5 Reasons to switch to Modeling Amps - Yes or No?

[Jimbob]

5 hours ago, tsp17 said:

I wouldn’t dare lift 60lbs.  Good for you for still being able to do it!  Up until recently i was going with head/cab just to split up the weight.  Around 40 lbs each.  I’m very happy to have found a single combo package under 35lbs.   Plenty loud for the venues i play at 35 watts.  

Well, to be honest, I use a small hand truck to get my amp from the car to the stage and back - same within my house to the car - so the only lifting I really need to do is to heave it in and out of my car and perhaps occasionally on an amp stand or on to the stage itself. Thankfully, the lifting is so minimal that it doesn't bother me much. If I know that I'll need to haul an amp up and down a full flight of stairs, though, I'll definitely choose a lighter amp. My primary amp is a Two-Rock TS1 combo, and even though it's a 100-watt beast of sorts, between the loop and the master volume control, I can dial it in for the kind of tone I like at any stage volume without having any issues. I'd be the first to say that I'd go for a modeling amp or a much lighter tube amp if I could produce the same kind of vibe that the TS1 puts out, but since I have yet to find anything that'll do that, I just tolerate the weight.  Funny, but since the TS1 1x12 combo is still relatively small in size, the other guys in the band think I'm just using a small amp. Little do they know that I could run that same amp at the Madison Square Garden and get away with it.......LOL.  

Edited February 27 by Jimbob

[bolero]

Here's 5 reasons in a Haiku

No

No

No

No

No

[rwinking]

I have never used the capture feature on my Quad Cortex until the other day. If you are not familiar with this feature, in a nutshell, you plug the QC (Or Fractal, Kemper, etc) into your amp and it digitally captures the amp and stores it for you. You can then call it up and voila, you can use that amp sound anywhere, anytime. My friend has a Brown Super and a Tweed Deluxe. HIs assistant captured both amps for me and sent it to the QC Cloud and then I was able to download it. It was mind blowing. Matt took several captures for me and I finally get what this is about. Modeling digitally models an amp.....all controls, eq, bright switch volume, gain, etc. Captures capture only one moment. So I have a capture of the Tweed Deluxe at volume 5 and the tone control on 5. Or another capture of the amp with everything dimed. When I call it up, that is what I get. I can turn the volume up and down, but I cannot change the eq, even though the screen has some eq controls. They work like a studio where you record  a guitar through an amp and then you can add treble, bass, etc in the mix but you are not changing the eq of the actual amp.

So if I want a nicely overdriven Super sound for a rhythym part, I call that up. If I want a nasty distorted tweed deluxe sound for the solo, I call that up. This thing can also captrueOD/Distortion pedals, mic preamps and a host of other cool things. Again, I am a tube guy, but damn! This thing is pretty amazing.

Here is the Anderton boys doing the A/B thing with the QC capture feature. They also demo how to do the captures, which takes only a couple of minutes.

 

[bolero]

On 2/26/2025 at 6:26 PM, big bob said:

Warm beer and cold women!

Haha was just listening to "nighthawks at the diner", great reference!

[Steiner]

Wasn’t it @rjsanders who exclaimed “boutique amps for boutique guitars”?
If there are no tubes, I have no time.  There is so much more buried in a tube amp’s sound.

[bolero]

David Gilmour still uses a POS Zoom thing from the 80s to record stuff.

 

[TalismanRich]

13 minutes ago, bolero said:

David Gilmour still uses a POS Zoom thing from the 80s to record stuff.

 

Aw, he's a rank amateur!  Someday maybe he'll be able to afford a REAL guitar and amp. 😁

[bolero]

😂