Sorry for spamming the whole forum so much. My dad's cat (used to be my cat; she liked him better; rescued her when I was in college) is dying and I just can't focus on work. Or play. Thinking about guitar stuff is relaxing.
True, and I think that's especially true with new technology like amp modelers. You use what your friends use, and almost everybody uses Kemper in Nashville. It's interesting how, even with the powerful influence of the internet, word of mouth is still such an important factor.
I think that's fair. IDK. Here, everybody who uses modeling is either on the guitar internet a lot and obsessed with the QC or not on the guitar internet as much and "still" using a Helix. A lot of people think FAS is this weird, esoteric European thing. I don't quite get it.
it's interesting that comments here focus mostly on things like: could such an ultra basic modeller be constructed within Axefx?, or, pointing out how far modelling has come since the early days and on details missing in the tacklebox' tones. But, unless I totally missed the video's point somehow, I thought he was clearly just trying to show how much things like tubes, rectifiers, and bias have limited influence overall, relative to some basic generic distortions and correctly placed eq, similar to the argument that, though body wood types have an influence in a solid body electric guitar's tone, they rank quite low in the pecking order of all influences.
I think you're right for his intentions. But, he didn't actually accomplish much of that.
Specific tubes aren't a big deal...okay. Cool. A lot of amp designers say the same thing. AFAIK, it's largely about headroom affecting when the distortion happens. I've changed an amp from 6L6s (I think) to 6551s to try to make it a little quieter. It worked a little and sounded the same to me.
Rectifiers....the differences in the attack were clearly audible in his example. He said they sounded basically the same. They didn't, unless you're just talking about long-term frequency spectrum. Some tube rectifiers are really bad at their jobs...they won't keep up with the power demands of a tube amp that's working hard...so when the signal demands a huge voltage swing, the rectifier can't deliver it fast enough and the whole amp temporarily acts like you turned it's operating voltage down....which
is compression/distortion, sounds like bloom, and feels like the leading edge of the notes are "squishy" for lack of a better word. If the rectifier works properly (which solid state ones do), that doesn't happen.
Bias makes a difference in the overdrive character of a push-pull amp...it's not the biggest thing, but it's not cork sniffing either. You can play with it in the fractal. If you know how to do it safely, you can do it on a real tube amp (that allows you to do so). Setting it "correctly" is part of normal maintenance. But while you're doing it, you can just turn the pot one way and then the other and see what happens...it's not likely to burn anything out in a few seconds (YMMV, IANAL, etc.). But
that difference isn't particularly subtle either if the power tubes are distorting. His experiment was a switch on an amp that's supposed to work either way....which at least kind of implies that whether it's fixed or cathode biased, the tubes are running basically like they should in either position. AFAIK, that's usually done to change the output power of an amp...which means it could be a headroom/volume thing on that amp and he normalized the levels...and it's entirely possible that they'd sound basically the same depending on how he had it set. Or it just doesn't make a real difference there. But bias, in general, does.
All of his cab experiments make at least some sense to me based on what I do know about acoustics. But, I haven't done anything like that comparison. I know there are some cabs I've liked and some I haven't. But nothing was consistent between them and most cabs I've heard have a use case.
The guitar ones....well....he definitely showed his points. So did the Darryl Braun video where he took a saw to a strat. I know that pickup position makes a significant difference. I think DylanTalksTone also showed similar things. So....clearly wood doesn't matter, or at least not much. But....Kris Barocsi and others have swapped electronics and hardware between guitars and had some of the character follow the guitar not the pickups. So, electronics and hardware don't matter much either. A lot of people make the same arguments about SS frets....that they don't change anything. And I've seen demonstrations that show that...and others that try to claim it but fail to prove it. So....that's only a "sometimes" thing.
If you take all these things together, the only valid conclusion I can come to is that nothing about a guitar makes it sound the way it does. But they still all sound different from each other, if only a little.
Or, much more likely in my view, all of those things make a difference. If you isolate them, each one is
tiny, mostly dropping below being perceptible after you hold most of them constant. Probably even less perceptible if you're running through an imperfect amp and especially a speaker that is always distorting at least a little bit. And I, at least, can't judge a guitar based on what it sounds like direct without an amp...thankfully no one really does that unless they're generating a frequency spectrum or something. And when I listen to these demos...as good as they are, my speakers are distorting too.
When you take all of the things that could minutely change the tone of a guitar and add them together...one sounds different from another, probably without any one thing being completely responsible.
People probably do put too much importance on certain things out of the pure coincidence that several guitars they've liked in the past share some characteristics and others they didn't like don't. Fortunately, I have a really easy way to tell whether a guitar is good or not. I play it. If it plays badly but something makes me still curious about it, I'll pay the shop to change the strings and do a setup. If the frets or the nut are badly dressed but I like it otherwise, I might choose to buy it anyway and do that work myself if the price is right. Or I might just not bother because there are hundreds of other guitars in my theoretical price range within an hour of driving.
Maybe the one I like just has mojo that comes completely from my emotional state when I first pick it up. Whatever. If they truly all sound the same and nothing makes a difference...that's as good a reason to buy as any, and it doesn't really matter what reason my brain makes up later to justify it.
The whole debate seems like a joke to me. Whatever side you wind up on and even if you're somewhere in the middle...it doesn't actually matter in the end. Just buy the guitar you like based on whatever criteria you find important.
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