Re: RME Firewire 800 and Guitar Amp Sim - Preamps

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 27 aug 2007, at 22.19, Luca Formentini wrote:

> Hi Kris,
> you may consider me crazy but since at least 10 years I play with  
> no speaker simulators at all.
> When I play live I go direct into the converter ( FF400) just after  
> having passed an overdrive, a compressor and a volume pedal.

Salve, Luca! Kris - I'm a crazy-son-of-a-bitch as well! I like to  
plug directly into the instrument jack of the FF400. With ultra thick  
plain jazz strings I get an awesomely warm and humming sound that  
way. The FF400 offers the option to dial in the exact input level  
that sounds best. And there's a huge difference in sound even on  
small changes of the input level. And if using a guitar with too  
sharp sounding strings and pickups you can roll of some treble on the  
guitar.

Try this: Guitar directly line-in through instrument input. Put a non  
latency EQ plug-in as the first to happen after the signal is  
digitized. Man, that's a holy grail!


> 1st thing I noticed: most guitar preamps are pumping the mids in a  
> way that even if you cut all of them you can't get a good "flat"  
> signal.

Nels Cline told me about having exactly the same experience, Luca.  
Speaking real amps, that is though - but there's where the sound  
references for he simulators come from.

> 2nd thing: bass preamps are usually more sensitive, natural and  
> wide in frequency range.

I'm wondering if this is not also true for real tube amps as well?  
The best sounding (jazz vibe) guitar sound I have had was on a  
borrowed Fender Bassman 50 W top.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)