You should watch it till the end, you didnt understand how he equalized all of the external factors to produce the same tone with very different amps, the general concensus has agreed that this differences beween amps were set on stone, and to justify those differences missleading wording and baseless axioms have been used for years and all of that comes from a general missunderstanding of the importance of frequency response.
If that isnt an example of exactly what ASR is trying to do for hifi products then what is?
Ok I watched until the end. I get it, but I think he's missing the point and in this very undertaking proving the real problem, which is spending more time pursuing gear and 'tone' than practicing the instrument. I appreciate it's a service he's doing for his viewers but he said he spent a whole year messing around finding this stuff out, a whole year he could have spent just using an amp he already had and practicing the instrument.
It was an interesting video and thank you for sharing, but the reason I contested its value is because I'm not sure it is true that guitarists are using audiophile terminology to justify religious views regarding guitar amps, so it's not an apples to apples comparison. Added to which the fact that, as I said, guitar amps are still not a tool for measuring or reproducing a signal. I find analogies to things like visual reproduction far more helpful to debunking audiophile myths, e.g. the fact that we can't see outside a certain colour spectrum, such as to UV and infrared, means screen designers do not care about reproducing them; it follows that transducer designers should not care about reproducing frequencies above 20kHz, nor should they market their products as better if they can. Trying to dispel audiophile myths using a tool for creative expression, such as a guitar amp, is like trying to dispel myths about digital visual reproduction by bashing painter's views on pigments, as though they discuss them using RGB and luminance values, no?
I've personally never heard this talk of different tubes and biases etc. from musicians in person. They do have adherances to particular brands and models, but that's more to do with consistency: sure, you could get the same sound elsewhere, but it's a cost-benefit analysis of the time and money it would take to get there vs. just using what you know. I don't frequent forums and YouTube so maybe it is different there, but I'm not sure how representative they are of actual performing musicians.
Maybe someone already does this, I'm not in the guitar world, but if someone makes a digital front end for a clean amp, and you have DSP plug ins like plenty of DAW software and recording hardware has to emulate hardware classics, it would be a highly valuable product, if you convince guitar players of the truth of it.
OTOH, I think as an art, picking your poison and working with it, learning to make it work, learning to get a result despite limitations has value too. If you can dial up anything from a menu list, I'm not sure you will stick with a particular sound to make artistic headway to any depth. In all sorts of human pursuits having best of everything can kill creativity, art, and enjoyment vs imperfect tools or less than utopian conditions.
A cliche: Music is art, and audio is engineering is true. However, electric guitars and amps are another of those intersections where it is a bit of both. I would assume originally, electric guitars and the amps were intending to sound like an acoustic guitar only louder. Apparently that didn't last long as quite quickly electrics had their own sound. Distortion and tone were just more tools in the palette of an artist to work with. If we approach guitar amps like some do hifi, the best amp and guitar body would be one that sounded most like a clean acoustic guitar of quality.
Yes, manufacturers have precisely been doing this for years! They're called 'amp modellers', and are available in a host of different form factors, from pedals to entire rack mount systems, to simply plugins for your DAW, like you suggest.
- The
Line6 POD was an extremely popular pedal which came out in the 90s and was one of, if not the first, good, affordable way to access modelling effects
- The
Axe-Fx is a top-of-the-range, extremely expensive processor which loads of touring bands use
- Modelling combo amps (i.e. amplifier and speaker built into a single cabinet) are all the rage nowadays, from the
Boss Katana to the
Yamaha THR series
And before these, manufacturers were already experimenting with different elements of the signal chain, such as when Marshall produced their
Valvestate amps which used valves only in the pre-amp stage. They were popular and one particular model, the 8100 head, has gained legendary status.
This is why I have a problem with the video because it is making out that there are hoards of clueless musicians out there with medieval views on particulars of tubes etc. arguing there is no way you could reproduce their precious tone in any other form. This is evidently untrue because reproducing different tones is precisely what manufacturers are doing, and precisely what consumers are paying for, which they wouldn't be if they didn't believe it. As with anything else, there are a handful of people who stubbornly hold particular unfounded views, but they are the exception, not the rule.
I have watched multiples of his videos. They are pretty cool! I did buy myself a nice tube amp before... and it seems that its perhaps money not well spent. On the other hand, its a cool thing regardless. On the part of the guitar sounds where it comes from... that's spot on as well. I've always shrugged about how different a guitar can be. In the end, it's often just the pickup change, tension of strings.. some strings, and how it looks and feels. The latter is often subjective. It's the fun part, but also, like any camps.. there are extremist amongst them. I like a Fender custom shop, its not always playing better than some other guitars I have who are a 10th of the price, but its also the whole brand image, look, etc to it. I think if you admit that, its fine, and you pay mostly for that. It has resell value as long as people are like that
Why is it money not well spent? Did you not like the sound of it? Did you not need to amplify your guitar signal? Was it unreliable? I also have a tube amp which cost a fair amount for me (although could be considered cheap compared to some amps you can get), it glows red, and I can plug my guitar in and start playing straight away and enjoy the sound it makes. Yes, I could spend months looking for a cheaper model, even without valves, which sounds similar, but it would be a massive waste of time, would not recoup the cost, and would simply result in less time actually playing! Again, I don't believe this scenario is comparable to shopping for hi-fi equipment.
It's a very romantic point of view that, for instance, don't apply to classical violinists and classical music critics.
Studies have shown that they do prefer modern instruments over ancient and expensive ones in blind tests.
If they say that a stradivarius sound superb, it's obviously for another reason than the sound and the connection to the audience's ear.
https://www.thestrad.com/blind-test...s-violins-from-modern-instruments/994.article
https://www.science.org/content/article/million-dollar-strads-fall-modern-violins-blind-sound-check
I was a bit over zealous with my wording but all I mean is that you have something you want to play and the amp is just one part of the chain that allows that. You're never going to sound like Jimi Hendrix because you're not Jimi Hendrix, even if you use the same amps and pedals he used. You're going to sound like you and part of that is just using the tools you like.
