Last night I felt like recording a little guitar, and wanted to give the Waves PRS Amp Models more than the initial cursory look I gave them when I bought them. I don’t use amp models often, but there are times it’s useful to. I have a few tips to get a little more out of them - trial and error stuff I figured I’d share.
Based on my initial tryout months ago (not recording with them, just trying to pull out some tones) I decided that like most amp models, they do better with some analog stuff in front of them. So I used my pedalboard through an Avalon U5 direct box. This analog front end did help with the realism a little. I didn’t use dirt, but I have some analog EQ and buffer pedals that shape tone in a good way I bought from Pettyjohn. Still, I felt something was missing, the thickness and roundness a tube amp has, among other factors.
Because I mix ‘in the box’ I’ve become a bit of a plugin addict, and I got a few tube processing emulations that I’ll slap onto tracks from time to time. One that improved things noticeably was the new Elysia Phil’s Cascade. This is a plug that models a one-off tube and transformer hardware box that Elysia’s designer made with old transformers and tubes. Elysia is a very high end hardware company with very high end prices to match! But the plug isn’t expensive.
This plugin made the models start to sound “tube amp” instead of “that’s a model, naaah.” I used a very light treatment, just enough to add some girth and a little upper mid complexity.
Still wasn’t real enough, so I imported a Celestion speaker impulse response into the models themselves (this is an excellent feature on these models). Improvement.
Finally, I ended this part of the signal path putting the whole schmeer into Universal Audio’s excellent Ocean Way Studio room model, making it sound more like an amp in a natural environment.
After two hours of fiddling I got a sound that still wasn’t as good as what I’d get with a real amp and an SM57 in two minutes (!) but it was certainly acceptable.
If trying this little bag o’ tricks saves you several hours of frustration, I’ll consider my work a success!
“Les, why go through all that if you can just turn on a tube amp, put up a 57, and get a better tone onto disk?”
“Yes.”
Based on my initial tryout months ago (not recording with them, just trying to pull out some tones) I decided that like most amp models, they do better with some analog stuff in front of them. So I used my pedalboard through an Avalon U5 direct box. This analog front end did help with the realism a little. I didn’t use dirt, but I have some analog EQ and buffer pedals that shape tone in a good way I bought from Pettyjohn. Still, I felt something was missing, the thickness and roundness a tube amp has, among other factors.
Because I mix ‘in the box’ I’ve become a bit of a plugin addict, and I got a few tube processing emulations that I’ll slap onto tracks from time to time. One that improved things noticeably was the new Elysia Phil’s Cascade. This is a plug that models a one-off tube and transformer hardware box that Elysia’s designer made with old transformers and tubes. Elysia is a very high end hardware company with very high end prices to match! But the plug isn’t expensive.
This plugin made the models start to sound “tube amp” instead of “that’s a model, naaah.” I used a very light treatment, just enough to add some girth and a little upper mid complexity.
Still wasn’t real enough, so I imported a Celestion speaker impulse response into the models themselves (this is an excellent feature on these models). Improvement.
Finally, I ended this part of the signal path putting the whole schmeer into Universal Audio’s excellent Ocean Way Studio room model, making it sound more like an amp in a natural environment.
After two hours of fiddling I got a sound that still wasn’t as good as what I’d get with a real amp and an SM57 in two minutes (!) but it was certainly acceptable.
If trying this little bag o’ tricks saves you several hours of frustration, I’ll consider my work a success!

“Les, why go through all that if you can just turn on a tube amp, put up a 57, and get a better tone onto disk?”
“Yes.”