agree on any fixed rule in music making, even more when it 
comes to the way you may use your instruments.

> I like this idea of the electric guitar and guitar amp being a mutual 
> evolution over the years. It explains why so many guitarists get so 
> frustrated with trying to get a decent guitar sound without an amp.

Maybe el. guitar to board and amplified guitar to gtr amp are two 
different kind of instruments because I am very happy with the "go 
direct" way, maybe just because I don't want to approximate or replicate 
any sound; I want to find the sound that makes me happy and I use any 
way I can to get it.
I think that if you look to get a decent amp sound without using an amp 
you will always be disappointed unless you decide to accept some 
legitimate limits.
An amplified guitar ( through a guitar amp) is one thing, consider all 
guitar amp emulators add a very important point: they emulate the guitar 
amp miked, not as you would be hearing it with your ears.

Have fun, not limits ;-)
my best,
luca
www.unguitar.com