Why Guitar Players STOP Using Tube Amps and START Using Virtual Amps

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[davidjairala]

Nobody will ever know if their first amp sounded good because they didn't know wtf they were doing

[andycasile]

The noise complaint issue is relatable - I am exclusively using plugins at home now for the same reason. But even without that, virtual amps are such a great practice and recording tool, and a great way to inexpensively explore more tones than you would be able to in the "real" world. As evidenced by the pro-quality tones you pulled from a $700 guitar and a $100 plugin, it is a great time to be an electric guitarist!

[michaelgregory]

I'm 61 and have been playing for 52 years, most of those years as a pro studio and touring guitarist. I love your humor videos, but you dropped some serious knowledge on your contemporaries with this one. Big ups!

[alexradsby]

Gain staging is the most important and most annoying thing about anything digital. Definitely a good lesson to learn haha. Well done man!

[Yirmes]

First amp I've owned was also a Roland Cube... the clean sound and built-in effects were actually pretty good given the price tag. As a matter of fact, I know some pro musicianers (mainly jazz cats) who still use that tiny amp for gigs.

[anandgarde]

An amp is an amp, whether its digital, solid state, or tube. There's pros and cons to each, you just have to know how to work with what you have. At home, I like to play through my collection of tube amps during the day and through digital stuff like NeuralDSP and Bias FX at night. When I jam with friends, I tend to use whatever is laying around in their practice space which is usually some kind of digital solid state combo like a Line 6 Spider or Boss Katana.

[Giggiyygoo]

I learned with a $10 irig, the free tonebridge app, and a $75 Amazon strat knockoff. Got tones that someone from 15 years ago would pay thousands for, learned quickly, and did it all on a shoestring budget. What a great time for us.

[howardbrianj]

You are quickly becoming a favorite YT follow. The content is quality, but you come across like a real person wanting to share real experiences. Much appreciated.

[aidenburgess]

The first (electric) guitar I ever used is sitting right next to me along with the first amp I ever used. My parents brought me to a shop when I was 10ish and asked me to pick out a guitar I thought looked cool, (from a wall that only had cheapish guitars) and I selected a ceramic blue SGR superstrat thing(unaware that I was actually making a big choice). A few weeks later I unwrapped the beauty for my birthday, along with the original fender mustang amp(not the guitar it's a modeling amp). I love them both and use them every day, even after getting more expensive gear recently.

[riogrande]

Solid state is kinda underrated tbh, you can get them all analog and good ones have some good tones, and the ease of maintenance is really nice.

[gavinpearcey]

I love tube amps...i build tube amps from scratch, just because I enjoy it. Virtual amps are great too, but understanding that you are running through multiple pre-amps (interface preamp, and virtual amp preamp stage) is critical.

[newgunguy]

Man, after watching Tomo play a hundred dollar guitar through a Fender 10G, I just don't care anymore.

[neaituppi]

In the last couple years, I started learning and using plugins. For decades I used room sound. You can see on my video history how recent it has been from jamming to something with a room amp, and a mic propped against it, to using plugins that can get any amp and effect sound I want. The room sound sometimes sounded good.

[davidscott]

My go to amp has always been my 77’ Princeton reverb, I have had it since 1991 and it has worked for me playing at home or playing in concert. I play a 91’ American made Strat and a Takamine acoustic electric thru it. When playing on stage I play thru a Lr Baggs para acoustic DI into the house system.

[themightymcb]

Amp sims are a game changer for metal especially. It's possible to get good tones for cheap, but it's certainly not easy. Save for a small handful of notable exceptions, solid state stuff doesn't hold up well at high gain.

But now I can just plug into my interface, pull up the Fortin Nameless Suite and melt faces pretty much instantly. So much clarity and punch, the kind of tone you'd need to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars chasing with actual gear.

[_charwyn]

Actual thing that added to the problems with virtual amps in the past…

The first gen Focusrite Scarlett were often malfunctioning where the “INST” input is too hot no matter what guitar you use.

Until I fully switched to the LINE mode (and applied high shelf on eq before all the virtual amps and such to compensate for the impedance difference), I was struggling BAD to try and figure it out, like why is it clipping…

And just by how popular those interfaces were and pther testimonies, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one with such conundrums.

Nowadays everything works better.

[onethousandtwonortheast]

My first guitar amp was a Roland JC 120. My jazz teacher sold it for coke money. He was a monster player. Died at 35. I brought it over to his house one day and left it there knowing I would come back for it. A couple weeks went by and my amp went bye-bye. I wasn’t mad though. I learned so much from him.

[JoeThanem]

You are forgetting those of us raised by boomer dads, who owned tube amps and would sit around drinking beer at night and jam with us classic rock and roll and we cut our teeth on our dad’s tube amp and classic guitars with our dad teaching us classic rock riffs. It was just how we grew up, and all we knew was dad had that awesome guitar amp that sounded really cool when you turned up that one knob that said “gain” and when you bumped the amp it sounded like a loud thunder sound (the spring reverb).
Ahhh, I guess not everyone has that experience……

[SheaRecordmetal]

I love my 5150 II . Here is also something you can do with loud amps. Get yourself a JHS little black amp box. It’s an attenuator and you put it in the loop. I basically use it as a master volume/tone knob. You get all the gain and feeling, but can play as quietly as you want.

[amirkhalid]

My entire rig consists of a Mooer GE100 multiFX pedal and a Fender Champion 100 amp. (I have a soft spot for the number 100.) Guitars are an Epiphone Les Paul, Squier Affinity Strat and Teles, and Chinese-made ES335 and SG copies. And headphones to plug into the Champion 100 for late-night practice.