It was at this moment I realized...

JTEX

JTEX

Well-known member
Lately I've been thinking about designing a distortion pedal to recreate a particularly juicy lead sound from the 80s. How was I going to prototype it? Well, how about putting together a patch in Guitar Rig until it sounds close enough, and then look at what I did in software and implement it in hardware?

But why? Why in the world would anyone go back to hardware if the same result can be achieved in software with the click of a mouse?

Seriously. It's dead, Jim. Analog FX is mostly dead, except for some edge cases. It might just not know it yet.

Just my $0.02. Gotta find another hobby 😢
 
Nah, it's not the same. Close enough, maybe. Not the same. Anyway, this stuff is fun. Digital is not fun. Even if you think you're having fun, you're not. Digital fools you. Have you ever seen the Matrix? That's how it fools you. Deep Fake. AI Porn. It's a slippery slope...

Anyway, that's my take. :)
 
There’s a rumour going on PedalPCB gonna rebrand into PedalVST and every PCB circuit gonna be available as downloadable file. You’re able to run those ”pedals” in a dedicated stombox with ARM processor and crazy high processing speed. Analog is dead. It was nice to know you guys. :cry:
 
Welllllp, I have had a GSP 2101 ( with the 2nd processor even ) and ultimately discovered that you cannot make it NOT sound like itself. ( it did introduce me to parallel processing in a big way - does anyone know those have/had a field programmable gate array in them? It was the secret sauce )

I still have a Johnson J Station, the original impulse-based box ( as far as I know ). I have gone through numerous generations of Vox modeling amps. I returned to pedals, mostly analog. Hell, If you want new analog modulation, you might *need* to know how to build it.

But I still have digital, just got a Boss IR-200 and it can dial up sounds identical to what I get from analog chains with real thermionic devices. I can even plug a distortion or overdrive into that and it behaves as expected - which is something no other digital rig I have ever owned would do.

You don't always pull out a power tool for every task. When I need an ultra-precise cut in wood, I use the hand saw/miter because it is less trouble. If I want to do vocoder or talk box stuff, 100% digital is less trouble. If I want to record when other people are sleeping, digital is less trouble.

FWIW the most annoying device I own is a PlethoraX1.
 
Nothing wrong with liking modelers, tubes, or solid state. If I learned anything from this hobby is, we have a tendency to make everything sound the same.. who we are will always shine through in whatever is we do, build, play or write despite our best efforts to be something else. It’s ok to have a preference for a medium, the apparatus we use is only part of the equation. You can take the same distortion based circuit, in any of the for mentioned mediums and even though they the ability to sound the same we might find different inspiration in each. When there is no more enjoyment in it that’s when it’s dead.
 
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JohnnyCreepy said:
There’s a rumour going on PedalPCB gonna rebrand into PedalVST and every PCB circuit gonna be available as downloadable file. You’re able to run those ”pedals” in a dedicated stombox with ARM processor and crazy high processing speed. Analog is dead. It was nice to know you guys. :cry:
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nah dawg stick around for all the troubleshooting threads!
 
Vinyl records have made a resurgence. Retro always has a cool factor for the right crowd. Analog might end up being the old school retro thing but I don’t think that means it will go away. I think you’re always going to have a crowd that thinks having a purely analog signal chain is cool as hell.

I have a few digital pedals and modelers, and I use IRs for recording because I don’t have a great space for cranking and miking amps. But I’ll always have a place for analog in my rig simply because I think it’s badass.
 
Obviously there's room for everything. I love my digital delays and reverbs but can't build the ones I use. Where's a PPCB version of a UA Starlight delay? Even if there was one I doubt I could build it!

I like using my hands to make stuff. And I miss being able to plug into my Tascam 234 cassette 4-track recorder with just an SM58 in front of a guitar amp and get a great sound. These days I need a combination of a Royer 121 with an SM57 into a Neve style preamp through a digital thing into my computer and then hours of getting frustrated with software (I learn new programs at a glacial rate!) and always end up dissatisfied with how it sounds. But there is less background noise...
 
it's like that.
any time i run into someone i know/knew from music/bands/scene, the theme of the chat inevitably turns into gear talk, and that gear talk is always about fucken music production.
not about playing guitar for the sake of just enjoying what guitar does.
not about physical gear of any kind.
it always circles back to 'oh yeah i tried out this new plugin on a sale the other day'. or something along those lines.

of course ill take and appreciate the rare minimal chances i get to talk gear with a fellow nerd, but goddamnit i miss the days when nerds cared about actual gear instead of software.
there's just nothing about engaging with a computer that excites me. (except when im writing a demo on garageband with freebie plugins and it's actually going well lol)
 
JTEX said:
Lately I've been thinking about designing a distortion pedal to recreate a particularly juicy lead sound from the 80s. How was I going to prototype it? Well, how about putting together a patch in Guitar Rig until it sounds close enough, and then look at what I did in software and implement it in hardware?

But why? Why in the world would anyone go back to hardware if the same result can be achieved in software with the click of a mouse?

Seriously. It's dead, Jim. Analog FX is mostly dead, except for some edge cases. It might just not know it yet.

Just my $0.02. Gotta find another hobby 😢
Click to expand...


DAMNIT!

You keep talkin' crap like this and that shite you posted on TalkBass and we WILL plan an INTERVENTION for you...

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Everything has its value and place if it helps you to be creative and to enjoy playing music, so it’s very much a “to each his or her own” thing. However, speaking for me:

While I had a Fender amp and a single pedal growing up (1968 Deluxe Reverb and Boss SD-1, still have them both), I relied mainly on a PodXT modeler and VSTs as I got older. When I got back into playing three years ago, for convenience and space-saving purposes,, I purchased Amplitube Max, which has a staggering amount of amplifiers and pedals and other effects. I could literally sample virtually any effect I wanted to, link them in infinitely organizable chains, etc. And Christmas that year, someone gave me a Spark 40 modeling amp. And you know what? With all those options, I never really touched any of them. Still haven’t. Sure, I would play with presets, but I wouldn’t tweak anything or play around with settings.

In early 2023 I built my first pedal, and since then I have built out an entire physical pedal board (actually two, which I am upgrading now, because I’m kind of out of control) consisting entirely of pedals I built. Many of them are the exact same effects as in Amplitube or the Spark but I had never tried them until I built the physical version. Now I don’t really use either Amplitube or the Spark unless I need to play through headphones for some reason.

Why? For me, it’s two reasons personal to me.

  • First, even if I ultimately don’t like the way a pedal sounds, I just really enjoy the process of physically building something.
  • Second, I find that having a physical knob to turn or switch to flick encourages me to engage with the effect and try different things to see what the effect can do and can’t. For whatever reason, when I see the effect on a computer screen and I have to move the knob around with a mouse, it never occurs to me to actually just “play around“ with the effect. It’s almost like it doesn’t seem “real“ to me in the same way that a physical pedal does. Maybe it’s just option overload - when you have 100 pedals to choose from, where do you even start? For me, it’s just too easy to quickly “taste” a pedal in the software and then move onto another without even playing with the controls to see what the pedal can actually do. With a physical pedal, I really explore it more.
So now my main use for the modelers (other than headphone playing) is to occasionally A/B a pedal I have built against the version in the software to see how close or different they sound. It doesn’t even occur to me to audition a pedal in the software to see if I want to build it (I can’t tell you how many times I have built a pedal that I love and only afterwards do I discover “holy shit, there’s a version of this pedal in Amplitube”).

Mike
 
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