itching dissatisfaction (Vox modeler and modelers in general)

[Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

Hmmmm.  I know I often "obsess" to get a certain tone, but a lot of 
times I think what I'm trying to buy isn't more gear, but more time to 
play the gear I have.  I've been working on that one a lot the last few 
years.

However, lately I've been freaking out about not being able to get this 
certain "quack" out of the Vox Tonelab modeler I've been using.  I was 
loosing sleep about it.  Seriously.  Perviously I talked about using 
the "amp" out settings and dialing in more treble to get a good tone, 
but this didn't seem to do the trick on the "high gain" sounds, but 
worked well for crunchy Vox and Fender sounds.  I could get close to 
the sound I wanted using the line out mode, but with all this high 
frequency sound that really killed it for me.  I spent some time with 
Digital Performer's perimetric EQ and realized that while most guitar 
cabs don't produce much over 5khz, the Vox was spitting out stuff well 
into the 15mhz realm.  Slapping a $70 DOD stereo graphic EQ after the 
Tonelab did the trick.  So, I had to spend a little more, but it's 
worth it.  I didn't like the "feel" of the Pods much either, although 
their sound seemed good.  The Tonelab seems to capture that stomp box 
and tube amp sound AND feel better than anything I've tried... but with 
this weird high frequency issue.  I wrote Vox scolding them for it, so 
maybe it will be addressed in a future update.  I hope so.  WTF were 
they thinking?  Didn't anyone bother to put a scope on this thing?

Still, it's got an 8 sec looper that acts like a Digitech PDS-8000.  
Now that's fun.

Mark

On Jun 12, 2004, at 6:30 AM, the toy room wrote:

> ."shit, I couldn't have touched this sound quality to tape
> before...maybe my itching dissatisfaction is not in the gear?"