A very specific target I'm after but it seems to be one of the most elusive. I've been trying to get a good tone for jazz lead on melody and improv (somewhere between George Benson & Larry Carlton) , I have a pod 2.0 and all the amp simulators in logic Pro X, but they all sound like doodoo to me. I've even tried bare-bones straight from my guitar into the board and tried to doctor it up with EQ and effects with very little success.
For rock sounds my Pod does pretty fine with a Mesa, Marshall, Fender, and hot Rod amp tones, but to do jazz it's a little more subtle (the tone considerations) and so far I haven't come close to the sound of a real amp. I'm starting to think that no form of direct input into recording is going to come close to an SM57 in front of a good amp. Am I wrong?
I'm sure Les, our studio wizard, must have some sage advice on this subject but if anyone else has suggestions I'd like to hear about it too.
I’m no wizard, but you’re right, no form of direct modeling recording gives you the dynamics and immediacy of a mic in front of a tube amp, and I think this shows up more with clean and “edge of grit” sounds than it does with highly overdriven sounds.
Thing is, sound isn’t just frequency response or how the distortion works. There are other important factors, and one of them is dynamics. Tube amps are very dynamic (tubes amplify exponentially, transistors amplify in a linear fashion). Modelers are less dynamic. Think of dynamics as a “third dimension,” if you will.
When you’re modeling an overdriven amp like the models you mentioned that work better, you don’t need as much dynamic range. Overdriven amps are highly compressed, because overdriven tubes compress quite a lot; many tube compressors work on the principle of natural tube compression. So using a somewhat less dynamic device like a modeler works better when it’s modeling less dynamic, highly overdriven signals. Makes sense when you think about it, right?
No doubt you’ve heard people say tube amps are louder. Well, no, it’s not that they’re louder, it’s that they reach their note attack amplitude
faster, and in a different way.
That’s dynamics.
So take that same guitar, and plug it into a model of a clean amp, and the difference in dynamics is palpable. You feel it as well as hear it. I think a lot has to do with what the ear perceives at the very attack of the note.
Every note or chord has an envelope, consisting of the note attack, the initial decay, the sustain, and the release. This is called the ADSR Envelope.
Clean tube amps sound more dynamic in the attack portion of the note than models of the same amp because tubes are, in fact, more dynamic than transistor based things. Note attack is what the ear perceives first, and it tends to dominate the ear on a plucked instrument. When some of it goes missing, the ear is disappointed.
Of course, when the dynamics are missing, you play differently, too. That’s why modelers, for better or worse, have a different feel than playing through a tube amp.
However, short of getting out a mic and sticking it in front of an amp (which is preferable for the above reasons), there’s something you might try that might improve the modeled sound after you record it: you can use an envelope shaper, and set it for a faster, sharper attack. Sometimes this works well, other times not so well. There are a lot of factors involved, but it’s worth a try.
I believe that Logic has an envelope shaper in its standard plugin array. You can make it accent the note attack a little harder, or you can use it to slow down a note attack. Obviously, you want it faster.
One additional observation - a model of “an” amp isn’t necessarily a model of
your amp, set up the way you set it up, and sticking it in your room where you can get it to sound exactly the way you like it. Models are also limited by their ability to process quickly in what they can and can’t do. A/D conversion and D/A conversion takes processing time. To understand this, all you have to do is think about what happens when you record in Logic; there’s a “round trip” latency that takes place. You can hear it. I guess that’s two observations, isn’t it? Oh well!
