This is what playing guitar feels like these days. The variety is absolutely insane, and the opinions on the variety can be equally insane.
I've been looking for an electric guitar amp to use for worship in a small church. I've tuned the sound system so we have a great front of house sound, but the monitoring situation is still a problem. Obviously, the best answer would be to fork over the cash to buy a mixer that can handle more monitors and then buy more monitors or even switch to in ears.
The problem is, I can only work with what I've got. And what I've got is the need to self-monitor my guitar tones so that we can run vocals through the monitors.
I've been able to accomplish this self-monitoring two ways.
First, the drummer is behind all of the musicians.
Second, all of the amps are pointed toward the musicians, angled up to their ears.
Third, we turn everything up loud enough for the drummer to hear the instruments but not so loud that it blows everyone's ears off on stage.
So far it seems to be working.
Now, I love tube amps. I love the break-up you get when you dig into the clean channel. It's probably my early blues influences in Jimi Hendrix, BB King, and tube amp rock musicians I grew up with like Pink Floyd, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, the Tea Party and I Mother Earth.
My favourite overdriven guitar sound is the sound of Pearl Jam's 1993 album, "Vs". If you've never heard it, you need to. The guitars are stunningly detailed, clear and warm, yet they pack enough enough bite and growl to compete with any modern rock album.
I also love the guitar tones from House of Heroes. They are fantastic.
As far as bluesy breakup and overdriven tones, I love the sound Collin James gets out of his rack, especially on the song "Mary Anne"
one of the best examples of a band that successfully combined blues and hard rock in my opinion was I Mother Earth. Take a listen ...
And then there's Lincoln Brewster. Dang. He's good. All that tone is coming out of a Line 6 Hd500 :O
Admittedly, Lincoln said he spend hours in the studio perfecting his tones. It's an interesting idea to do this, because conceptually, if your studio is quality enough to mix in there's a good chance the tones you craft in the studio will translate well onto the stage. The key is translatability. In many cases, musicians who use big stomp box modellers like the HD500 get frustrated because they can't translate the tones between stage and studio.
Right now, I'm using a POD HD500 to get the bulk of my tone. Prior to that, I used a Behringer Vamp 2. Seriously. Here is one tone I got with it ... I'd say for the $100 I paid, I did alright. This was the Brit model. I fed a Boss DS-1 into it using a Strat set to neck pickup on one side, and a humbucker on the other side.
So where does that leave us? I want an amp for stage volume, but I don't want to get a piece of garbage just to have some volume. I also don't need a modeling amp, as alluring as they are because the HD500 is surprisingly detailed. The amps act like authentic old tube amps, which is why they are a challenge to make work. The Brit P75 model is exceptional, however, pretty well out of the gate.
I've read a lot of information across the web on why it's a bad idea to use a HD500 with a traditional guitar amp, unless you are using the HD as a basic stomp box (and disabling the amp models). However, the extreme popularity of the Fender mustang series and other digital modeling combo amps tells me that it's not really as much of an issue as people are making it out to be. In fact, I watched one video of a blues guitarist who usually used a Fender twin reverb, but then switched to a Mustang IV because the model of the Twin was so close. Those models emulate cab as well as power and amp character.
The question will always be how a particular cab model interacts with the speaker of the guitar amp you choose, which is why I'm having such a difficult time deciding what to do. In theory, having the cleanest possible sound for the guitar amp makes the most sense. And so, something like an Orange Crush 35RT might be the ticket.
At the same time, a Fender Blues Junior or even an orange micro terror and cab are also very appealing, because they have the actual tube sound. And if it's right (I've played both, and loved them), then it's right. I might not have to spend hours crafting a tone with one of these puppies. In fact, when I played the orange micro terror, I plugged in my strat, adjusted the gain and played for an hour. It was joy.
It seems that a lot of the worship world is gravitating toward Vox and Matchless Amps these days. I had a Vox AC10, which I thought sounded fantastic. The only problem was the build quality. It rattled like a bag of chains, so I dishearteningly returned it.
This brings me to another important consideration: Build quality. Things are changing, but it still stands that there is a wide variety of inconsistency in amps which are built overseas (especially things built in China). The quality control just doesn't seem to be there ... but then stuff is cheaper from overseas. So that's the tradeoff.
Interestingly, my old faithful V-Amp was an absolute tank and sounded way better than the reviews suggested. I would give it 5 out of 5 stars for value. NOw I did have to play with it a TON to coax the sound I wanted out of it, but once I got it that was that.
I also use a Behringer headphone amp for studio monitoring during recording sessions, which was super inexpensive, sounds fine and is built out of solid metal.
Then I had a behringer guitar amp that died for no reason, and every behringer sound board I've ever used is really tough to make sing, and their loudspeakers (at least the ones I've used) are honky. There is really no "plug in and go" with cheap stuff.
I've had a couple of ideas for what to do about my amplifier situation. I really only need it to play live. I don't need nor want it for the studio. Studio digital modelling has gotten so good, and my recording room is so small that I prefer to just craft tones out of POD farm, Guitar Rig and Amplitube software.
Here is idea #1, which I got from thegearpage.net
This one is interesting, because it uses a micro class D power amp run into some full range speakers, all mounted on a stand. I like it. Plus, it's a stereo setup, which is great! The only problem with this is that it likely won't give me the volume I need on stage, plus it would be a pain to set up and take down all the time.
Idea #2
Why the Crush 35RT? Because it's clean tones are pristine all the way up to 10. This means, in theory, I can let my HD500 do all the tube modeling, and use the crush for simple volume without having to worry about setting up complicated dual amp paths inside the HD500 (which I would have to do with other amps to make sure I can send a non-amp model to the amp and a modeled output to the house speakers).
This means I will feed a guitar level signal into the amp, and let the amp do clean amplifying of whatever is happening inside the HD500. In theory, it should sound great! But that's only in theory.
Third Option: Boss Katana 50
The reviews on this are outstanding, and it is said to take pedals very well. Apparently, the amp models on this are so realistic, that some of my die hard tube amp friends are dropping the tube amps for this. But ... I don't know. Do I need more amp models, bells and whistles? Even if they are great? I will say I absolutely loved the Brown channel in the demos I saw of this amp. It will go from clean to insane just with the sensitivity of your playing. That's cool. But the HD500 can also do this.
So that's where I'm at.
What would you do?
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