Using guitar amp sims live onstage... requesting your feedback

Question

I know this is mainly a recording forum, but I expect a few of you out there are using amp sims live. So I've about a dozen gigs now and it's been OK for the most part. I also use Logic to run backing tracks, and I've been using different amp sim plug-ins on live guitar tracks to test them out and see what works best. For the most part I'm using Guitar Amp Pro, but I'm also trying Amplitube 2 and Guitar Rig 3. In general, I've had comments from FOH audio techs saying that my tones are pretty good, but there's always seems to be a bit of harshness and thinness in the tone that is not apparent in my headphones at home, and if anything I tend to reduce the treble and presence in all my patches, below that of the factory presets anyway.
I mainly play through the monitor systems at gigs, and am looking at different in-ear options, but last weekend I played a venue with limited on-stage monitor capabilities, so I made provisions on my own. I split off the stereo signal coming out of my Firebox interface and went into a little Mackie 1202 mixer, then into a Crest stereo power amp, then into my Vox 4x12 stereo guitar cabinet. You can't run a processed guitar signal back into a regular guitar amp head as this combination sounds like ka-ka, understandably, because the amp sims have already processed what the amp would then process a 2nd time. Anyway, I ran the EQ's on the mixer totally flat, so in effect I was sending the uncolored original sound to the cabinet.
Surprisingly, in this new configuration my tone was actually very good and "amp-like" sounding. My theory is that the 4x12 cabinet, not having a horn or high frequency driver, naturally removed any high end harshness with it's limited frequency response (it's probably about 8Khz bandwidth I'm guessing). I might have expected my tone to be muffled, so either I'm running too much high end in my patches or what, but it's no wonder that a monitor or FOH loudspeaker system with separate high frequency drivers would sound the way they do. My next thoughts are to maybe test running a low pass filter on the output strips in Logic to roll-off frequencies above 8kHz or so, to limit what gets fed out to the monitors and FOH.
Another theory about the thin sound is due to the fact that in an amp sim environment on-stage, there really isn't any air moving speakers like in a true mic'd up guitar cabinet on-stage. In terms of amp sim preferences, I find that Guitar Amp Pro is not as detailed or warm as the others, but it can be tweaked for acceptable higher gain tones and some really nice clean tones. I think in general, Amplitube 2 has the fullest fattest tone in some of their amp models, and while Guitar Rig 3 has some really nice models which sound fine in headphones or studio monitors, they seem to sound the thinnest live of the three sims I've tested.
I know guitar tone is a very personal thing and what sounds good to one person may sound like crud to another, but what generalities and experiences have some of you had? I think we're just on the tip of a revolution in live guitar, what with the new Stomp IO and Rig Kontrol products coming out, just to name a few... Also, how are some of you finding the latency issues that are still hindering this technology to some degree? Many thanks in advance!

Answer 1

hey thanks for the responses guys! I usually get notified via email when a reply is posted but that didn't happen for this post (?). Anyway, great advice, but in the meantime I've actually managed to make a dramatic improvement in my onstage tone and it was very simple, and logical too. The first rather embarrassing point is that I tried setting up my tones with different sets of headphones and whoa what a difference. One would expect that different headphones will all sound different (as it is with loudspeakers) but the Yamaha headphones I was previously using removed pretty much every bit of high-end harshness that I was hearing on stage through the monitors, so what I thought was a good sound in reality was NOT. With my new BeyerDynamic earbuds (which I will be using as in-ears onstage soon) I heard pretty much exactly the same harshness that the Yamaha's were masking.
The fix to this was actually pretty simple: in the cabinet simulators of the plug-ins, I simply moved the mic to "off-center" instead of "on centre" where I had the majority of my patches saved as. Other than maybe a little less presence and treble, the tone was instantly 100% better. The funny thing is, from all the live shows I've done I always position the mic off-centre because it sounds better, doh!
I've played 4 shows since and 3 of them were festival style with great quality monitor rigs and my guitar absolutely rocked when on high gain tones, instead of giving my bandmates and the first few rows in the audience a very close shave The tone was very punchy, fat and "amp-like" and I was even getting some controllable feedback from the wedges. The guys in the band and even some FOH engineers commented that I had great tone so I felt alot better about the whole thing. The other show was a club with cheap monitors and while the sound was nowhere as good, it still was not harsh like before.
I admit that my overall tone is maybe still not quite as dynamic as it could be and there's a minimal (but almost unnoticeable) amount of latency, but overall it sounds like a guitar should, and I've heard many players with good quality amp rigs that sound much worse. I'm going to continue with my "ampless" crusade (no hard feelings jnashguitar haha!) and as technology improves I'm confident I'll continue to zero in on that elusive holy grail of guitar tone that every guitarist can attest to. That's the thing with guitarists, we think we have achieved the perfect tone, but after a few months we start looking again, but that's what makes it fun, buying new toys, trying new things. Good tone is everywhere!