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Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 7:49 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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spend time in both almost equally, have friends and family in both. guess it depends where i am at the moment. on joining the Union, some in quebec, me, would go for it (hell, i'd run down in my pajamas). gotta go overseas tomorrow, back to atlantic city on thurs, will be up to my ears in work, apologies if i don't respond over the coming week.

absolutely agree about pushing air. my gut feeling about the performing arts is that at some point you have to perform. for me, there's nothing like playing tight in a band and playing for someone and seeing them enjoy it live. the amp & the laptop are tools to help perform - but it's gotta come out of the speakers. that's my very humble view from the small and infrequent venues i've played at. however, i have emotional ties to my guitars, i can't explain it, but some how after all the practice and sweat, i kind of bonded with my strats. they make me feel good and i think that has a positive outcome on my playing. as for my rigs (the SEs), they have the sounds i like and i need to hear the air being pushed into a room not just a head set. might sound silly, but that's how i feel about it.

ciao,
johnny.


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Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:41 am
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budglo wrote:
What do you expect from an "engineer".In my line of work , i spend a great deal of time fixing poorly engineered systems. :roll:


Jeez, in my line of work as an engineer it's the architect's work I have to fix....

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Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:09 am
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Playing live with a laptop is for kidz or for musician's on budget.... If you're serious, you will go with the real thing !

Laptop is fine for PC recording though.


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Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 2:17 pm
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I seriously don't like using digital, I have tried some really nice processors and to me theres nothing better than my bassman and ts9 or my bassman and an OD-1 (or both :twisted: )


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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:51 am
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Thanks to everyone for your input on this subject. At this point I'm not sure the benefits trump the use of an amp but I think as we move forward this will probably be an increasing trend. I just picked up the December issue of Guitar Player magazine and interestingly enough they have an article on this very subject on page 128. It might be on their website at guitarplayer.com. Thanks again.


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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 12:59 pm
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Using a laptop is pretty much an equivalent to showing up with just a POD and plugging it into the PA.

There's a few things wrong with this approach:

1. You're relying entirely on the club/promoter/whatever to provide a reliable and decent sounding system for you to plug in to. I've played certain pubs where you even need to bring your own vocal PA.
2. You piss off the sound man. I played this one gig where one of the kids in the opening band showed up with just a POD. Sound guy was irritated. I have no idea why he was, but trust me, you don't want to piss of the man who's doing your front of house mix.
3. Further to #1, you're then relying on the stage monitors to hear your guitar. It's my experience that you want as little as possible other than vocals in the floor wedges because it starts getting "cluttered" sounding real quick and if you put too much in you start having trouble making out the important things like the vocals.
4. I could see if you're using a laptop or POD for processing and then putting that into a simple solid state amp with a speaker but just showing up with the digital processor and no way to amplify it is like showing up with half an instrument. If you're going to play an electric instrument then you need to have a way for people to hear it. Simple as that.
5. Reliability. So if you forget to turn off the screen saver or the power save options what if your laptop decided to go to "sleep" mid-song? How about software errors? Blue screen of death anyone? How about your anti-virus decides mid-set is a good time to do it's scheduled scan? Or any other pop-ups for that matter? Having a windows "bing!" noise in the middle of your song sounds and looks amateurish.

This kind of processing is fine for the studio where it's a controlled environment. On stage, that a different environment altogether. You need to keep things as simple as possible because if something does go wrong there's nothing worse than having a million things that could be it.

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Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 4:40 pm
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Ok, this seems to be a touchy type of subject here, but like everyone else i feel compelled to put down my 2 cents.

Being one of those guys that uses a computer to record music on, i can't say that i haven't used my fair share of digitally simulated amps. they sound good, theres no doubt about that. having the line 6 UX2, i can play (virtually) a fender champ, then play a lovely soldano. what could be better, right?

Well, heres the wall for me. although these programs sound good enough to get the point across, theres a good reason they call it a "simulation". i have found that almost all digital amps, or computer programs always make the amp in question sound a little choppy. i know thats not the technical term, but the tones these programs create just sound kinda tinny or cold.

Tube amps just sound better. being one of those "snobs" i can tell you that i can hear a difference in a SS or tube or even computer amps. though it is a small margin or difference. Tubes are all analog (so they only go to certain freq) not like digital anything that will give you all sorts of freq, even some the amp in question may not have made!

that, and it just doesn't look all that cool to have such a hot sounding tone coming out of a.......laptop? it just doesn't look right, does it?

"there is no replacement for displacement"
get out that ol' amp stacker and pummel your listeners ears with pure power.

like lemmy says "if it's too loud, your too young"


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Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:01 pm
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I played a POD XT and then a POD X3 Live for several years with a Variax. Just showed up and ran XLR to the board out of it. Sound guys don't hate this, they love it. Not sure why a previous poster said this, because the only thing sound guys hate is stage volume. They're funny that way.

However, I recently converted to a Strat with a tube amp, and there was a definite difference for me. I just felt more connected to my guitar and the sound I was producing. It felt more alive and it felt more like the guitar and sound had a "soul" to it.

I think most of the threads have missed the point that performers are converting to digital hookups for convenience. Not because of the sound necessarily.

I also agree with an earlier statement that you cannot control feedback and playing dynamics as artistically with digital. Where would John Fogerty have been playing through a POD?

If you like the digital format, there are plenty of reasons to do so. I like tubes.

"Can't we all just get along?"


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Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:00 pm
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Good one msu65.

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Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:13 pm
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hello from atlantic city. casinos are relatively empty. nice breeze off the ocean on the boardwalk.

hmmm, more myths to disspell from the tube community.
1. feedback happens when the pickups couple to the speakers. this can only happen with an amp with its gain&volume cranked up. it doesn't matter if the pre-amp is digital or analog. feedback tone depends on the nature of the saturation of the driven elements. whether you like a particular feedback depends on a few things, including your expectations.
2. reliability. tubes. laptops. tubes have their problems. laptops have their problems. and the there's the end user with his problems. guess what's least reliable.
3. nothing wrong with stage monitors, if you know what you or sound man is doing. depending on the venue, a well setup pa system may be far more preferable. in short: no "right answer", it's whatever sounds good.
4. comment beginning with "not like digital anything...". sounds like a possible fact, but is just prattle. again: go compare the latest 240Hz digtal lcd to an analog crt tv and tell us what's better. or compare blue ray dvds and "digital" sound system to vinyl and an old fashioned (1960s) analog tube sound system and tell us what's better. this is rhetorical, i just wanted to push the point that there's a lot of digital stuff around us we take for granted and would never give up, but somehow when it comes to guitar amps, it's suddenly different. it's not.
5. claim that a tube amp can be differentiated from a digital amp by hearing. given that reasonably good quality amps are used, i'm willing to bet you cannot tell in a blind test.

so far, the only thing that makes "tube" sense is personal preference.

ciao,
johnny.


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Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 10:33 am
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johnny stecchino wrote:
so far, the only thing that makes "tube" sense is personal preference.

ciao,
johnny.


And reliability capable of withstanding extreme punishment, if you buy marshall. :wink:


I'd agree on all of those points though Johnny. My only quiblble is that I much prefer vinyl to any modern media format. The reason being vinyl was always mixed with a mid peak. Cd's on the other hand seem to consistently be scooped. Its nothing major, I can put up with it but prefer vinyl.


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 10:54 am
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understand!

Ciao,
johnny.


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 11:30 am
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Here is where I will come in..I prefer my nice Fender Super Champ XD...one of my buddies swears by his laptop with emulatoer...I am cool with it...not my preferenc, but the guy sounds good..so it is all good in my world. I get frustrated when people think that it is their opinion and nothing else...I kind of feel sorry for them because they remain closed to possibilities...just my opinion.


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Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:08 pm
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airbornestrat wrote:
Here is where I will come in..I prefer my nice Fender Super Champ XD...one of my buddies swears by his laptop with emulatoer...I am cool with it...not my preferenc, but the guy sounds good..so it is all good in my world. I get frustrated when people think that it is their opinion and nothing else...I kind of feel sorry for them because they remain closed to possibilities...just my opinion.
Well, when your livelyhood is music, sometimes the sure thing is the safer bet.I dont neccessarily see the other camp as close minded,maybe their preferences are their preferances and thats all there is to it.Nothing wrong with that, but when someone comes on and saying that laptop ams are the best thing since sliced bread and anyone else is "funny", I think that has a tendency to close a few minds.


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 2:23 pm
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"funny" has been taken out of context quite a bit, and clearly sensitivities are way too high (sometimes, i'm not sure if it's posturing for effect). in retrospect, it isn't very funny when when one sees so much prejudiced misinformation concerning "digital", "solid state", "laptop", "software", "pa systems", etc... by "experts".

ciao,
johnny.


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