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Looper's Delight
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Scott: Here's a copy of part of a posting I made recently to the VG-8 mailing list that speaks to your query: << Davor wrote: > >David wrote: my arsenal of modellers including, to date: > >VG-8 and 88; GT-5 and 6; DG-Stomp, Digitech GN3, and Pod XT ... David, it took me ten days to realize that you use ALL these ''toyz'' so could you kindly send us more detailed comparisons of these modellers and their (dis)advantages in your studio (or on stage).>> Hello, Davor Frankly, I have all of these still hooked up mostly because I can (my rig doesn't travel) and because I can never duplicate the tones I like on older models when the new ones come out. But I'll be glad to ramble on a bit about what I like and don't like about them, fwiw, and with this disclaimer: I'm almost always looking for unique and unusual tones, not for ways to duplicate existing, classic (or current) guitar/amp tones, especially on the VGs, and I don't play live and loud, only in my studio and for recording. Also, since I do a lot of sound layering and playing over guitar loops (captured live with delays and other real-time looping tools), I tend to go for collections of sharply contrasting tones as much as for ultimate signature lead or solo tones. ....(snip some VG-8 stuff, but this may be relevant:).... Altho I definitely have some straight guitar/amp sounds on both VGs that I use and love, I almost always use mag-pickup modellers for those sounds, since I like my mag pickups, and the rich differences when switching between them. So, the VGs are my guitar "synths" and my "acoustics," (but all my favorite acoustic sounds are on the 8, not the 88). Mag tools So far, the king of my collection is the Pod XT (QUITE different from earlier Pods I tried), both for its clean sounds and its drive simulators, with the GT-6 coming second. Both offer a great range of credible and attractive distortions, but the POD sounds more organic to me, more spongy and good-gritty, very warm, while the 6 sounds more processed, more digital, more raspy, brighter---but both are full of depth and surprises in their amp/distortion models. For clean tones, I find it almost impossible to get a strong, punchy, loud clean on the 6 that doesn't get harsh and distorted on the upper strings when played hard, but this is not a problem on the Pod. And I haven't found any fx on the 6 that are keepers. For some reason, all the same effects I loved on the GT-5 sound crummy to me on the 6, less interesting and quickly boring. (Haven't found any Pod fx that interesting yet, either, but I haven't looked that hard.) And it's so dumb that there's no separate compressor/limiter block on the 6; it's an option within the FX1 block. Plus, the noise gate simply doesn't do the job on the 6, but is very effective on the Pod---and the Pod's compressors are very cool; you can run both a global "LA2A" type and a stomp-box pre-distortion. (WHY do we need a noise gate on digital modellers, anyway? Can't they build gain models that delete the warts on their analog forebears??) Again, the bottom line here is that I have more patches that I actually use on the Pod (about 10 different ones), compared to maybe 3 on the 6. The GT-5, DG-Stomp, and Digitech are also-rans, and I could pretty easily part with them if I had to. I use the Stomp the most, because I like the wah sounds. They're not classic, more like a tone-control sweep than a resonant filter, but I find this attractive. I have 3 sounds I like on it, a clean, a low-drive, and a smooth high-gain, but I need a separate noise gate to use the latter 2; there's no built-in gate, which either means that my unit is defectively noisy, or that Yamaha is just cheap. I suspect the former. Oddly, even with the noise problem, I find the Stomp very hi-fi, detailed, clear and cutting. Dumb interface for switching sounds on the fly. The Digi is hooked up into the external loop of the GT-5, and I quit exploring it after setting up my 1 favorite clean and high-gain tone within a single patch where I can sweep between them using the GT-5's exp. pedal, via MIDI. I have one GT-5 patch that gives me access to this sound, which is very nice, but I'd say it's more one-dimensional than the tones on any of the other boxes. Beyond this cool external-loop trick, I keep the GT-5 in honor of some quirky fx sounds I really love on it, couldn't duplicate with the GT-6, but don't often return to, including a bitchin' ring-mod bass, some very odd filtered tones using the Humanizer, and a few variations on a slow-gear effect I also can't get the 6 to do: not a sweep up in volume, just a soft or non-existant attack that starts right away. (This is because it takes both a compressor and the slow-gear to achieve, but on the 6 you have to choose between the comp and the SG.) To sum up, I find that even with all these mag choices, I rarely wonder which unit is currently on without looking, since they all seem to have a characteristic overall sound, which is part of the reason why I both keep the old ones, and keep buying new ones. But when I listen back to old recordings, it's much harder to tell, unless there's a distinctive effect going on that tips me off. So I guess I'm really more of a self-indulgent horder of toys than a discriminating tone detective. >> PS to Scott: I haven't tried the Behringer or a J-Station, but I do also have a Pandora and an Adrenaline, but didn't include these because, while they have some nice sounds, they both seem not to compare in richness, dimension and "sculpability" with the units I did mention. << all this talk of amp modelers vs. tubes amps has me wondering: has anyone ever had a chance to test (A/B) the different digital amp modelers available?? (pod, j-station, behringer v-amp, digitech rp & genesis, korg pandora, plus any i'm missing... etc)?? was just curious. i have the digitech rp100, and it's decent, i've played a pod for about 10-15 min once, and wasn't too thrilled w/ it, but that may have been b/c i was testing it w/ a crappy (new) fender squire strat that was not a great guitar to play....just curious..... s---- -- >>